Scripture Power

It took me awhile, but I finally came up with the theme scripture for our homeschool this year. We will recite this every morning as a part of our opening exercises:

"Wherefore, be not weary in well-doing, for ye are laying the foundation of a great work. And out of small things proceedeth that which is great.

Behold, the Lord requireth the heart and a willing mind; and the willing and obedient shall eat the good of the land of Zion in these last days."

Doctrine and Covenants 64:33-34

School Has Started

And so far it's going great. This is the most organized we've ever been and the kids are responding to that really well. It's so wonderful that Bean is finally mentally developed enough to focus long enough for some school time as well as actually work independently for once. Fish doesn't have the same developmental challenges that Bean does, so he has settled right in and is doing very well. His only issue is that he is a perfectionist and if he can't get something right on the first try or if I have to help him he gets very upset.

Here they are working on their art projects from Artistic Pursuits.

Here's my teacher's desk. I've had this antique desk for years and for the last several years I have only been using the hutch in a decorative manner and the drawers for tablecloth storage. Then I realized that the desk part makes the perfect place for my teacher's supplies since it closes and locks and is right next to the dining table where we work! Hooray! You can also see in this picture that our tree is filling in. They earn the leaves each day by doing their work to the best of their ability.

The hardest part of school this year so far has been keeping the Rabbit occupied. She's been sick this week and has been very fussy. A couple days she really put a wrench in school. Sometimes, though, I can occupy her with a puzzle or some other diversion.

So we're off to a great start!

Reinforcement

I read a great article today about the results of a study done comparing the test scores of homeschool students to public schooled ones. You can read it here.

The School Wall

Okay, remember how gung-ho I was about school at the beginning of June? Didn't want to take a break? Well, mid-June I realized that my kids needed a break. So we took one. It was supposed to just be July, but it's ended up being the first half of August as well since with everything that's been going on I don't have everything ready yet. Now the kids are really anxious to start again and they're acting restless, so I'm trying to get a move on and implement all my fabulous plans.

Last year's plan worked well in some ways and not so well in others, but one thing I learned was that trying to change our one-subject-each-day routine mid-year was not going to happen. Bean does not switch gears easily. I had to stick it out until the end of the year and now I have to be very careful how I plan this year because whatever I do I'm more or less stuck with. It has to be flexible enough to allow adaptation while being structured enough to meet the needs of my particular children.

Bear with me while I review a little bit the pros and cons of last year's system. I had a subject for each day of the week and we did formal sit-down school for an hour each morning. It was supposed to be at the same time every day but the Rabbit had some objections to that. School ended up happening whenever, but we did stick to the basic routine, even if the time was off. The hour was a good idea, but the one-subject-a-day had its challenges. On the plus side, the simplicity and predictability of the system really helped Bean. But honestly, Bean cannot sit still and focus on one subject for an entire hour, especially if it is math. And while he completed and comprehended his first-grade math program, it was not the best to do math only once a week. Or reading, for that matter.

This year we are ready for a slightly more complex schedule with more variety. Most subjects are okay to have only weekly, but I feel that the kids need to do math and reading/writing every single day. However, everything needs to be in small chunks. So what I'm envisioning is this: each school day starts out with some kind of opening exercises-- a song, a prayer, a recitation, the Pledge of Allegiance, etc. Then the kids have a math and a language worksheet to complete on their own. We will then do two additional subjects or activities each day in 15-20 minute chunks. If we stay on task and complete our work in time I will play a game with them at the end. Everything will still only take 1 to 1 1/2 hours. The Rabbit has been doing better lately with her schedule so we should be able to keep to a time schedule this year (if I stop staying up late blogging!) If we stay on schedule, we should be done with our formal stuff in time for field trips, play groups, library story time, or whatever else is going on that day. And as always, the rest of our day is always filled with informal, unstructured learning activities. Learning is a lifestyle around here.

As I've thought about how to create our daily opening exercises, I decided to put together a school wall in the dining room that is similar to a bulletin board in an elementary school classroom. Many of my public school memories are pretty dreadful, but I do have warm fuzzy feelings when I think of the bulletin board displays so I decided to give my kids a taste of that. I went to a teaching supply store and purchased a calendar kit and a giant oak tree kit. This evening after the kiddos were asleep I worked for a couple of hours on my wall. It's not done yet, but here it is so far:

There are still leaves and acorns and animals for the tree. Hopefully the addition of the leaves will make it less noticeable that the owl calendar ended up way too close to the ABC strips (those were a later purchase and I didn't realize how big they were going to be and there was really nowhere else to put them.) With the calendar, every day during opening exercises we can talk about what day of the week and month it is and what the weather is. The tree is going to be used for various activities and incentives.

