Pumpkins

Poem of the Week: Theme in Yellow

Theme in Yellow

From Last Year

By Carl Sandburg

I spot the hills

With yellow balls in autumn.

I light the prairie cornfields

Orange and tawny gold clusters

And I am called pumpkins.

On the last of October

When dusk is fallen

Children join hands

And circle round me

Singing ghost songs

And love to the harvest moon;

I am a jack-o'-lantern

With terrible teeth

And the children know

I am fooling.

HT: Poetry Foundation

Not So Wordless Wednesday: Because Sometimes the Day Doesn't Follow the Plan

 So.  The plan was to do a leaf walk at the Arboretum with Adventurers, and then head north to pick up baking supplies.

But. This seasonal clothing change.

I'm fighting the good fight, but it's winning. And laughing at me.

I asked a friend with 8 kids for sage advice and she laughed at me too.  Immoderately. Apparently more kids doesn't make it easier, something I probably should have known.

So I decided to take the entire morning, dump my plans, and just get it done!

 Well, I certainly worked hard all morning.

Can you see a difference?  Kinda? Squint.

The main problem seems to be that I am missing the three bins  containing all of Choclo and most of Oob's winter clothes.


Yes, I have rechecked all the clothing bins in the basement, all the way to the bottom of each bin.  I predict it will take me 6 months to recover.






 In the mean time, I was running low on flour and sugar, so we used the afternoon to  make  a trip to the warehouse.


Final tally: 800 pounds!

300 lbs of sugar, and 500 lbs (total) of pastry and bread flour.

Judging from the most recent receipt, that will last me nearly a year.

And that, at least, was easily found and is now neatly stored away!

Spider Problems

 Big spiders












Very webby












Kinda spooky





Almost Halloween!

Poem of the Week: Among the Rocks

Among the Rocks

By Robert Browning

Oh, good gigantic smile o’ the brown old earth,

This autumn morning! How he sets his bones

To bask i’ the sun, and thrusts out knees and feet

For the ripple to run over in its mirth;

Listening the while, where on the heap of stones

The white breast of the sea-lark twitters sweet.

That is the doctrine, simple, ancient, true;

Such is life’s trial, as old earth smiles and knows.

If you loved only what were worth your love,

Love were clear gain, and wholly well for you:

Make the low nature better by your throes!

Give earth yourself, go up for gain above!

HT: Poetry Foundation

Awesome American History: 1892-1898

 This covered Lizzie Borden, Helen Keller, and the Spanish American War, pages 173-183 in The American Story by Jennifer Armstrong.

Having friends in the NFB, we decided to focus on Helen Keller on this one.

I know that a lot of people going for "what it's like to be blind," set up blindfolds.  Talking to actual blind people, this is not what it's like to be blind, and it tends to perpetuate stereotypes of blindness as scary and debilitating.

Instead, we did a fun project where the kids did their names in braille, using bumpy jewels to make large feelable initials or names.

We also did the punch method where we pressed a pencil point through paper to make raised dots.  The advantage was that the dots were much more the size of regular braille.  The disadvantage was that you have to do it reversed, which was too hard for kids.

Instead, I did some and had the kids read it using the alphabet guide.

 It was really fun! 

We also watched this TED Ed video of Ted Kish explaining how he uses sonar to navigate.

For our active activity we tried the sonar exercise he suggests in his talk.

 For our snack, we had brain cupcakes in honor of Lizzie Borden and it being October.

In a weird coincidence we (my A + P classes and I ) dissected sheep brains the same day I made brain cupcakes. It was weird.

Actually, I felt stuck between, "My life is weird" and "We are rocking this homeschool thing!"

And then the kids went outside and had an epic nerf battle, because... Spanish American War? 

Yes, I'm sure that was it!

Anatomy and Physiology: Have a Heart

A fun video for my class showing how blood moves through the heart as well as other great heart info.  I don't categorically endorse all the Crash Course videos (they can be a bit crass) but I liked this one.😏

Wordless Wednesday: C + O Canal

Painted Pumpkins

 One October, many years ago, we bought 6 pumpkins, one for each kid, and stored them festively on the porch, waiting for carving.

Someone stole one, evidently thinking that we had a lot of pumpkins, and wouldn't miss one.  We did.

Leena's Tahu mask, Oob's Soundwave, Zorg's Deathstroke

For those of you living in other climates, around here you can't carve your pumpkins more than a few days before Halloween, because, after that, they start to rot.

Mxyl's Wanderer above a Sea of Fog

But we figured out that we could paint our pumpkins, and since then, we've painted our pumpkins with Biocolor, a kind of washable paint that you can peel off of any nonporous surface.  When we're ready to carve, we peel and wash off the paint and go at it!

Klenda's Hydra

 It's actually doubled our enjoyment: we get to do two fun and creative things with our pumpkins!


Usually, I neither paint nor carve a pumpkin because I'm helping out various kids.  As they get older, and need less help, I find myself at loose ends.

This year, I started doodling on a white (eating) pumpkin with a marker, and then on a gourd, and then things got out of hand.

 But it was fun!

Poem of the Week: The Beautiful Changes

The Beautiful Changes

By Richard Wilbur

One wading a Fall meadow finds on all sides   

The Queen Anne’s Lace lying like lilies

On water; it glides

So from the walker, it turns

Dry grass to a lake, as the slightest shade of you   

Valleys my mind in fabulous blue Lucernes.

The beautiful changes as a forest is changed   

By a chameleon’s tuning his skin to it;   

As a mantis, arranged

On a green leaf, grows

Into it, makes the leaf leafier, and proves   

Any greenness is deeper than anyone knows.

Your hands hold roses always in a way that says   

They are not only yours; the beautiful changes   

In such kind ways,   

Wishing ever to sunder

Things and things’ selves for a second finding, to lose   

For a moment all that it touches back to wonder.

HT: Poetry Foundation
Image: VisitFinland.com

Awesome American History: 1885-1892

 This covered Skyscrapers, the Johnstown Flood, and Ellis Island, pages 163-172 in The American Story by Jennifer Armstrong.

We started out making construction paper skyscrapers as our art activity.  Some people got fancy and made cars and garages.  The kids got really into it!

Then , for the active activity, we set up all out buildings as a "city"in an underbed box, and had a flood!










For our snack, each family brought in a food from our immigrant ancestors.  It was so delicious, I forgot to take pictures, but our Irish family brought soda bread, our Swiss, German, Mexican, Cape Viridian family brought Mexican breads, and we made German Apple Fritters.

We are Prussian, Scotch-Irish, (and Scottish, and Irish), Bohemian, English, and French with some Scandinavian and Italian if you go back far enough, so we had options.  I opted for the apple fritters I was going to make anyway!

Wordless Wednesday: Roosevelt Island