The Continuing Adventures of Bonnie and Clyde

In the news, we got a  little bit of snow this week.

Just a few inches.

Of course, Bonnie had to make snow angels.

And an epic battle had to be waged.

And, we had to do a little school work.  Today’s subject?  Aerodynamics.

Truthfully, there were far too many good sledding pictures, so Bonnie & Clyde’s dad made a video of some of the best sledding clips.  The background music are two duets, played by Bonnie & Clyde this holiday season.  The first is “Deck the Halls” and the 2nd is “Santa Claus is Coming to Town.”  Hope you enjoy, and Merry Christmas!

Sledding on youTube

I often find it ironic that while I was a girl scout for about 36 seconds, and the Mr. was a boy scout for just a little longer than that, that we have been involved scouting parents for … what … 12 years?  Something like that.  Seems like we’re almost always involved in some scouting activity or another, and this week was no different.

The girl scout troop is starting to ramp up for GS cookie sales.  That’s right – it’s almost time for the annual stock-up of Thin Mints and Samoas!  Bonnie and the girls in her troop spent this week’s meeting practicing how to approach people about cookies, and deciding where they were going to donate their Gift of Caring boxes, and if they wanted to donate some of their profits (they do!).

While the girl scouts are working on that, Clyde and some members of his boy scout troop went on a two-night polar bear campout.

It doesn’t have to snow to qualify to be a polar bear campout, just be cold enough, but they got snow, as an added bonus.   They did some geocaching, hiked a battlefield, and learned that if you don’t brush snow off a tent, it will eventually collapse.  A good time was had by all, but I know they’re glad to be back home and will sleep well in their warm beds tonight.

I see that I forgot to finish updating this post, and hit publish.  Sorry about that!  This post was originally about the week before the week of Thanksgiving.  It was a catch-up week since Clyde was recovering from H1N1, and there were a ton of activities that week, too.  Busy, busy!

In the kids’ pottery class, they made coasters out of tiles, using shaving cream and dishwashing soap to create a textured design.  Those had to be fired, so I won’t have a picture until we pick them up after the next pottery lesson.  My sensory-challenged kid was able to do the craft; a big step for him!

Tuesday of that week, we learned how to sculpt in the style of Rodin.  The kids used sculpting tools made of paperclips and clothespin to whittle away their designs from the block.  Clyde created a tie-fighter and Bonnie went for a globe.  They still need to paint those now that the clay is dry, but they had fun creating a mess with the little pointy tools.

Wednesday, both kids went to scouts.  The girls learned how to crochet to satisfy the Yarn & Fabric Arts junior badge.  They learned both how to finger crochet, and how to use a hook to create a simple chain stitch.  I had to learn enough so that I could help the scouts, and in the process became quite hooked (no pun intended).  Since then, we’ve been having a good time checking out crochet patterns for napkin rings, hats, wash cloths, etc.  Thank goodness for the patience of several good teachers; they are all so much more helpful than a picture in a book.

The next week was mostly Thanksgiving prep.  One of Bonnie and Clyde’s grandmothers came to town, and the big kid came home from college, so we had a household.  Besides eating way too much, the kids enjoyed playing games and hanging out with family.  It’s going to be rough to get back to school!

(FYI, the IEW papers have been updated for both kids as well.)

Please add to the annals of  “Things that I never thought I’d say as a parent” the statement, “Why is there a salami sandwich under my couch?”

In more mundane matters, it’s been a busy couple of weeks around here.  Both Bonnie and Clyde took and passed another TKD test.  They were a bit nervous about it, but came through with flying colors.  The test was 3 hours long, though, and Clyde started feeling punky about half-way through the test, so he was quite glad he was able to complete it.  Neither kid has been able to wear their new belt, however, because that was the onset of the flu for Clyde.

It was about 9 days of symptoms for Clyde.  Once we decided it was definitely flu-like, we gave him oscillococcinum, which did a great job in knocking back the symptoms, but didn’t quite knock the flu out of his system (which was quite unusual).  His fever remained fairly low-grade, so we never saw the scary fevers that other friends experienced, but he couldn’t quite kick it until this past weekend.

