Grandma Strikes again! B’s favorite Christmas present this year was a carnivorous plant terrerium.
This morning I decided to do a little formal school, it made a good change from holidays actually; spelling dictation, Story of the World, and setting up the terrerium. DH had asked me to take it easy, as I’ve had a lot of Braxton-Hicks contractions lately. I woke up thinking that school sounded more fun than laundry or dishes, so it must be taking it easy.
About 4 people asked me at church yesterday if the baby had already dropped. Well, I’m out of breath still, so I’d say no. My mom say that the dress I wore’s Empire waist emphasized the pregnancy, not that I looked ready to deliver to her. I think I feel better?
We all lay down on my bed for history. The boys asked me to read the chapter about the Rabbi of Cordova twice, after that I kept prone and called encouragement (and occasionally told M to stop climbing on B’s chair). I took inspiration from my mother’s story about earning her Pioneer Girls baking badge in the 1950’s by baking a scratch cake by herself with her mother allowed no closer than the kitchen door. My bedroom is right off the kitchen, so it was like that. I could see and hear, but not jump in too quickly.
I had B read all the instructions before beginning. He wanted to know why; so I told him about the 30 min recipe for chicken soup that calls for cooked chicken on step 7 – if you don’t read recipes or science experiments through totally you never know what surprises you’ll find, but the time may be gone to act on it if you are in the middle of things. As it turns out we needed 2 cups of distilled water or rain water. We melted some snow in the microwave, then got started.
The new word of the day was stratify (as in refrigerate the seeds in the terrarium for 8 weeks). The terrerium takes up as much space as a gallon jug of milk – how come kitchen space is one of those homeschool costs they forget to warn you about? Just kidding. I loved the boys enthusiasm as they got out the seed packet. Those seeds were tiny – way smaller than carrot or radish seeds, more like dust!