I went through nearly an entire package of these:

I love them.

I also bought letters to spell out the name of our school up above the tree. But I can't put those up until we make a final decision on what that name actually is. Once we've got a name, I want to pick a mascot and school colors. I'm even thinking of getting us all matching shirts with our school name embroidered on them to wear on field trips.

So I'm excited. I think this year is going to be really fun. That's really important in homeschool-- if the mom isn't enthusiastic about the curricula and methodology then no one's going to get much learning done. The kids are excited too. I can't wait to see their faces tomorrow when they come upstairs and see our school wall. I think it's going to help them feel more connected to their formal school work. I hope it's going to make everything a little bit more fun.

The Costume Box

During this last week we got out the costume box again. It has been in the storage room for awhile (I rotate my kids' toys so that they appreciate them more). They were very excited to see their costumes again.

They've been putting on plays for me, which is something that they've never done before. For a long time I've hoped that they would, so I'm excited. I want to encourage a lot of theatrical production in our home. I can see it being a huge part of our homeschool. They haven't seemed very interested in the past, so I'm thrilled that they're taking to it now. Bean, of course, is the ringleader, telling the other kids what to say and where to stand, but he's very good at getting everybody involved, even the baby.

On Fire

My dad asked me today if we were going to take a break from homeschooling for the summer.

Well, that was my original plan when I mapped out our year. However, not long ago I attended a homeschool convention and now my mind's so full of all the wonderful things I want to teach them and all the cool projects we can do that I can't bear the thought of stopping for a minute. There's just not enough hours in the day to explore everything we want to learn about. Why should we stop for the summer?

Now, you may think that I sound like just another obnoxiously perky Holly Homeschooler, but I want you to understand something. I haven't always felt like this. Years ago I wasn't interested in sitting down and doing lessons with my kids (in fact, that sounded intolerably tedious to me) and I didn't want to give up any of my time in my own little world in order to work with my kids. My enjoyment of homeschooling has come gradually and has gone hand-in-hand with a real grieving process of giving up my own pursuits in order to give my children this time. But now I am on fire!

A big part of this is that Bean is finally old enough that he is catching fire too. More and more now he really wants to learn and he's a lot easier to teach than he used to be. After everything I've been through with him, that's so exciting that I want to capitalize on every second of it. Fish is now old enough too that they can do stuff together and that makes things much more fun.

And the convention! It was emotionally exhausting because it was so wonderful and stimulating and I got so excited about all the different curricula available but I had to balance that against my budget of both time and money. You would not believe all the awesome, fun, exciting books and CDs and toys and computer software and programs that are available now for homeschooling. I just kept seeing things that looked so fun-- the Badger and I agreed we're going to plan ahead next year and budget a thousand dollars so we can buy everything we want at the convention. I really think a key component of homeschool success is for the parent to have curricula that they're excited about. If the parent is truly enthusiastic, the kids will be too.

I only had a little money to spend, so in the end I went with only one big new thing for now, but I'm very very excited about it. It's the Artistic Pursuits art curriculum and it's really neat. The kids love it and so do I.

So no, we're not going to take a break for the summer. We're having way too much fun.

Finger Painting

It occurred to me the other day that it had been forever since we finger painted. So that's just what we did yesterday for Making Day. Despite the smocks and the outside location, I still had paint all over clothes and toes and noses and carpets, but I guess that's part of the fun. It was very washable paint, so in the end everyone was happy.

Note how Bean has one color on each finger. Roo made a big mix-y mess and Fish as usual tried to duplicate exactly what I did.

Story Time

The Yellow Horse

Our Making Day project on Friday was one of those suncatcher kits you buy at craft stores. Everyone was very excited about it at the start, but was a mixed success.

Bean loved it and did really well with it, but it was such a delicate operation that Fish and Roo couldn't help and were really in the way. I had to keep asking them to stop shaking the table and finally encouraged them to go find something else to do in another room.