The rest of the family seems to have missed it (knock on wood) and we hope that that’s our last run-in with the flu for the winter.

We were a bit concerned that Bonnie stay healthy as we were supposed to go on a Girl Scout campout this past weekend.  So, come Saturday morning, we packed up the car and headed out for 24 hours of Girl Scout fun.  It was a really wonderful time!  After many days of rain, we had beautiful weather and the girls enjoyed their time outside.  They went on hikes and learned how to recognize some different trail signs.  Bonnie enjoyed practicing skits and making SWAPS (Special Whatchamacallits Affectionately Pinned Somewhere) to trade with her fellow scouts.  In fact, she enjoyed the whole weekend.  When we got home, her comment was that it was, “the best camping trip I have ever been on, and it makes me want to cry.  In a good way.”  You can’t ask for better than that.

And the reason there was a salami sandwich under the couch?  That’s probably best left to the imagination.

Happy Halloween from Bonnie & Clyde!

Though it was quite drizzly, they had fun with the yearly run through the neighborhood.

This was a quiet school week, allowing us to get caught up on a few assignments that were giving us trouble.  Clyde worked hard on a descriptive paragraph that described his favorite ride at Disney World, and Bonnie tried another summarization.  This coming week won’t be as quiet; I might have to raid the kids’ candy supply for a little boost.

Hope all remembered to fall back, too!

One of the biggest surprises when we first started homeschooling was the HUGE number of activities which were available to homeschooling families in our area.  So, the first year we signed up for too many activities, and were run ragged hurrying from one thing to another.  The next year, we backed off a little too much, and the kids felt we were home too much.  Every year since has been a bit of a balancing act.

So, this year, we deliberately picked activities that didn’t occur every single week.  It provides us with the variety, and a lot of flexibility in the schedule.  This week, however, was one of those rare weeks when all the activities collided into the same schedule.   Oy!

In our first art class of the week, Bonnie had to create and paint a mold in her pottery class (Clyde decided to skip this activity).  Bonnie chose a Christmas tree for her mold, and while the class waited for the clay to dry enough to paint, she chose a horse-head magnet to paint.   Both items have to wait until the next class to be picked up, though, so no pictures yet.

In the 2nd art class, a couple of us have gotten together and formed an art co-op based on the Discovering Great Artists book.  The book features art  activities for children to experience the styles and techniques of the great masters.  For example, they might emulate what it’s like to be Michaelangelo painting on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel by laying down on their backs and painting on paper taped to the underside of a table.

Our co-op started our first session by learning about Piet Mondrian and Andy Warhol.

Piet Mondrian wanted to create pictures to express thoughts and feelings entirely created with straight lines and simple colors.   Here’s one of Clyde’s attempts.  He just couldn’t stay with rectangles, or leave any white space in it, though.

Andy Warhol liked making art using the images of famous people or things.  Many of his paintings show repeats of the same image colored in different ways.  Bonnie was really excited about this one.  In her picture, she gave herself a different necklace for each image.

The creepy skin tone seems really fitting for Halloween, too… But she really had fun messing with Clyde.   She took the picture of his favorite bear and made it a Colts fan (something Clyde is NOT).

Thanks R for leading the kids on such fun activities!

Besides the two days of art activities, it was also Girl Scout week.  This week, the girls had a guest speaker – a police detective, who shared what it was like to be an investigator, to help them work towards their Marvelous Mysteries Badge.  Our family finished up the badge last night with a rousing Murder Mystery game at home.

Next week should have much less running around, thank goodness!

As I mentioned in the beginning of the year, both Bonnie and Clyde are taking classes using the Institute for Excellence in Writing’s writing curriculum.  Clyde’s is focusing on the creation of Powerful Paragraphs, while Bonnie’s class is a Level I class (this is her first year).

I’ve created a tab at the top of this blog containing this year’s writing samples for both kids, to watch as their writing develops.

Enjoy!

Having visited the turning point of the Civil War, it seemed necessary to also visit the site of the bloodiest one day conflict, and to also see the town that saw the events which headed the nation towards Civil War and was a key strategic location for both the North and the South.

So, we started the final day of our field trip with a stop at Antietam National Battlefield.

