Today, Kyle learned about writing Expository Essays. The actual teaching took about fifteen minutes.

It took him six hours, a nap, another nap, a stomach ache, playing with the cat, playing with the dog, swinging on the chin-up bar, swinging on the weight machine, three meals, oh, and another nap to write it. He really wanted to be on the computer - as in gaming. He was rebeling. But I was patient, I was firm, I was kind. And he sat down and wrote the essay in ten (!) minutes after Dad came home. Didn't have to say a word to Dad or him- he just decided to finish it - and gave me an awfully nice, unsolicited apology for procrastinating. But he gave the essay to Dad to read first. Which meant my editing comments could not be worse than his father's.

But, at any rate, here is his first draft - rather cute:

How to clean the wood stove, it's not hard. The reason you would clean the wood stove is because of creosote, a flammable residue from burning wood, especially pine and other evergreens. It builds up over time and can cause chimney fires if not taken care of. That's why today we have powder and substances that we put in our fires to make the creosote hard and inflammable. Then it gets all clogged up in the vents of the stove and makes it so it can't get enough air.

To clean the stove you have to let it go out by opening the flume and turning the air all the way up. Sometimes you have to open the door(s) to let more air in if it's not going well. Once it's out you let it cool off to a comfortable temperature so that you can safely touch the inside without being burnt.

You will need one thing to clean it, your hands, although a shop vac would help. What you have to do is open the side vents internally and scrape out the creosote with your hands. But before you do that you have to get rid of all the excess ash and coals lying in the bottom, preferably with the shop-vac. Then you make sure all the creosote that you can get out with your hand i.e. the big chunks, are out. Now you use the shop-vac to suck out all the smaller pieces and powder.

Once it's all cleaned out you have to re-light it and make sure it works. Don't forget to put the vent covers back on. After it's going it's clean and this should really be done every two weeks or so or when the weather permits it. I'm not really an expert though so you don't have to take my word for it.

Now as you can see cleaning the wood stove isn't that hard, it just requires a little effort and doesn't take very long. It needs to be done as well as emptying the ashes to avoid clogging and to maintain performance from your stove.

Abby babysat her four little charges today. How she loves them. They made chocolate chip cookie bars and had a tea party. When she came home, she made us some chocolate chunk craisin cookie bars, using the same recipe, from memory. I was impressed with her remembering the recipe over a several hour period.

Abby and I discussed the upcoming fieldtrips, and as we are going to the FBI Field Office on Friday, she has ballroom dance class on Friday night, and we are going to Bean Town next Wednesday for the day, we decided it was best not to go to Braille Press tomorrow, but instead go in May. Life must be close to sane, or at least an attempt made. And today sort of wrung me out.

Great chess game with Abby. Ended in a draw. Had each other's Kings on the run for about forty minutes.

Abby and Kyle were competing good naturedly to see who would finish their math first - Kyle won.

Going to study Egyptian tombs a little before our fieldtrip on the 8th.

Good chess game with Kyle - he beat me!

Chugging along with math and writing.

Abby, Kyle and I went out to Borders and found a couple of glass chess sets (the chess club was low on sets yesterday). With my teacher's discount, they were $6.46 each! What a steal!

Chess club met today! Good turn-out. Dave gave a good brief talk on strategy and how peices move. He spent a couple hours last night drafting up several hand-outs for the children.

Abby had refused to go, but now that Dad is going to be there, she's all excited.

They came home, pumped and talkative. Good day.

We've been discussing foreign languages. Neither Kyle or Abby are interested in learning Russian or Farsi (economically viable) or Spanish ( which I have a base in). Kyle wants to learn German and Abby wants to learn Japanese or Chinese, but has decided that it makes more sense to learn German. I need to do research on language programs, but I think I am leaning toward Rosetta Stone - reviews have it as the best one out there. I know, it's not as good as immersion, but I don't think there's a chance we could go to Germany for a year or so to learn the language. We'll have to settle on cds or computer.

Nothing exciting here - just going through the usual math and writing, planning field trips, chores, daily life, conflict resolution. Same ol', same ol'.

Waiting to hear back if Julia can go with us on a field trip in March to an egyptian tomb and the art museum.

Oh, what a lovely day it was! We got a late start because it was requested that I witness some documents for a friend, but we made it to the museum only an hour after opening, so we had five whole hours left to spend there. Abby still felt that wasn't long enough . . .

First daughter decided to join us instead of job-hunting, so, she and Bubba peeled off and toured the museum on their own while Kyle stayed with me. That meant no sibling fighting and a very nice boy keeping me company, reading along with me and actually showing interest. All in all, a very nice time. We were particularly impressed by the way Rodin showed not only the muscles and form of the human body, but by the way he could show emotion in his sculptures.

There was no time for sitting, or knitting, as we spent four hours walking through nearly every exhibit, the spawn showing me some of their new favorites, or remembered favorites from previous visits (we've not visited in three or four years). Of particular highlight were three new things: a mummy; an 18th century dress and an art collection of Edward Gorey's .

Some links for Auguste Rodin: http://www.musee-rodin.fr/welcome.htm (this one has a great education guide you can download - 22 pages!) http://www.cantorfoundation.org/Education/edu.html

Spent most of the day reviewing math and writing with Kyle and researching material on Rodin. We're taking a trip to the art museum tomorrow to see the new exhibit on Rodin - excitement! I'm planning on bringing my knitting along and peacefully knitting surrounded by art while they complete the scavenger hunt and puzzles I've put together for them. Abby says she would gladly live at an art museum, Kyle is moderately enthusiastic about the trip. Jesse is going to stay home and jobhunt.