Snow day on Groundhog's Day...but not if you're homeschooling

See the photo at the top of the blog today? Taken out the window early this morning (the orange blobs are street lights). All the schools are closed here...except for Lydia's Homeschool Academy.

Dewey's Link of the Day: Paper Snowflakes

Have you ever checked out PaperSnowflakes.com?

Dewey says you should really have a look. Besides, you don't have to clean paper snowflakes out of your fur.

Frugal Finds and Fixes, Featuring Dollygirl

I think Dollygirl gets this week's Treehouse prize for frugal creativity and, well, a bit of luck here and there too.  Over the past while she has won several doll-related blog giveaways, which makes watching for the mail truck much more exciting.  She's received a free (girl-sized) t-shirt, buttons, and craft materials.

(Photo by Dollygirl)

 She found an awesome clearance-aisle deal (a dollar a pack) on several sets of small doll clothes that fit Only Hearts Club girls and others of about the 9-inch size.  (Official Only Hearts Club clothes run about $20 an outfit, which is why Dollygirl's 9-inchers have so few clothes.  I don't like sewing for small dolls much either.).

She also searched online for the doll hairstyling kit that we couldn't locate for her at Christmas, found it on a Canadian website for a very reasonable price, and ordered it; she's still waiting for that one (there are supply issues, which is why the store here didn't get them in either).  She has been working really hard earning extra money this week, shoveling a vacationing neighbour's snow...I mean, really, REALLY hard.  .

(CTV News photo)

Also, in the past week or so, she has built a doll sewing machine from Lego, a fabric-draped stage and other necessities for a doll awards show (an idea she had for a blog story), made a pair of bead earrings (for herself, not the dolls), and used a gift of fabric to make a very cute mini bed.

As for the rest of us...well, sometimes frugal is just deciding not to replace what's no longer needed: in this case, an answering machine that suddenly started misbehaving.  It used to be a necessity; now, not so much. We could have gotten message service added to our phone line, but again, it's not worth it for the few callers who can't email us or don't have Mr. Fixit's cell phone number.  The last message we got on the machine was a very confused telemarketer (which is what alerted us to the fact that it wasn't delivering our we'll-call-you-back properly).

We've done some of the usual baking--muffins, oatmeal raisin cookies--and made some fairly frugal meals like turkey-pasta casserole, Polish wieners with sauerkraut, and bean soup.  We've used the dryer a lot less this week. I've re-read Liss Burnell's 2012 grocery guide (free book still on my e-reader).

And Mr Fixit and Ponytails each got a needed pair of running shoes at a buy-one-get-one event, plus Ponytails has a student price card that gives her an extra discount at that shoe store.

How was your week?

What's up in the Treehouse? (A Snowie Day) (updated)

(Words to the poem are here)

If you didn't get the hint from the Loreena McKennitt video and the Lampman poem, it's a snow day here as well as in many other places.  And it's not just snow on the ground: that stuff is still coming down.

So Ponytails doesn't have high school, and none of the rest of us had plans to go anywhere this morning.  The Apprentice is at her university, which is also closed because of snow.

Mr. Fixit's surgery was a month ago tomorrow, and while he hasn't had any complications, it's taken him the whole month to start feeling like his insides (and outsides) are getting back to normal.

Mama Squirrel is happy because the very-hard-to-find Children of the Fox arrived at the library this week, and now we get to read it. (Kirkus review here.)

Highlights of our various school weeks:

The Apprentice helped dissect a brain.  She says that it's amazing that that thing can be inside a human head.

Ponytails started her new semester.  She has classes in English, math, Canadian history (all required credits), and photography.  The English class will be studying Life of Pi, Romeo and Juliet, and To Kill a Mockingbird.

Dollygirl helped clean, solder, and paint a radio, and discovered that she is amazing at making tissue-paper flowers.  (Photo to come.)