The Battle of Antietam was the culmination of the Maryland Campaign of 1862, the first invasion of the North by Confederate General Robert E. Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia.  Over 23,000 lives were lost in that one day, and though the battle was tactically inconclusive, Lee withdrew his forces back to Virginia (ending this first campaign in the North) and it gave Lincoln enough confidence to announce his Emancipation Proclamation

Unfortunately, the museum was closed that day, so we took a quick look around the Visitors Center, looked out over the grounds,

decided against another car tour, and decided to move on to Harpers Ferry National Historic Park, where there would be more to see and do.

Indeed, there was too much to see and do at Harpers Ferry; we were only able to cover one small portion of it on this trip: the lower town. Some day we’ll have to return with plans to hike some of the ridges and explore more of the Civil War ruins that are still around.

Harpers Ferry is located at the intersection of Virginia, West Virginia and Maryland, and is located at the confluence of the Shenandoah and Potomac Rivers.

You’d be right if you thought that that created a recipe for a flood plain, and indeed, the town has flooded many times.   Here, Clyde contemplates the height of the flood waters from various historic floods.

The lower part of the town is the National Historic Park, and was mostly deserted, making it seem a bit like a ghost town …

… which was a shame, as we really needed more people to witness the family in 1860s clothes.

Harpers Ferry is historically important for multiple reasons.  It’s perhaps best known as the location of John Brown’s raid on the Federal Armory.  John Brown was an abolitionist who planned to raid the armory at Harpers Ferry in order to arm rebellious slaves and strike terror amongst slave owners throughout the south.   He ran into several problems, and ended up holed up in an engine house, which became known as John Brown’s fort.

President Buchanan sent a detachment of marines, led by Robert E. Lee, to Harpers Ferry to squash the rebellion, and John Brown was eventually hung for his treasonous actions against the government.  Though the raid failed, it is commonly credited with escalating the tensions between slave and free states to ignite the War Between the States.

Once the war began, Harpers Ferry became an important and strategic location.  It had witnessed the arrival of the first successful American railroad, and because of it’s location on the B&O Railroad, Union and Confederate troops moved through Harpers Ferry frequently.  The town changed hands 8 times between 1861 and 1865.

One of Clyde’s favorite Civil War heroes is Stonewall Jackson, and he was thrilled to learn that Harpers Ferry was also the location of one of Jackson’s most decisive victories.  In September 1862, Robert E. Lee led the confederate troops into his first invasion of the North, and he chose Jackson to lead the assault on Harpers Ferry.

On the morning of September 15, surrounded by a force twice the size of their own and out of long range artillery ammunition, the Union forces surrendered.  Jackson captured over 12,500 Union troops at Harpers Ferry – the largest single capture of Federal forces during the entire war.  The southern victory was short-lived, however, as the Battle of Antietam was to come two days later, and ended Robert E. Lee’s northern invasion.

With that, we were at the end of our time, and began our trip home.  We’ll have to head south to visit sites for the end of the Civil War, but that’s for another trip.

Though we haven’t visited very many Civil War sites, it seemed as if we would be remiss if we didn’t make a stop in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania since we were so close to it.  One of the bloodiest battles, the three-day engagement is described as the turning point in the war.  The battlefield is quite large, and there are lots of tours that you can take, but we weren’t sure if there would be enough kid-appropriate things to hold their attention.

It ended up becoming Clyde’s favorite stop on this whole trip.

We started at the Gettysburg National Military Park Visitors Center and purchased the kid-friendly version of the audio car tour.  There’s a more complete version of the audio tour to the park, but the cashier was quite helpful in telling us that the kids’ version would be more engaging to them.  She was right; this version was perfect for their attention spans, and the descriptions of the individual skirmishes were engaging, but not overly grisly; factual and not overly simplified.  The kids still gained a decent understanding of the issues and situations on each battle day, but weren’t totally overwhelmed with names and places.

