Unit Studies Run Amuck

Leena (cheerfully, before breakfast): Mom! I read that Thomas Jefferson invented a teeny tiny elevator for his house! Can we do that?

Seven Quick Takes Friday

This would be the "Random Things on the Camera" edition!

1.

At long last, we finally have a picture of Mxyl as St. Anthony of Padua! He was too sick to even dress up for a picture on Halloween, but he's feeling muuuuch better now. Especially after eating all the candy Klenda collected for him!

2.

I think this may have something to do with not having another baby on the way, but I think it's so cute when Choclo wants to be wrapped up like a baby. Evidently, someone else does also.

I neither wrapped him up, nor took the picture. I'm guessing it was Klenda.

3.

Speaking of cute Choclo pictures which I didn't take, I think Mxyl took this one of Choclo feeding Courage. Willing to eat from a four year old's hand is pretty tame!

Alas, Love just discovered this morning that, while a four year old is pretty safe, a two year old will not be able to resist your beautiful tail. Love still has the tail, by the way. The urgent squawks brought us running to the rescue.

4.

Here is this year's Leaf Tree. This is a project which we do every year by popular demand. As usual, the trunk is a paper bag and the leaves are just taped to the wall.

The remarkable thing about this tree is that the leaves were all collected on November 18th. Where I grew up, the leaves are gone by Halloween!

Even stranger, we also just brought in a large bunch of roses from the garden! We also are being inundated by camellias, but, somehow, I find that less strange than the roses.

5.

Our (burgundy) couch cover finally wore through, and our recliner was giving up the ghost, so we got these "beach house tan" slip covers.

I love the covers (from Target), they are stretchy and soft and they fit better than any cover I've ever had. BUT. They don't go with the clear sunny yellow walls.

The walls have been suffering from Choclo's Harold and the Purple Crayon phase, so they needed to be repainted anyway. You can count this as the "before" shot.

6.

While looking for color ideas to go with the tan covers and burgandy drapes and carpet, I, with the help of the intrepid Grammy, discovered that there are tons of color scheme websites!

This one was my favorite! This was too cool - color scheme by Yahoo! Here is another that lets you convert a picture into a color scheme (which is why the curtain is hanging on the couch, I wanted to crop those two colors).

Evidently, these are used primarily for website design, but they can also be used to coordinate rooms and wardrobes. Who knew?

7.

And here is a gratuitous Oob shot. Not totally gratuitous, I guess, since he's actually demonstrating the need for couch covers.

He is standing on the couch and flopping back on it (no Oobs were injured in the making of this blog post).


More with Jen!

Guest Blog by Mxyl: Story time!!!!

And now it's time for Story Time with Mxyl:

Hello cute earthlings! I have made a story about an animal from our home planet, Zoom.
Here it is. Enjoy!

THE INVISIBLE ANIMAL,
by Mxyl.

A new animal is at the now-crowded zoo. He is invisible. His fearsome roar cannot be heard. He is also transparent.
A person asked the zookeepers how they caught the creature. The keepers said, "Um...Hold on..um...We don't really know. We weren't the ones who caught him. Maybe... You could ask... the Hunters?"
"I KNEW IT!" Said one of the people, throwing open the door.
"IT WAS JUST A TRICK!", said another.
"Thar's nuth'n' in ahear, just air," said still another.
The zookeepers said,"No!!! you opened the door! That's one of the most dangerous animals on the planet!!"
"Yea, right," laughed one of the people.
But, seen by no one, something jumped out of cage and ate everybody up.
The moral of the story is: Don't jump to conclusions. Trust your superiors.
THE END.

I hope you have enjoyed my story! Bye for now, earthlings!
This has been Story time with Mxyl.
As they say in Zoomlian, "Fhlshsush!"

A More Appalling Thought

This Sunday is the feast of Christ the King, which means the next Sunday will start Advent! Yikes!
Time to start planning out Advent!

I've actually had a lovely year or two where I was done Christmas shopping by Advent. Not this year, I think. :)

On the plus side, this gets easier to plan since we have settled into some fun traditions and I don't feel like I have to "come up with" something each year.

I like to print out a blank calendar to plan on so I don't try to stuff in too much.