Getting the little bits of plastic to go where they were supposed to was tricky. The instructions recommended tweezers and I don't have any, so we made do with a knife. This required a lot of help from me but not so much that Bean became disengaged.

For those of you who may not have had the pleasure of experiencing one of these projects, you shake the little plastic bits into the metal frame and then you bake the whole thing in the oven until the plastic melts. Here is Yellow Horse fresh out of the oven:

And here is Yellow Horse performing his duty as a suncatcher in the kitchen window.

I think he turned out very nice.

Another Prairie Paper Storm

Periodically we have these strange storms of construction paper that blow through my house. For weeks, the construction paper sits peacefully in a drawer in the "homeschool cupboard." Then one day it's suddenly all over the kids' room or the dining room table.

The kids emerge from the whirlwind wearing clever paper hats.

These storms are very exciting because I never know what I'm going to find in their aftermath. Today I found this. Very cool.

They're not much fun to clean up after, but they sure are fun!

One of Those Homeschool Moments

I was having a tough time with Bean and his math this morning. He was trying my patience to the utmost. It was one of his flickering lightbulb days. One second he would be totally on the ball and giving me the right answer very quickly. The next second he would be wiggling, pulling faces, flinging his pencil across the room, and acting like he had no idea what I was talking about, even though he gave me the right answer just a moment ago. I have some theories about what causes this and there's some things we do that help but today was one of those days where he was just really struggling and so was I. I was on the verge of screaming. I asked him, "What is six plus eight?" He looked at me with his googly stare and said "two." I took a deep breath and said quietly, "Now, think, Bean. If you have six doughnuts and Fish has eight donuts and you put them all together, how can you have only two doughnuts?" He immediately responded, "I'm hungry!"

A good belly laugh was just what I needed right then.

Painting Gnomes

For Making Day on Friday I bought "paint your own garden gnome" kits in the dollar bin at Target. (I love Target!)

They were a hit.

So many times cheap, simple crafts turn out to be more fun than expensive, complicated stuff.

Ten Homeschool Tidbits

1. Bean actually brought me a beginning reader from the library and said he wanted to read it. This is huge. I've been checking them out for months and whenever I would suggest he try to read even some of the words he would get angry or burst into tears. So when he brought me the book and said "I want to read this" my jaw dropped. And he read it. It contained about 65 words and he read most of them himself. I cannot tell you how thrilling this is to me.

2. I've been using "The Never-Bored Kid Book" as Fish's school curriculum. When Bean was doing his math exercises Fish felt left out that he didn't have any papers to work on. I realized I had these books and that they were perfect for a preschooler. Lots of cutting, tracing, gluing, coloring, etc.

3. Bean is doing very well on the piano. It was gratifying to see the way he took to music when he struggled so much with reading and other subjects. The toughest thing has been helping him remember to practice and to learn to practice adequately. Last week he was not able to shop at the family store because he did not practice the piano enough during the week. This week he is practicing like a dervish. The family store is pretty popular around here.

4. Cousin S is our violin teacher. We are all progressing under his tutelage and it has really helped me to have his old beginner violin book in the house. I like to play along with Bean when he practices the piano. If he goes too fast I get all messed up and then we laugh and I say, "Boy, I sound awful!" and Bean thinks that's hilarious. I think it's brilliant because he sees firsthand the process of learning something and how you are bad at it at first and that's okay. He's such a perfectionist that I have had a hard time getting him to understand this. He's also seeing the concept that you have to play something over and over and over again during one practice session to really master it-- another concept I've had a hard time drilling into his head just with my words. I also love the idea that he's watching his mother continue to learn and develop new talents in her ancient age.

5. For our Geography lesson on Tuesday I got a big map of the United States and drew in the routes of every trip our family has ever taken in the nine-plus years of its existence, starting with our honeymoon to San Diego all the way up through our trip to New Mexico this last Thanksgiving. It was really neat to see the resultant spider web. It reawakened my wanderlust and made me itch to add some new lines in new directions.

6. In conjunction with this I also added up how many states each of us has been to. The Rabbit already has 11 under her size-12-months belt. The other kids each have 14 because they have also been to the west coast states. (It hit me that the Rabbit has never been to Oregon, the poor thing! That's just wrong!) I've been to 39 plus DC and the Badger has been to at least half of them. I will have to check with him-- he's flown so many random places over the years that I can't remember them all. When we got married I was by far the more well-traveled spouse (when I met him he'd never been east of the Rocky Mountains except on his mission) but that's definitely not the case anymore. Since we're so centrally located right now I would love to take a few long road trips and get the 9 I'm missing from the Lower 48.