Things to do on a Snow Day:  Dollygirl's private-schooled friend came over so that they could "do homework" together. I gave Dollygirl some extra math pages to do, and she helped quiz her friend with some French work. After making (and eating) some microwave S'mores, they put all their snow things back on and headed to the friend's house to play in a sort of igloo they are building in her back yard. Dollygirl is staying for supper, which is probably a good thing since she can stay put there for awhile, and it's still snowing and blowing.

What's on the school menu? Voles and pukak snow

It's a snow day in this part of the world.  Elementary school buses aren't running, end-of-semester high school exams are postponed by a day (giving Ponytails an extra day to study), and Dollygirl's best friend in the neighbourhood has the day off from her private school.  It isn't a beautiful, sunny snow day either; it's kind of a messy, wicked-looking, might have freezing rain kind of snow day.  But it's okay for playing inside...or not having exams.

So what's up for school today?  This morning we read a chapter of Walking with Bilbo; a couple of chapters of The Pushcart War; and Dollygirl is doing two pages about rounding off in Key to Decimals.  Then she's going over to her friend's house to play until lunch.

After lunch, we'll have chapters 38 and 39 from The Story of Greece, about the destruction of Sardis and the death of Histiaeus.

When Aristagoras reached Sparta he tried to tempt the king to help the Ionians by telling him of the wealth he might gain for himself. After Artaphernes was conquered at Sardis it would, he said, be an easy matter to go to Susa and seize the treasures of the great king. He then showed Cleomenes a thing he had never seen before—a map engraved in bronze. Aristagoras pointed out to him all the countries he might make his own if he would aid the Ionians in their revolt.

The king listened and looked, then he dismissed the Greek, promising to think over the matter. In three days he sent for Aristagoras and asked him how long it took to journey from Ionia to Susa.

"Three months," answered the messenger.

"O stranger," then said Cleomenes, "depart from Sparta before the sun goes down; thou art no friend to the Lacedaemonians when thou seekest to lead them three months' journey from the sea."

For Natural History:  a section from Jamie Bastedo's Falling for Snow.  I will probably assign some of the section as copywork or dictation.

Whether living on the shoulder of Alaska's Mount McKinley or in an engineered forest in Bavaria, small mammals dwelling under the snow depend on pukak, that warm, moist, loose layer of crystals that hugs the earth.  If the snowcover is deep enough, they may be virtually immune to predation by foxes, owls, or weasels.  Thus ensconced all winter, a vole, lemming, mouse, or shrew can effortlessly maneuver through its maze of corridors, stopping at a food cache for a nibble of berries, checking its many sentry posts at the edge of its territory, or visiting a nest chamber to groom its fur and steal a quick nap.  Never mind the bitter winds and cold snaps and predators that trouble surface-dwellers.  For these furry little critters, life is good down under.

And, I think, maybe a craft or art project for the rest of the day.

Crayons' Year 5: A quiet Friday

On today's homeschool menu:

Singing "Holy Holy Holy" (not the Heber hymn, the Schubert Sanctus that I learned during a brief stint in the Presbyterian Church of Canada)



Singing "Ontari-ari-ari-o" (we usually sing something Canadian on Friday mornings)

Online math game

Reading about William Tyndale in Makers of the English Bible

Short keyboard (music) lesson

Plutarch's Life of Dion, half of lesson 4. King Dionysius keeps the philosopher Plato trapped in his palace in Syracuse, and sends Plato's older friend Dion off to Greece, because he wants Plato to be his (and only his) best friend forever. 300ish B.C. is not that far removed from the experience of some ten-year-olds!

(short break here)

Picture study: Mary Cassatt, Woman and Child Driving.

Cursive writing practice

Silas Marner, most of chapter 10, and written narration

Lunchtime:  reheated minestrone, bagels, and Magic Milkshakes (Mama Squirrel recently received the lovely gift of a Ninja blender, so we're making things we haven't had for awhile)

Helping shovel snow, and sliding down our hill

That's about where we're at now...some things left to do like laundry and cleaning.  Also we're going to work in a chapter of Ballet Shoes.

And it's the weekend!