It helps that we have a tradition of decorating slowly. The big stuff gets scheduled: the second Sunday of Advent we put out our outside decorations and lights, the family creche goes up on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, the third Sunday we do the inside greenery, beads and bows (we decorate the light fixtures and doorways), and the fourth Sunday we do the tree.

All the rest of the decorations are hauled into the guest room. Each day a kid gets to go in and pick a decoration to put up. Naturally, what gets picked first every year is the light up talking Nativity.

The figures don't actually talk, instead there is a narration with music. Inexplicably, they start with the Wise men and then do the shepherds. It is played some 5 or 6 hundred times a day for the entire Advent and Christmas season. $10 at Walmart 5 years ago. Who knew?

Then I poll the kids about their favorite Advent activities. The results this year?

We will definitely do the manger (you put a straw in every time you do a good deed and, by Christmas, Baby Jesus has a nice soft bed).

We will also do the Advent house (each day you open a door and find a piece of the playmobil nativity and some candy) .

We will do the sticker book if I can find the stickers. I had thought I'd just buy a new one, but $268 seems a bit steep. I mean, it was great, but not enough for a second mortgage!

The Jesse tree.

Paper advent calendars for each kid.

The Advent wreath, of course. We'll probably make a paper one for the children's altar.

We'll do the O Antiphons, when they come around. We print them out and distribute them at random with a sheet of poster paper. Everyone does their antiphon, and we put them up on the appropriate day.

And then, each week, we'll have a day to make cookies, a day to do make presents, and a day to make a decoration.

I have been thinking of themes. Advent is so big, I like to have a focus. I am thinking of using a song this year. O Come O Come Emmanuel is obvious, but I've never liked it musically. Growing up, it was sung every Advent (sometimes every Advent Sunday!) and always with a dirge like tempo. The words are great, but...

We used People Look East a few years back, and I liked it very much. There are four verses, with a fifth for Christmas Eve, and each one can be thought of as a different kind of preparation. I may do it again this year. Here are the words:

1. People, look east. The time is near
Of the crowning of the year.
Make your house fair as you are able,
Trim the hearth and set the table.
People, look east and sing today:
Love, the guest, is on the way.

2. Furrows, be glad. Though earth is bare,
One more seed is planted there:
Give up your strength the seed to nourish,
That in course the flower may flourish.
People, look east and sing today:
Love, the rose, is on the way.

3. Birds, though you long have ceased to build,
Guard the nest that must be filled.
Even the hour when wings are frozen
God for fledging time has chosen.
People, look east and sing today:
Love, the bird, is on the way.

4. Stars, keep the watch. When night is dim
One more light the bowl shall brim,
Shining beyond the frosty weather,
Bright as sun and moon together.
People, look east and sing today:
Love, the star, is on the way.

5. Angels, announce with shouts of mirth
Christ who brings new life to earth.
Set every peak and valley humming
With the word, the Lord is coming.
People, look east and sing today:
Love, the Lord, is on the way.

And here we have it sung:

An Appalling Thought

Do you remember A Conneticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court?

A 19th century smith is transported back in time, and wows King Arthur with modern technology.

If that happened to me, with 2 centuries more technology, they would be considerably less impressed.

What would I do? Build them an airplane? How about a computer? Umm. A car? Anything?

I think the best I could do would be to pull out my cell phone and show them the screen lighting up (until the battery ran out)!

I'm not worried that I am going to be swept back in time (with a career as the Village Idiot), but it is an uncomfortable realization that my own level of technology- the things I understand well enough to recreate, is probably lower than that of the average person 100 years ago.

My friend Bill, on the other hand, probably doesn't need to worry about these things!

Off to the Zoo

After a week and half of being stuck inside, we needed to get out, so we headed off to our favorite zoo.

It always amazes me that, although we live within sight of Washington DC, it is actually as fast or faster to drive up to Baltimore for either the Zoo or the symphony.

We used to live in Baltimore, so this was the Zoo I took Mxyl to when he was a baby. It was a nice zoo then, but now, it's fantastic!





We particularly liked the tundra buggy/polar bear exhibit.


Here is Leena, "driving" the tundra buggy!



And here are Choclo and Oob, playing in a bear trap (What? Like you never let your kids play with bear traps?)



This visit we did their African trail . This actually includes African penguins next door to their elephants!