7. In general, our Tuesday studies lately have been very eclectic. After finishing our overview of each of the regions of the US last December we've just been checking out books from the library on things that caught our interest during our studies. I've been picking mostly books on physical geography and Bean has been picking books on American history, which he adores. On Tuesday mornings we sit down on the couch with a dozen books and just read. One book might be about life in Colonial America. The next one might be about tornadoes. Then we might read about a certain tribe of Native Americans. There's usually a "Magic Schoolbus" book in there somewhere as well. I guess we should re-label Tuesday since it's not just geography anymore. Everyone enjoys it though.

8. Spring soccer season is upon us. Fish has his same coach from last fall and Bean has a friend from last fall on his team, which heightens their enjoyment of the experience. I really love to watch them play soccer. I see them learning teamwork and physical skills, all while getting really tired so they sleep better. I can just tell it's a really good thing for them and that makes me happy.

9. The Rabbit can now stand alone for short periods of time. I can tell she can't wait to run. This is going to be an exciting spring for her.

10. Our making day project today is those little Fuse Beads that you put on a little peg board and then melt together with an iron. They were dirt cheap at the craft store and my kids are having a ball. Score!

We Sell For Less

Bean has just had a big light flip on in his head.

He has suddenly made huge strides in his reading ability and what's more, he actually acts interested in reading now. This is such a change!

We were at Walmart the other day and he actually tried to read the words on the side of the building. I know many kids do stuff like this all the time, but he has never really done it before. Whether he didn't notice or wasn't interested or it was too hard I do not know, but suddenly he could read "We Sell For Less" and he was very excited. So was I.

We're cruising through his reading book now. He actually recognizes words he's seen before. Wow!

And writing! Look!



I used to not even be able to get him to write!

Being patient with Bean and his progress in school has been one of my toughest challenges. In addition to having to conquer my own impatience I have had to deal with the outside pressure that in order for me to be a decent homeschooling mom my kids should be performing in all ways above grade level and not at all below. I have had to work very hard on getting over caring so much about what other people think of me, as well as not judging myself by their standards.

I know I am doing what's right for Bean. And it feels so good to see his progress.

The Awards Ceremony

We've completely revamped how we do Family Home Evening lately and it's been a lot of fun. In addition to Badger Bucks and the family store, we've been doing an awards ceremony based off some ideas I got in the book "Teaching Children Values" by Linda and Richard Eyre.

I made several award ribbons for specific things relating to certain values we want to reinforce. Right now there are four, though I plan to add some more. There is the "HUP" Award for honesty under pressure, the Brownie Award for secret acts of service, the "WWJD" award for trying to be like Jesus, and the "P&C" Award for being prompt and cheerful. The way I've adapted the award idea for my family is that every family home evening each member of the family will get an award based on what good things I saw them do during the week. We do it kind of like an Olympic medal ceremony. I call their name, they step on on the step stool while everyone hums something like "Pomp and Circumstance" and then I present them with their award and everyone claps. They love it.

This week Bean is getting the Brownie award because he unloaded the dishwasher without being asked. Fish is getting the WWJD Award because he shared his string cheese with Bean and Roo without being asked when we were on an outing one day recently. And so on. The ribbon is theirs for a week. Then they have to give it back so I can give it out to someone else at the next awards ceremony.

I was a little concerned about the idea at first because I wasn't sure I wanted to give the kids "prizes" for living values they should be living anyway, such as honesty. They should be living those values because it's right, not because they get recognition for it. However, I also think that you can't give your kids too much positive reinforcement, especially when they're little. I've noticed that for really little kids concrete recognition (such as a star sticker on their homework page) is very very motivating. It seems to me that this will build good habits that later will translate into doing the right thing because it's right.

Winter Gardens

Today for Making Day, we made gardens. I gave the kids each a piece of "dirt" (a piece of brown construction paper) along with scissors and glue, and I let them attack my enormous stack of seed catalogs.

They loved it.

I talked to them about collages and showed them some of the collages I made in college. (College! Collage! College! Collage!) Bean still wanted to "plant" his garden in neat rows, but Fish really liked the collage idea.

