Newman's Castle

We spent much of Monday at Newman's Castle with our homeschool group.  When we went three years ago, our homeschool group was the only group there.  However, this year we had some bad planning (by yours truly) and ended up going on a school holiday.  We were there with at least one hundred other people.  His castle really cannot accommodate that many people all at once, so it was a lot of waiting in line to climb the towers at the start.  Fortunately our group had what others didn't.  Stamina.  We waited them out and several hours in, we had the run of the place.  The boys both made it to the very top of the bell tower.  Caroline, who doesn't seem to be scared of much, surprised us by saying she was too scared to climb that high.  It consisted of a lot of stairwells, ladders, and Henry even said that the bell hit him in the back while he was climbing.  But they were pretty proud of themselves when they made it.

If you look closely, Josiah's at the very top.

Josiah

They climbed the drawbridge wheel, played with wooden swords, and did their best to get the sword out of the stone.

Mr. Newman, the owner of the property, also owns a bakery in town.  Part of the castle tour includes a brown bag lunch with a spread of donuts, cookies, and cakes from his bakery.  When we all gathered for our lunch, Josiah just happened to mention that he had already eaten two doughnuts. He seemed to always make himself scarce and go off exploring on his own.  Apparently, always with a doughnut in hand.  For her presentation at CC this week, Caroline talked about her time at Newman's Castle.  One of her peers asked her, "What was your favorite part?"  to which she replied, "The cake and donuts."  In three years time, when we study this period of history again, we'll just skip the castle and go get some donuts.

Poor Henry has not felt well all week.  He didn't have many symptoms except a general feeling of sickness.  He had a very brief fever Monday evening and then nothing since then.  No cough, no stomach upset, not even a runny nose.  He has been taking his temperature every day, all day long because I think he feels that if he has a fever then he is legitimately sick.  I have told him that I know he's not one to fake being sick, but I think it may be the incessant questioning of his sister that makes him check his temperature.  No-empathy-Caroline keeps asking him, "Do you have a fever?" to which he'll reply, "No."  Then she says in quite the accusatory tone, "You're not sick."  She has had no patience for him being able to lie on the couch and watch TV.  She continuously brings up some random day in the past and tells me, You made me do school when I had a fever.  I have no idea when this day was. I can only imagine we did school and discovered she had a fever later in the day.  But she has brought that day up, and brought it up often!  Fortunately, by Saturday he seemed to be on the mend and was running around the house again tossing his ball in the air.  Once we saw the ball playing we knew he was back.
 In addition to being sick, Henry has lost 3 teeth this week.  He never lets us know that he has any teeth loose until they're ready to fall out.  He's like a puppy right now with all the teeth coming out.

We had a very fun CC day this week.  One science experiment was about surface tension and water molecules.  We had a bowl of water, shook in a lot of pepper flakes, then got a tiny bit of Dawn soap on the end of a toothpick, put the toothpick in the water and watched the pepper all zoom to the edges of the bowl.  The kids in Caroline's class were amazed.  Henry missed CC (and had spent the morning at Todd's work), so Caroline did it for him the next day.  It was a fun one.
Then we studied the artist, Gainsborough (who did The Blue Boy).   He liked to draw fanciful, idyllic landscapes, but the people at his time wanted him to paint their portraits.  So he fulfilled both and painted people in front of landscapes of his own desires.  In Caroline's class they painted a background scene of sky/mountains/river/tree, but the best part was that they got to put themselves in the painting.  Caroline's painting is below.  When she cut her photograph, she kept the grass since there was grass in her painting.

Keeping the craftiness alive, Caroline made a necklace this weekend.  She painted one of those plastic things that you're supposed to hang in the window.  She, instead, decided to make it in to a giant bling necklace.

Josiah and Caroline were able to do Saturday Night Drop Off at their friend's house.  The craft this week was for all the kids to do a vision board and set goals for 2020.  We thought this was a great idea.  We had no idea what the kids would come up with, but as parents we could think of some great goals for them.  Apparently we were not on the same wavelength as our kids.
Josiah's 2020 goals:
1. Draw Mickey Mouse 20x (he'll have that done in 2 days time)
2. Learn more about dogs.
3. Buy a top hat.

Caroline's goals:
1.  "Ha ha ha.  I don't have any goals."
She did tell me that the girl she drew was so she could act more like a princess.  The unicorn was so she could be cute.

Alrightly then.
They did have fun at their friend's house.
And so a new week begins.  This week we study Degas and have another fun project.