The Time Travelling Roman

by Harry

One day when Harrius the Mighty was fighting the Gauls, he almost lost. There were 100 Romans fighting 200 Gauls. Harrius ordered his legionnaires with javelins to throw their javelins at the remaining Gauls and his horsemen to attack.

Then it was a heroic victory for the Romans!

Harrius rode back into Rome but the only way to ride under Triumphal Arch was to kill 5,000 men. Julius Caesar saluted Harrius the Mighty for this heroic victory. He said, "thank you for saving Rome."

Then Julius Caesar gave Harrius the Mighty the time traveler helmet. Julius Caesar invented the time traveler helmet. He told Harrius the Mighty, "this is a time traveler helmet. Go forward in time, look up some things about legions. Look up some machines besides our flame throwers, ballistas, and onagers. Find out how to build them and what we need. Go get Samus the Conqueror and tell him you're going to go to the future and to hold your hand. Tell him what buttons to push. Harrius the Mighty is going to wear it and Samus the Conqueror will hold his hand."

They got ready and heard a whirring sound then a blasting off sound and in five seconds they landed at the _____ house.

Harrius the Mighty knocked at the door. I answered it and said, "hi Harrius the Mighty and Samus the Conqueror." Harrius the Mighty asked me, "can Sam and I look up some machines, not ballistas, flame throwers, or onagers and find out how to build them?"

I said, "I know how to tell you how to build them. How about you go to our military and you can get the pieces there also. I have a place traveler helmet that takes you places like your time traveler helmet does, except it goes to places in the modern time."

Samus went to the military with Sam and Harrius the Mightly stayed and played Nintendo 64 with me. Then we read Roman books. The reading was for fun.

Sam and Samus the Conqueror came back and told Harrius the Mighty how to build machines. Harrius and Samus have the list of what they need and what they are called. They are tanks, Long-Bow Apaches, and F15 Eagles and F16 Eagles. Those are jets, not eagles.

Harrius the Mighty put the helmet back on. They hld hands and pushed the buttons when they were at the back door. They traded the place traveling helmet for the time traveler helmet and went back to Rome.

Harrius the Mighty and Samus the Conqueror told Julius Caesar what they found. He was happy. They used the modern machines to win every battle. Harrius the Mighty went under the Triumphal Arch and got a huge empire.

The End.

Spring Fever?

I know we all have colds, but not one of us has an actual fever. But it seems like we aren't getting anything done. Well, I take that back. We're getting a lot of things "done," we're just not having any fun doing any of it. In the last week it's been harder and harder to get Harry to "just sit down and do his work!" Sam is thrilled that I'm including him with letter pages to write and numbers to add, Annika is also happy to have some coloring books to color and paper to cut. Emma is happy being held and drolling all over me. But Harry isn't happy.

And I totally understand that. He is a little clone of me in many ways. So much so that sometimes it's scary! I think that right now he's bored. And, honestly, so am I. We go from doing a couple of pages of math to a lesson in his grammar book to a spelling test (which he loves now, go figure) to reading something. It's a lot of going from this to this to this with no connections made at all. I have an idea of how to solve that for next year with different materials, but for now what do I do? It's important what we're working on and I need him to learn spelling and math and grammar along with history and science. And all of those other things that are important.

I think we are going to get more books out for read-alouds. I'll look through them for interesting words and interesting things we can learn more about. We might switch math for a while to another book that's interesting by virtue of the fact that we don't use them all of the time. For science we'll go outside more. We need more play in our day I think. So in general we'll go outside more. That alone can cure most ills. I'm going to listen to my feelings more when I start thinking that we need to do less and be more. Yep, that's a start.

But for today, here's what we worked on:
math--review page
spelling--he got one wrong so he wrote it three times in his spelling notebook
grammar--telling the story of the three little kittens and him telling it back to me
50 Famous Stories--George Washington and his Hatchet
The Winter's Tale--they just love Shakespeare!
We looked up Bethlehem, Jerusalem, and Nazareth to talk about how far apart they were (are)
There is something else that I can't think of now, another read-aloud. hmmm. Nope,not coming to me. Maybe later

The thing with Harry is that if I left him alone he probably would learn everything he needs/wants to know. I just don't trust that well enough. But I need to find a way to channel that a little better. Hmm. Lots to think about.

Tuesday

Tonight I have a swimming class at the local college, so everything gets compressed. It all has to be done by about 4--any cleaning, lessons, dinner prep. Otherwise you get a very cranky, somewhat frantic mom trying to leave. But it's worth it--so worth it to go swimming for two hours twice a week. I love it so far. It's hard, but fun.

Anyway, this is what we've done:

Some outside stuff this morning
Harry worked on his math lesson.
A grammar lesson, complete with copywork. We talked about the difference between sit and set.
We read a section of SOTW and answered some review questions. The PBS Nova site has a cool thing to create an aqueduct. That was a lot of fun. Tomorrow we'll make one out of clay (I think).
I still need to do some read-alouds. We went to the library this morning for some books, so while the pizza dough rises next, I'll read to the kids.

That's about it I guess. Pretty typical for a Tuesday seeing that we're out for most of it.

It must be Monday

Today we:

learned some new hand songs--I'm trying to include Annika more than I have been
had scissors practice with Sam and Annika using some cutting pages from Wondertime.com
(Sam gets very upset when he can't do it perfectly the first time)
began lesson 11 in MUS
began lesson 3 in Spelling Workout (which I hate--too much busywork)
read about the Roman gods and worked on the Ancient Rome history pocket
read part of the Armadillo story in Just So Stories
Began The Winter's Tale in our Shakespeare for Children book
Drew five or six new Roman maps
Colored several coloring pages
Ate lunch and snack

I guess that's it. It just seems like more while you are doing it.

Bad Days and Unschooling

Usually I write only about the fun things we do--the good days when everything comes up sunshine and roses. Honestly, though, most of my days are pretty good. Maybe sometimes just sunshine, but no roses, but still that's not bad.

Occasionally we have our days when it rains. And it rains hard. Harry didn't get enough sleep last night, Sam had speech early this morning, Annika's world is destroyed because I wouldn't let her eat all of the lotion in the house. And Emma, well, she's still pretty perfect, sleeping away in her crib looking angelic. (A whole other problem--she's sleeping too much, maybe she's sick.) I didn't sleep well last night because I did something to my right shoulder and now it hurts continually with little spikes of extreme pain. And it is literally raining today. Yeah, not too much sunshine today.

The other thing complicating all of this is that it's Thursday. I actually count on Thursdays to "catch up" from the week. Monday and Thursday are the only two days we don't have a bunch of stuff through the day. So, I use those two days as heavy academic days--there's a list of work to accomplish, and doggoneit, we're going to accomplish it.

So, what do I have with all of these moods and other things happening? A really grumpy family. (Except Sam, surprisingly he's my most even-tempered kid on bad days.) And no one wanting to do this list of work I have planned. Today I decided to have an early quiet time. Since I know that everyone is actually pretty tired, I fed them a pretty good snack at 11 and sent them to separate rooms to read, sleep, or play, their choice, as long as they stay there and are quiet. And I made cookies. Big ones, with lemon in them.

This afternoon, when I get them from quiet time, we'll meet at the kitchen table for some cookies and milk. We'll do some "real work" like spelling and grammar, and we'll read poems, stories, and make a Roman fasces.

I'm hoping that will dispel some of the clouds and bring out the rainbows and roses.