Roo was just happy to have scissors and glue and a book full of pretty flowers.

It's still no doubt that Making Day is our favorite day of the homeschool week!

Great Bear

Do you remember when you were a kid and you had a stuffed animal that you projected a personality onto? Bean's been doing that for several months now with Great Bear. Great Bear has become a regular member of our family. Here he is:

I get to fix him snacks and tuck him in at night and all that. He's my quietest, most polite charge.

Here is what Bean wrote about Great Bear yesterday on his blog. I had a hard time keeping a straight face as I typed this for him. It's just so darling.

"Great Bear is uncommonly good-mannered. At times he has to fight the other stuffed animals. He is also very skilled with a gun. Don't mess with him. He keeps one eye open when he's asleep. So, in case somebody is trying to capture him. So. Beware. Sometimes I'm very good with him. Sometimes I bring him along just to keep the other kids laughing. Just to electrify me. It's very odd that whenever he defeats another bear he gets half of all their powers. He's a very good bear. He sometimes lets the other bears win. But not often. His birthday is Friday January 30th. We had celebrated his birthday by eating pie for breakfast. His cake's going to be delicious. It's going to be cupcakes. So, he is very nice in his own powers. You'd better look out. He sometimes falls in the mudholes."

You notice that Great Bear's birthday was yesterday. Great Bear has about four birthdays a year, or more. They pretty much happen when Bean decides we need a birthday around here. We had pumpkin pie for breakfast (sugar free!) but we never did get around to the cupcakes. Next birthday, I suppose.

Great Bear got some fabulous birthday presents yesterday. Many of our homeschool "Making Day" crafts revolve around making things for Great Bear. Last fall Bean started sewing a nine-patch to make into a quilt for Great Bear. It took him a long time, but he stitched the whole thing himself by hand.

I helped him back it with a square of fleece and tie it. Great Bear and Bean are both very pleased.

Yesterday for Making Day we made a house for Great Bear. Bean told me he wanted to do it several days ago (when he got ahold of the box my bookshelf came in!) and I told him it would be a great Making Day project. Yesterday morning when we got started it became apparent that he and I both had very different ideas about what a house for Great Bear would look like. Instead of trying to fight him about it, I decided to just let him go at it and do it however he wanted. I stayed nearby to help with cutting or taping as needed, but he designed and created this all by himself. I guess he decided that Great Bear needed a royal castle, because he made battlements and a drawbridge. It was a great learning experience.

They're Learning

One may surmise, from my lack of posts about homeschooling, that we have let our school routine slide.

Not so. In fact, with this new year we're all feeling really energized and enthusiastic here in Acorn School. Things are going great. Bean is tackling his reading lessons again. Fish keeps asking me if random things like windows and oranges and shadows are made out of molecules. And Roo is finally learning to use the potty.

It's good to have this resurgence of energy. School got a little bogged down toward the end of last year. Our schedule went completely out the window, thanks to the Rabbit, who doesn't believe in bedtime. By the end of December things were totally unorganized and when you opened the homeschool cupboard you started an avalanche. However, we were still learning. Bean and Fish were especially enjoying Geography. December's unit was on the west coast and Hawaii and Alaska and Bean really really liked Alaska. We checked out some books on the traditional Inuit way of life and he ate them up. Now he wants to go live there. It didn't help that the Badger mentioned to him that he originally became a pilot with the intent of being a bush pilot in Alaska....

Anyway, to further fuel their enthusiasm for Geography I purchased a book my friend Janet reviewed on her homeschool reviews blog recently. Janet was somehow lucky enough to be selected for a panel that reviews various products for free. She then writes about them and, guess what, Janet? I read your reviews and I've been buying some of the products. I'm so glad I bought this book. It's called The Little Man in the Map, and my kids and I both adore it.

We also adore the educational toys we got for Christmas, including this building set called "Wacky Wigglers," by Learning Resources. They are compatable with the "Gears Gears Gears!" sets, which we have owned for several years. This set adds a motor and googly eyes and clacking teeth and other silly things to make moving creatures. It said "ages 5 and up" and I hoped that I would be able to let my kids just go to town with them, but I find that my five year old is not careful enough to have free rein with electronic components. Therefore when we play with these it has to be under Mommy's supervision. I usually end up building most of the creature myself and then they play with it, but they love it and someday they'll be building their own.

