Disease and Diversion

Well, a germ has done what the weather couldn't -- this week's co-op  has been cancelled.  I got the call this morning as I was getting into the shower.  Last Monday we had one family out and one down by one child.  By Wednesday afternoon, Katie and Travis were sick, and they have continued to be sick in variously icky ways, with remissions and relapses, since.  With the exception of one lucky family, nearly all the other children in our group have also been sick this week.  Travis just has a cough now (or, at least that was the case last night!), which the Triaminic stifles nicely, so I was planning to bring him today.  Katie's fever zoomed up again last night, so she was definitely not coming.  But, having apparently spent the past week viewing our Yahoo group messages comparing our children's hideous symptoms, our one mom with uninfected children sensibly (if belatedly) communicated to our group leader at midnight last night that she would not be bringing her children to co-op this week, and the decision was made to cancel.  Which is really fine with me.

Illness has not improved Travis's already shaky history retention.  "Jamestown" or "Plymouth Colony" are not the answer to every question about the founding of the original thirteen colonies, but those are Travis's "go to" answers.  Actually, I don't even believe he thinks John Smith saved the day in every colony.  I was noticing that he tosses out "John Smith" and "Plymouth" at me in the same way that Katie randomly offers "Split of the Roman Empire Under Emperor Diocletian" (after, say, "Alfred the Great") while we are doing our Veritas Press history cards, and it occurred to me that maybe we needed Tapestry history cards.  (I know what you are thinking.  If they give random answers with the Veritas cards, why would you think that more memory cards are the answer?  But they actually do know the Veritas card sequence pretty well, and I don't think they have nearly as firm a grasp of Colonial facts and sequence of events.  Plus, they like competing with each other with flash cards!)

I did all thirteen colonies, plus thirty-one others for people and events we've covered in the five weeks we've done so far of Unit 3 of Tapestry.

If nothing else, this should provide me with some variety in the wrong answers the kids give me to history questions.  And maybe they'll remember some stuff.  Making the cards up certainly was educational for me (for instance, I learned that there is a wide range of opinion on the internet over whether Nathaniel Bacon, of Bacon's Rebellion, was a hero or a murderous crook).