Chemistry (and Pirates)

Yes, I know it be Talk Like a Pirate Day, but I be trying to catch up on all the stuff we been too busy to blog about! Shiver me timbers!

Annnd, I'll take a break from that to tell you that we started high school Chemistry last week.

Evidently, this is the class that many fantastically overcompetent home school moms do not want to teach. Maybe because we work with strong acids, horrible toxins, set things on fire, and occasionally blow things up?


I thought those were why we wanted to do chemistry!

At any rate, I wanted a class of 6 kids.  Six is perfect: enough for a good discussion, but not too many to oversee when we set things on fire, and an even number so they can have lab partners.


I got two classes of six: a girls' class on Tuesdays and a  boys' class on Thursdays! In practice this has been fantastic, and I, at any rate, am really enjoying both classes.

The only change to the plan is that I will now be finishing before Lent, instead of finishing before Thanksgiving (it had been two classes a week).

Unfortunately, neither class landed on Talk Like a Pirate Day.

Adventurers, however, started up with it's very first trip today- let the anchor fall on me liver, that was fun!

We went to the Natural History Museum and saw the skeletons (crossed bones!), dinosaurs, gems and
minerals.

I'll post more pictures on Wednesday, but I'll leave you with this one of the Hope Diamond being eyed by my crew of scallywags.

To wrap things up, we sang many many verses of "My Name was Captain Kidd," and watched a BBC documentary on Captain Cook.  Not technically a pirate in the conventional sense, but very interesting to watch.

Avast, Matey!

It's Talk Like a Pirate Day!

This year, I planned ahead (meaning, thought about it the day before) and so have a great list of resources for you!

This was my favorite site: Talk Like a Pirate Wiki, put together by New Zealand teachers.  Don't miss their pirate vocabulary list! Kiwis, I salute you!

This is a great math pirate adventure.

This is a fun piratey web adventure with lots of extra fun information.

And here are tons of fun lesson plans and teaching ideas - don't miss the one submitted by a home school captain (halfway down).

We will also be making our own pirate flags, going on a treasure hunt, and maybe doing a bit of orienteering or compass navigation. Oh, I suppose, we'll make pirate newspaper hats, too.

And we may yet squeeze in a viewing of Pirates of Penzance!

Happy Belated Talk Like a Pirate Day!

 Did we celebrate?  ARRRRRRRRR!

We were a bit busy on the actual Talk Like a Pirate Day (September 19th), so we celebrated over the whole week!

We made treasure maps, which we aged with tea and fire.  An process equally impressive and smelly: very piratical!

It was interesting to see how detailed and/or realistic the different maps were.

We dressed up as pirates, aided by the redoubtable Klenda and face paint!

We went on several treasure hunts.  I set one up, and then Klenda organized one, and Oob has been making treasure hunts ever since.  His clues are cryptic, but, since he wants to lead you through it by pulling you along, it all works out!

We did a number of piratey Mad Libs, and other printables.

Fantastic website with more home schooly pirate resources here and pirate car games here.(HT to Diane Kieth Flynn for both of those)

We listened to Moby Dick (not technically pirate, but also not for land lubbers). (HT to Living Books for the Ears)

And it was the last hurrah for the squid and shark!

Seven Quick Takes: Can You Put This On the Blog?

 1. From Klenda, who found a fly in her soup, and wanted evidence.

So, yes, all those fly in the soup jokes, they're all true!

You have been warned.

You're welcome.

 2.  This is not a picture of a penguin explosion in Choclo's room.

Actually, it's a picture of a penguin pod race, as in the pod race in the second Star Wars prequel which Choclo just saw and loved, and yet was, for me, so forgettable that I can't remember it's name AND I can't be bothered even to Google it.

The three penguin pod won.

 3.  It's me. Hello!

The Emperor was visiting old friends out of state and asked me to send a selfie.

There may yet come a day when I can take a selfie without being photobombed by a kid, but that day is not today.

Thanks be to God!


4. Not to be freaky, but we are another big dissection kick!  I thought I'd skip the picture on this one.

You're welcome.

Seriously, though: Choclo asked if he could dissect a snake, and a pigeon, and a piggie (are you creeped out yet?), and all the organs (cow eye, sheep kidney, heart, and brain).  And then Oob, not to be outdone, wanted the starter pack of all the basic animals.

When the package came in, we had everything except the sheep brain, so I called them up and told them they had lost my mind, and to please send a replacement.

Which they did. Thank you Home Science Tools.

5. The Lord provided a little extra money, and then provided a few things to spend it on.

I unexpectedly needed (and got) a new washer and dryer, new glasses, a new windshield washer pump, a new alternator, and a new crown.

In the process of getting the royal treatment, my dentist let me watch his robot create the new crown.

I live in the future!!!