Current Conditions on the Prairie

Lately I write a lot of blog posts in my head that never make it down through my fingers to the computer keyboard. I used to blog while feeding the Rabbit and now she's getting too big to hold still and eat while I compute. At the moment she is asleep in my arms and I can finally catch you up on my world.

The Rabbit is doing better and better with big people food. She has figured out how to eat rice cereal, but she prefers to self-feed. As I do not have much time to sit and spoon things into her, this is fine with me. She had a great time with a pile of peas the other night at dinner. I didn't even have to replenish her supply because Roo took care of that for me. (Isn't that one of the oldest tricks in the book-- pawn your vegetables off on your younger sibling?)

While we're on the food front, I'm happy to report that I did not gain any weight this month. Unfortunately I did not lose any, but this is a tough time of year for me (can you say "homemade pumpkin pie with real whipped cream"?) My goal is to hold steady through the holidays and then get serious about these last ten pounds when cookieless January rolls around.

I haven't been doing my weekly homeschooling reports, mostly because I believed they were boring the majority of you to tears. However, the vocal minority among my readers has expressed disappointment in their absence. So I'll try to keep you updated without being tedious. Homeschooling has been going very well and I'm enjoying it more and more. I am still struggling to sort out mentally what is realistic and stop judging myself by other people's standards. I think I am growing as much as the kids are. I hope so. Anyway, Bean's progress with reading has been slow but steady. He loves Geography and History. We've been talking about the Southern states and the Civil War and the Civil Rights movement. And he has been finger knitting up a storm. I bought one of those Knifty Knitter looms for him so he could make some real scarves for his friends, but he hasn't got the hang of it yet. Both the boys love "Making Day" the very most of all the days of our homeschool week. Oriental Trading Company is my new best friend for Making Day projects. We've done some great autumn crafts from OTC these last few weeks.

We had the missionaries over for dinner the other night and one of them is a virtuoso pianist. I asked him to play while I was getting dinner ready and he sat down and played the third movement of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata. I about passed out in the kitchen. It was so incredible. My boys were riveted and I said to Bean, "THAT is what you can do with a piano if you practice." Bean has music in his soul and loves to play, so hopefully the memory of Elder Nielson's performance will help him develop discipline.

Roo refuses to wear pants lately. She MUST have a skirt. I don't know where she got this. Certainly not from watching me. But I'm going with it. She's so cute in her little skirts. Pajamas are the problem now though. Sleepers are unacceptable in the new Roo Regulations. So I am working on making her some nightgowns for Christmas. It is difficult to sew with everything else I've got going on, but it's so fun to have a project that energizes me.

I paid $1.68 a gallon for gas yesterday. Oh, how happy that makes me!

Another thing that makes me happy is my new fleece turtleneck from Land's End. I put it on this morning and I don't ever want to take it off. EVER. It is so soft. All day long when the kids were acting like little monsters (I don't know WHAT got into them today!) I would stop and take a deep breath to calm down and say to myself, "Oh, my shirt is so soft and fuzzy and comfortable!" and then I would feel better and be nicer to my kids. Also, the Badger gave me a great back rub because he liked it so much. I would encourage all you moms to go buy one in the interest of promoting domestic tranquility except I don't know yet whether or not the fleece is going to stay really soft or pill up really quick. I'll let you know in my next General Prairie Update.

Prairie Landscapes

Yesterday we went to a community-sponsored program designed to introduce preschool age children to the arts. The preschoolers in the group were squirming all over the place, but my boys totally ate it up. They talked about landscapes and at the end the children each got to make their own landscapes with strips of tissue paper and watered-down glue and a cardboard log cabin.

I pretty much made Roo's for her, since she was being reticent. She finally warmed up at the end and helped me with the clouds though. Didn't we do a nice job?

Fish made his completely on his own once I showed him how to work the glue. Didn't he do a nice job? I think the big blob of yellow was supposed to be the sun but it migrated downward on the way home and then the glue dried so now it's... uh... a big flower or something.

Bean went and sat on the complete opposite side of the room so I didn't even see his until he got home. He tried to make Laura from Little House on the Prairie, but he was having a hard time so he decided it was just a tree. In this photograph though I think it looks more like Laura than a tree. Didn't he do a nice job?