We also picked up the Junior Ranger booklet to the park, which has activities for the kids to complete at many of the sites in the park.  We’ve done many other Junior Ranger booklets, and each activity usually takes between 5 and 15 minutes to complete.  It can get a little annoying if the kids focus on only completing the booklet, instead of seeing other things in the park, but it also calls their attention to things they might not normally notice.  However, if you have children and plan to do this activity booklet at Gettysburg, be aware that it’s MUCH longer and more complete than any of the other booklets we’ve seen.  Most activities were rated to take between 45 minutes and an hour, and some take longer than that.  It’s an excellent resource if you’re going to spend a large amount of time at the park (at least 2 days), but be aware it could be frustrating if you’re only spending an afternoon here.

Anyhow, we started the car tour, thinking it would take us about 2 hours to work our way through the park.  We should have realized it would be longer when we were sidetracked at the very first stop on the tour.  The whole tour was quite amazing – the dramatizations of each battle, the descriptions of strategies, the consequences of decisions were all outlined for the kids.   There are approximately 1600 monuments in the park, and some of the most significant are also called out on the tour.

One of the most impressive monuments in the park is the Eternal Light Peace Memorial with the eternal flame.

Located on the summit of Oak Hill and surrounded by guns that mark Confederate artillery positions, the Eternal Light Peace Memorial overlooks the July 1st battlefield.   It was dedicated by former Union and Confederate soldiers to “Peace Eternal in a Nation United” in 1938, and the flame was lit by FDR.

One of the most chilling sections of the tour was the area known as the Devil’s Den in the Valley of Death.  A turning point for Day 2, the kids could easily see how the Confederate soldiers were trapped when they gave up the advantage of the higher ground.

And the kids were also quite moved by the Pennsylvania memorial which lists the names of all 34,530 Pennsylvanians who lost their lives in the Civil War around the base.  As the football fan stated, “That’s over 2 and a half stadiums of people!”

We ended up interrupting our audio tour in order to make the final ranger program of the day at the National Cemetery, the location of Lincoln’s famous Gettysburg Address.

We had issues with the ranger, but we did learn that Lincoln was NOT the featured speaker of the day.  When the cemetery was being dedicated, a popular orator at the time was asked to speak, and he prepared two hours worth of remarks on the battle at Gettysburg.  Lincoln was asked to just say a few, brief, appropriate remarks.  His comments were so brief that the photographer wasn’t able to set up his camera in time to get a picture!

I’m not sure the full implications of this cemetery really sunk in for the kids, but they did see the Soldiers’ memorial,

and learned that the great, great, (great?) grandfather of President Richard Nixon is buried here.  Someone had set a dime on his grave marker, and we would love to know the story about that.

By this time, we were quite a bit behind on our planned itinerary, so we had to do a little revising on the fly.  After a decent night’s sleep, we went back to the Minuteman National Historic Park’s visitors center in Lexington, just to see what was there before heading on  our way. It was an absolutely gorgeous morning.

This visitor’s center focus is entirely on the events of April 19, 1775 and we saw one of the best multi-media presentations on those events that I have ever seen.  I’m so glad that we stayed to see it.  It very clearly outlined the events on the Lexington Commons, the North Bridge, and the ensuing battle down Battle Road and the kids got a very good feel for how the Revolutionary War actually began.  It tied together a bunch of loose pieces, I think, and was totally worth the stop.

We had planned to stop in Hartford, CT and at the New England Carousel museum, but those didn’t make the cut.  Instead, we did a long drive down through NY (over the Tappan Zee bridge), though NJ, into PA, to make our way over to start the Civil War portion of the trip at Gettysburg.  However, we didn’t want the two battles to get confused, so we needed something to delineate one portion of the trip from another, and what better way to do that than to stop at the very historical Chocolate World?

Ahem.

Okay, so maybe not really historical, though there are Revolutionary soldiers buried in the town, and we did learn quite a bit about the history of Milton Hershey and the Hershey Chocolate empire.

The kids enjoyed the factory tour ride (and the free sample) and enjoyed packaging up their very own package of Hershey kisses.

The trolley tour through town was quite interesting, too.  The kids really got a kick out of the Hershey kiss street lights

and the fact that there are 80 million kisses made each day (just imagine the thousands of miles of foil needed to wrap those kisses!)

And, they enjoyed the multiple free samples along the trolley route, too.  “It’s the milk chocolate!”

Someday, they’re looking forward to returning, but mainly to ride the rides at Hershey Park.