Wild Kingdom Round 4: Guest Blog by Klenda

Did I mention that we also have a tank of Blue Pearl Shrimp?

Zorg's godfather gave us 3 or 4 of them and we put them in a tank in my room. And they had baby shrimp!

There are hundreds and HUNDREDS of little shrimp spots! At first, we thought they were bacteria or bugs in the water.

Then we realized they were BABY SHRIMP!

Seven Quick Takes Friday: Kid Clean Up

How about seven ways to get your kids to clean up?

1. If it's an overwhelming mess, help out. Make a deal where you pick up 1, 2, or 3 things for every one the kids pick up (depending on the age and number of kids). Count out loud! Invariably, after a short time, my kids start doing extra to get ahead of me and end up doing more than the deal as I bemoan my fate.

2. Have them pick up a specific number of things, and break it up with treats. We do this when we are watching educational you Tube or BrainPop videos. Everyone knows that to watch another 2 minute video they have to pick up 5 or 10 things. Looked at the other way, when you are doing something the kids like, break it up with work!

3. Break the job down for them. Make a list (if they can read) that tells them specifically what to do. For example, if they are cleaning their room: First pick up all the clothes. Then pick up the books. Next, pick up the toys. Then pick up the trash. Last, make your bed. If they can't read, stay with them and tell them, or make up a song to remind them of the order. The actual order doesn't matter, but the skill of breaking a big job into manageable bites is invaluable.

4. If you have more than one kid working, give them separate jobs. If you tell two or more kids to clean a room, invariably there will be a kid or kids who slack off, or can do less work because of age. The bad feelings and noise level do not make for a clean room! If you have the younger kid pick up the blocks (no sorting involved) and the older kid pick up trash (has to distinguish trash/non-trash), they both will work more willingly and you can tell who is actually slacking off!

5. DO NOT make clean up competitive between kids! The bad feelings ruin the "clean house' feeling. Have them compete against a timer, or against you. I've never yet had a laundry folding competition with my kids that I have won... or lost, if you think about it. Team spirit and a mountain of folded laundry was worth a certain amount of humility!

6. Bribe for big, extraordinary jobs, but not for the normal every day ones. When the whole house needs to be cleaned, I break it up into 9 big jobs. Why 9? Because all the Bionicle movies are free on You Tube in 9 ten minute sections each. Do you have any idea how many big jobs 5 people can do in 9 spurts when they are anxious to see what happens next? I can get the house done and then some, especially if I keep working while they watch. Looney Tunes and Duckula also work well here.

7. Appeal to their better natures (as dramatically as possible). When I've told a kid I really needed help, explained why, and told them what they could do to help me, I have never, ever, ever had them let me down. Always they do what I have asked, and often more! BE GRATEFUL!!! Make a big deal about the fact that they are willing to go above and beyond the call of duty. If you are going to pull the weeds, be even more enthusiastic about watering the flowers! Nurture the hero inside of your kid and you will see it more often.

More with Jen!

Arrrrrrrr!

Did you remember that last Saturday was International Talk Like a Pirate Day?

We did.

I was planning to be away on retreat, but Oob and Choclo were still clingy in the final phases of recovery from the swine flu, so I sent the Emperor off instead.

I wasn't sure how much to do with The Emperor being away. On the one hand, I didn't want to get in over my head with projects, on the other, busy kids are easier than bored kids. This is all so much easier now that the older Zoomlians are older!

For one thing, it's amazng to see how much the older Zoomlians do on their own initiative. I set up a treasure hunt, pirate packets (printed from around the internet), and cooked an assortment of pirate food, but they pulled together their own costumes. Zorg made a knife out of foil. Klenda made everyone eye patches.

They spent a lot of time that day drawing treasure maps.

Arrrrrr!

We had treasure cake for breakfast (banana bread with chocolate chips, the loaf looks like a treasure chest, the chocolate is the treasure).

Lunch was goldfish with hoctopuses (hot dogs with half of them sliced to make the tentacles, then microwaved so the tentacles curl up).

I don't remember dinner. Might have been tunamac made with wagon wheels (they look like coins?).

We finished up that evening with a showing of Muppet Treasure Island to all the happy crew!

Wild Kingdom Round 3: Something Fishy

Did I mention the guppy breeding project?

A while back we got some guppies with the intention of doing breeding to better understand genetics.

We bought some males and some females, of course. The males all died because of a parasite disaster in the big tank. One of the two females died in a separate tank disaster (the filter got disconnected).

That left one female, but that was OK because she was pregnant! A non pregnant guppy is referred to as a "male", as it turns out. From her one encounter with the unknown father, she gives birth to a batch of fry every month...for six months.

Her last batch was fairly small, so we think she is near the end. Her first batch is almost ready to breed. I believe they are ready, but we are still waiting for full color development so we can decide which ones to breed.

I have been separating the sexes as soon as I could tell them apart (3-4 weeks old). I do this by scooping them out and looking at them in a wine glass (the only "glass" glass in the house) which has led to some odd looks as well as an interesting conversation with my mother in law when she found a snail in my wine glass at 2 in the afternoon. Fortunately, she is splendidly understanding about such things!