Mxyl pointed out that it looked like the penguins had feet without legs and the elephants had legs without feet. I never thought of it that way before, but it was pretty funny going from one to the other!




Then we discovered they had a baby elephant! Way too cute!








I let the kids loose with the camera, and they came up with some very nice shots.


All in all a lovely day!

US History: Colonial Times, Living

We've been doing lots of daily life activities in our Colonial unit!

Our favorite was making this little wattle and daub house. We had intended to make it on a plastic tray with the posts supported by homemade clay, but there was just no way to get the posts secured strongly enough to counteract the tension of the weaving process.

We ended up doing it the old fashioned way: pushing the posts deeply into the ground, about 3 inches apart, then interweaving small flexible branches for the wattle. We used shoots from out red twig dogwood, which made a very pretty little framework. You could also use willow, I believe both are even historically accurate! Anything very flexible would work.



The tension made our rectangle look a little round as we were weaving.
We added thicker "logs" on the top to bring it back into shape.

Then we added the daub. The colonists would have used clay mixed with manure (to prevent cracks from forming as the clay dried). After everything had dried, the smell was "hardly noticeable." Umm.

We used plain garden soil mixed with water!!!

Sometimes it doesn't pay to be too historically accurate.
Next came the framework for the roof.
And then the thatching!

We found a great You Tube video of a master thatcher. Very fun! It looks like it would be very easy to do a terrible job.




We also braided a rag rug or two with some sewing scraps.

I very much wanted to spin wool with a drop spindle, put I couldn't figure out how to buy wool. I knew if I bought "raw" wool I would need to wash it (not sure how but we could probably figure it out), pick it (we can do that), and comb it (can it be done without carding combs? wouldn't that cost a lot to buy them?). What with losing a week and a half to a(nother!) bad flu, I was starting to feel like we should move on, so I punted and we watched it all on You Tube. Here we have shearing, preparing, spinning, and weaving. All four are the same group and they take a total of less than 10 minutes. It was wonderful to see so many different ways to spin!

Infallible Cure for Hiccups

Zorg showed up while I was sweeping the living room, "Mom, I have hiccups and the other kids told me you can cure them."

Sure, first you have to sweep the living room, dining room, and kitchen, then you need to mop. Then clean all the bathrooms and fold all the laundry. Then clean the boys' room, the girls' room and the library.

He gaped at me as I started to hand him the broom.

Oh no! Your hiccups are all gone already.

"Thanks, Mom!" Huge grin as he ran off.

Which goes to show there is more than one way to scare the hiccups out of someone.

And if it hadn't, at least I would have had the whole house cleaned!!

US History: Colonial Ink Video

This was our first try for a "how to" movie. I now have better editing software, so I think I'll have better sound quality on future videos. We had a lot of fun making it, but we are definitely still figuring things out!

Surprise Benefits

It's Math U Feed!

A surprise benefit of a flock of birds in the house has been Choclo's interest in counting, adding and subtracting parakeets.

If I am feeding 3 parakeets and 2 more come along, how many parakeets are there?

A surprise benefit of having 5 kids really sick at the same time has been having 6 kids willing to watch Blue's Big Musical Movie... Which lasted long enough for me to file that entire overgrown pile of home school papers you see in the background!

US History: Colonial Times, Lighting

We've been stuck with another flu strain the past few days, but, before we got sick, we were starting some fun Colonial activities.

We've been dipping candles. What you are seeing here is a coffee can inside a pot. We have simmering water in the pot, keeping the can warm and the wax melted.

It turns out there is a trick to dipping candles with out using lots of wax! We filled the can 2/3 full of boiling water, then put in chunks of paraffin (in the canning section of your grocery store). The hot water melted the wax, and the wax floated on the water. We also added part of a crayon for color.

We kept a tall container of cool water handy.

We tied 2 lengths of string to a dowel so that there were 4 ends hanging down. We then put washers on the ends of the strings to keep the candles straight.

Then we dipped the strings, first into wax, then into cool water. If you keep them in the cool water long enough to get chilled (we used ice), the wax builds up faster.



After the first batch, we also added bergamot oil to make them smell good!

Eventually, I hope to make candle clocks out of some of them. To do this, you take several candles which were dipped together. You burn one and, at hourly intervals, you mark on the rest of the candles how far the first candle has burned. Since our candles are short, we'll use half hour intervals!