Perigee Full Moon

I must admit, before I began to homeschool my kids there were a lot of cool things that I never payed much attention to. The Perigee Full Moon, also known as the Super Moon, only occurs about every 18 years. It is closer to the earth so it appears larger and brighter than other full moons. The two shots above were take one the night of the Perigee Moon, and the other at the beginning of Dawn the next day. I take our puppy out very early so I got the shot as the moon was just going behind the trees. Because DJ and I are still learning to use the digital camera at night, we were unsure of the setting to use. You can see the difference after I got to play with it in the morning. This is just a note to me, and will mean nothing to my readers. For night time pictures, the flower must be off, and the lightning bolt must be enclosed in the oval, to get the best shots. For those of you who want to be photo enthusiasts, don't throw away your instruction books, as I did 7 years ago when I received the camera as a gift. It takes wonderful pictures, but it helps if you know what all the settings are ahead of time. Anyway the video below is wonderfully educational, please share it with yourself and your children.

Oh for those of you who read my blog regularly, DJ took 2nd place for his sea lion photo, this past Saturday in 4H fair. Caitlin got a Cloverbud ribbon. The first place ribbon went to a beautiful rabbit picture.

Report Cards

The first week of Spring Break is over, and I have accomplished a lot. I finished up report cards today, and both are progressing well. DJ's math grade went up, a huge accomplishment. I did notice the last two weeks of the semester he was slacking off again, and not reading questions completely. This was true for both math and science, so he will need to get back to working on that in the last semester. His science grade fell, mostly because of what I just stated. He is also moving into harder science, with harder reading passages. Language arts remains OK, but the grade is misleading because he still struggles with identifying parts of speech when in a written assignment. I can not blame him there it is boring, and a lot to remember. Caitlin did well over all, and Head of the Class has helped her a lot, especially in skip counting. Head of the Class also offers them both Spanish and basic Music topics, things I don't really cover on my own. They also offer some art classes, though we do that in our own lessons. DJ continues to improve on his sign language, and could definitely have a simple opening conversation with someone who is deaf. All in all a good third semester.

The pool is almost clean, though I did have to purchase a new vacuum for it. 100 bucks, but very well spent money. The fair entries are in, and we pick up and fight out if the kids won on Tuesday. We helped my mom dig a hole for her swimming pole, and will finish the rest of that on Tuesday as well. Did you see the full moon last night? It was beautiful and called a super moon, but I will blog about that another day.