And I don't have to worry about that pesky extra money!

 6.  Speaking of the Lord providing, I got to go on retreat for the first time in several years!

It was the regional retreat for Lay Dominicans, so it was all Dominicans all the time.  Great preaching and lots of quiet time.

It was a silent retreat.  As an introvert who usually has a large family around, I didn't have a hard time with that, in fact, I really enjoyed the silence!  I know it's much harder for extraverts.

Near the end I started to wonder how many days of silence it would take to make me actually want to break the silence.  The answer is: more than just one weekend!

But it was still lovely to come home to all the noisy hugs and kisses!!

The retreat house is near the Basilica, so I walked over one evening and got to spend a little time visiting my Mom.

7.  As you probably know, it's International Talk Like a Pirate Day!  Arrrrrrrrrrrr! It's one of our favorite random holidays!

That's Choclo's treasure map, you can tell by the Angry Birrrrrrds.

More fun 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!

Talking Like Pirates

 Arrrr!  We did talk like pirates, matey!

Here we have Klenda threatening a nervous Leena.

Leena actually made a pretty winsome damsel in distress!

We had a good time doing map work and other piratey printouts in our Talk Like a Pirate Packets.

I think the favorite was the Pirate Mad Libs.

 Klenda helped with costuming.  She made hats and eye patches, as well as face paint scars.  The scars were realistic enough to alarm some adults!

But, of course, the favorite part of the day was the treasure hunt!

This time they really had to dig for it - in the mulch pile! 

I had buried it very shallowly, but I hadn't counted on the people on the pile shifting the mulch so much.  They actually had to dig quite a bit.  But it was worth it - licorice whips filled with sour candy- mmmm!

It was so much fun that the Zoomlians set up a second treasure hunt for their friends in the Anatomy class!

It Be Talk Like a Pirate Day Tomorrow, Matey!

Ye've been warned!

We've been making maps and playing around with pirate stickers, mad libs, and  doodles all week.

The maps are drawn on regular paper, soaked in tea, then (when dry) singed with fire.

The doodles are half drawn pictures where you need to draw the other part.

In this case, you had to draw the sea monster that is attacking the pirate ship.

I love doing this with all six Zoomlians because they come up with hilarious variety!

Here, Klenda draws an unfortunate giant merman, and Oob draws a sniffy fish that also kisses (run away!).

Choclo drew a megalodon with stripes (as well as a another shark).

Mxyl drew a terrifyingly cute little rubber ducky.

"It can bite off an entire nail with every mouthful, " he explained, "and with enough nails gone, you'll be treading water."

So, there's that.

Hmmm.  I might have boys.

Not pictured, Leena drew Gamera, and Zorg drew Larry Boy.

And we got a little silly with stickers!

Tomorrow we'll do a treasure hunt, and probably make pirate hats.

More piratey stuff, including web resources, from our earlier adventures, here.

Mount Vernon

 We loved Mount Vernon!  It was totally worth the substantial amount of money!

Here we are in front of George Washington's actual house.  You can see a bit beyond the house, that it's sitting on a bluff overlooking the Potomac River - very beautiful.

We got a full tour of the house (no photos allowed) and it is set up exactly as it was at the time of Washington's death, right down to the shades of paint.

The location is really beautiful, and we spent quite a bit of time wandering through the gardens and outbuildings.  This is the view from the back lawn.

The kids had fun with the adventure maps provided to them at the outset.  It was Talk Like a Pirate Day (Did you notice the eye patch?  I didn't at the time.), and it took us a while to realize that they do these maps all the time.

 We had spent several hours there before we realized that there was a separate museum (I mean really?  The whole place is a museum!).  That was partly because they built the museum part underground so that you could still see Mount Vernon as George Washington saw it.

I must say, we see a lot of museums, and theirs was fantastic!  It was every bit the equal of a Smithsonian.  It also had a 4D theater with real fog and snow (snow!) and so forth.

And they had a children's section with dress ups, games, head cut outs, crafts and all sorts of great things for 8 and under.

The whole thing was very, very well done, and we loved it!

A Litte Too Much Pirateness

Shortly before dinner yesterday, Mxyl went for a bike ride, gave it the old heave ho, and ended up spraining his wrist.  It being International Talk Like a Pirate Day, and all, he decided just to amputate it and go for a hook!

But the emergency room personnel were very busy, so they just splinted it, made us wait an extra 3 1/2 hours (they are contractually obligated to make the visit last four hours), and sent us home.

On the plus side, it was his left wrist, leaving him free to create a new header in photoshop and redesign the blog! (Encouraging comments welcome!)

Don't Fergit, Matey!

It be International Talk Like a Pirate Day! 

We'll post pictures of this year's shenanigans later, til then have fun reminiscing about pirates past (with links to fun activities).