Mini Semester Two

It seems like even though we aren't in "school," we do have a session demarcation that develops on its own. And this is the start of our new mini-semester, it would seem. Our Young Rembrandts art class is over and the 5 week pottery session is about to begin. The Edison Project class Walter was taking at www.quickstudylabs.com ended last week (but ended for him a mere two days ago because he was out of town for the final week of the distance learning class), and the new one begins tomorrow. And this week we sign up for the next session at the Richmond Enrichment Studio, which is a homeschool center. We still have two weeks left of the current 8 week session, but the changing of the guard is in sight.

It has finally been seasonal here. Tonight we expect a freeze, and because we're resistant to turning on our heater quite yet, it's a wee bit freezing here in our house. Walter, Rutledge, and I celebrated the season by going to Carter Mountain Orchard in Charlottesville. The orchard, which is about 90 seconds away from Monticello and Ashlawn-Highland, is your typical tourist craziness--thousands of families, well-coordinated and extensive parking direction, twenty checkouts, cutouts to stick your face in for pictures. You get the idea. We had a great time. And we came home with 20 pounds of apples. Tomorrow the big plan is to make an apple pie. Only 80 more apples to go after that!


The Fujis were especially elusive. What more excuse do you need to find in a niche in the canopy?


Apple cider doughnuts by the half-dozen, still warm. With apple slushies. With your 22 pounds of apples. Ahh, the good life.


Fall is for hayrides. You know, I think that when I was growing up I might never have been on a hayride. Or maybe once at a weekend camp I went to at a horse ranch. But I don't even remember. My kids? They're on a hayride every time they turn around in the fall and spring. Walter and Rutledge especially enjoyed seeing the top-secret apples not for public picking and consumption. I vetoed walking a mile with three elbow-wrenching bags of Granny Smith's to try to sneak a few contraband pieces of fruit.



Overall, though, this was a relaxing weekend at home. Walter and Frances went to a sleepover at a neighbor's house, and Frances went to watch her friend cheerleading and her friend's brother playing football. She went to a mock-sleepover birthday party on Friday night. In the midst of the playing, we also managed to read two short but satisfying stories about the Mayflower and the first Thanksgiving, numerous picture books, a short book about George Washington, and more than half of the Great Illustrated Classics _Captains Courageous_. Ollie and I are still in the middle of _Five Children and It_, Ollie is reading the second in the Gregor the Overlander series, and we have _The Cat Who Went to Heaven_, another Newbery winner, on the docket for tomorrow night. Frances rewrote, in her own special way, the story of Rumplestiltskin, which I transcribed onto notecards that she bound together and plans to illustrate.

Walter and Ollie worked together to make a "sweeper," which is the first project in the new Lego Science and Technology set that came in the mail last week. I'll have to write more later about what a cooperative venture looks like between the two of them.



This particular project was called "Circus Magna." Two different circus tricks are either "attractive" or "repellant." In the first, a man flips from a platform on the tower and lands on a target after the car drives through. In the second, which you see above and below, a jump seat is picked up by a car as it drives under the tower. The next step was to build a counter that will record the number of times the trick is performed.