Anyway, after sexing the last batch, the grand total is: 47 males and 48 females, counting the mother. The one male that we think is fully mature is quite striking. He has a dark blue iridescent body and his fins are red with dark spots.

In a few weeks, when the rest have colored up, we'll start intentional breeding.

We also discovered something interesting about guppies! The mother has a dark blue body and light blue fins with dark spots. When I put her in the female tank (the lower picture) she turned pale and lost her color. I thought it was stress, but I couldn't figure out what could be wrong. Then I read an article on wild guppies that mentioned that wild females were covered with "melanophores"which changed the guppy's color depending on the color she was swimming over. The guppy turned dark when swimming over dark rocks, but light over a sandy bottom. If you look at the two tanks, one has a black substrate and the other is light tan!

Wild Kingdom Round 2: Guest Blog by Mxyl

Hello, Earthlings! We saw the most amazing thing yesterday!

First we saw a male mockingbird singing to a female mockingbird from a bush. Then two rivals landed in the same bush. The three males started fighting over her.

The first male drove off the two fiends, then resumed singing to his true love. After a few songs, the female finally flew over to her new husband and they flew off swooping around each in flight!

This a picture of the female I took while she was watching the fight.

Wild Kingdom Round 1: Chicks

First the chick update: our grand total is three chicks; the fourth egg was never fertilized. They are growing with astounding speed! The first two have already opened their eyes and are getting the beginnings of feathers (the process looks terribly itchy).

I don't know if you subscribe to the "ontology recapitulates phylogeny" theory, but the chicks look remarkably like dinosaurs to me!

We have started handling the larger chicks so that they are a little tamer than their parents (we hope). They are comically cute: gawky, soft, warm, fragile, and yet, oddly reptilian. It really has been a remarkable experience!


Lastly, here is a shot of the parents (in case, from the above pictures, you thought they were actually mutant zombie dinosaur chicks). The mom is Peace (the white one), and the dad is Joy (the blue one).

And, of course, you recognize Choclo feeding them while streams of grace shine forth from the heavens because that's just the kind of kid he is.

Swine Flu Update

We are moving along: 6 kids have it so far, Leena is recovered and Klenda is nearly so. It definitely is hitting Oob and Choclo harder than the bigger Zoomlians. The Emperor and I are waiting for our turn.

A friend suggested that we might not get it. At this point, I would rather get it in the mild form the kids have and know that I am then immune to it. I could then also know that I am non contagious when co-op starts up next week...

Prayer Request

A friend of a friend has been in a live in relationship with a man for some 20 years now. On Sunday he suffered a massive heart attack and died very suddenly. He was about 60. Please pray for the repose of his soul, and for her suffering. She is really in shock. I don't think either of them had religious inclinations.

I know it is dreadfully hard to deal with sudden tragedy without God.

I also wonder if being in a quasi married relationship makes it harder to deal with the death of a non-spouse. You have all the pain of being widowed, but you can't say what people would readily understand: "My husband died."

I have only met her two or three times, so I don't know what she is feeling, except through mutual friends who are caring for her, and I never met him, but please pray for them both.

US History: The Age of Exploration vs. The Swine Flu

I've learned the hard way that you can't do high tide all the time! After the high tide mini unit on Native Americans, we are enjoying a quieter micro unit on the Age of Exploration.

This mostly is me (or a random kid) reading from our anchor book and all of us looking at the globe and time line. I am getting feedback by having them tell the Emperor about it over dinner.

In case you are wondering about the video idea, our recorder is not on speaking terms with our computer. After arguing with both, I've decided to try again after our friend Bill switches us over to a different computer.

Behind the scenes, I am gearing up for the Colonial mini unit. And dealing out ibuprofen.

Oh, yes, we do seem to have the swine flu! Klenda and Leena have it so far, and we are hoping it is quick and mild and does not completely derail our plans for the Inside Catholic banquet and my first retreat in 3 years (all next weekend). The girls are feeling OK - about the level of a bad cold as long as we keep the ibuprofen up and the fever down.

On the plus side, we could be over the whole thing before CCD, Scouts, and Co-op all start next week. And think of all the time, hassle, and expense we will save by not needing the vaccine.

I could just squeal with delight!

US History: Wrapping Up Native Americans!

We're wrapping up this mini unit. I thought it would be tough to get back into it after 5 days off and our jaunt to Air and Space, but it wasn't too bad.

We did the punch out North Western Village as our diorama. Klenda and Mxyl did most of it, and they had a good time. I think I will have them glue it onto a board so that we can keep it in our museum as part of our diorama time line.

We spent more time on our time line today. Did you know that agriculture sprang up all around the world around the same time? Between 10, 000 and 8,000 B.C. from North and South America to the Fertile Crescent, everyone figured out how to grow food.

Back to the Native Americans, we made our moccasins while sitting outside and enjoying the fine weather. This project turned out to be tremendously fascinating, not only to the Zoomlians, but to everyone who passed by.

I would definitely recommend the kits. They worked out to be the right balance of complexity and practical "doability." And now they all have self made shoes!

I'm sure that we will do more with Native Americans as we go into the colonial period, but for now, we are starting to look at the Pre- Columban explorers, particularly the Vikings.