Life in the Fish Pond

"The idea that it is funny to see wild animals coerced into acting like clumsy humans, or thrilling to see powerful beasts reduced to cringing cowards by a whipcracking trainer is primitive and medieval. It stems from the old idea that we are superior to other species and have the right to hold dominion over them."
—Dr. Desmond Morris, anthropologist, animal behaviorist, author

I really hate circuses.

The circus is in town. Maia was invited by Grandma to go,since Emily & Lilly will be spending the evening with their Daddy. She's excited and thrilled and I, who would normally choose to educate my children about this sort of thing and encourage them to be activists, will just bite my tongue and yell, "Have fun and be good! (and don't let the clowns eat you)" , as she walks out the door.

No, I won't actually say that ;ast bit about the clowns .It's not like me to pass on my quirky phobias to my kids...even if I really secretly fear that a clown may indeed eat her when Grandma has her back turned.

In other domestic matters...
I am on the hunt for a babysitter who can be available every Wednesday morning for 5 weeks,beginning June 21st, in the event that Offspring #1 can not fulfill his familial duty of supervising his younger siblings in the rare event that his mother actually has a life.

It shouldn't be hard since it will only be for Offsprings #2,3,&4 and NOT whiney,boobie-obsessed #5. He'll be going with the Mama (and the boobies). Anthropologist Meredith Small...author of the book Our Babies, Ourselves : How Biology and Culture Shape the Way We Parent ...is teaching knitting classes for mothers with their babies.

The woman at the knitting place where the classes are being held said,"you don't need to know very much about knitting to take the class". So,I'm wondering exactly what the "not very much" is that I should know. Like, what sort of knitting needles should I bring? What kind of yarn does one learn to knit with?

I'm a total Knitting Virgin.I'm clueless Yarn is foreign territory for me,unless it's being used to make doll hair or latch hook rugs.

SO, any help from Knitters with Carnal Knowledge would be greatly appreciated.

::School Stuff::
(I am so bad at keeping homeschool logs and including it in entries seems to help me remember to do it)

Em & Lil
* Started Vocab Unit 6- dictionary definitions and rhyming phrases
* cursive writing-A & B
* Em took a math lesson from last month and did it independently. The lesson was calculating nergy usage cost based on cost per kw/hr for our household.
*Lil did a math game at Miss Maggie's Earth Adventures under the game section there.
*They browsed lesson plans for activities they want to try for our unit on Egypt.
* made observations on our potatoe slices.(so far, they all look pretty average)

Maia
She informed me today that she'd rather not do
"things with words and letters." She likes numbers more. (she can't be my kid)
She's been doing simple multiplication concepts. Like, "If a ladybug has 6 legs and there are 5 ladybugs on a leaf, how many legs are there altogether?" She loves doing math stuff like that.

We read a ton of books that she got at the library book sale. One book really affected her. It's a book put out by The Sesame Street folks and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child ,called, "For Every Child A Better World". She kept going back to that book all day long, focusing on the pages with the homeless children and the children who live where there's war. It was a good discussion starter....