Happy Memorial Day

Hope you're having a great Memorial Day!

We went out Saturday to visit the graves of our loved ones: to pray and decorate and tell stories.

Then it was home again for a big extended family cookout.

My cousin, Ed, mentioned as he was leaving that Memorial Day was one of his favorite holidays, and I really agree!

It's a beautiful family day for us to enjoy both our family here and to cherish those that have gone before us.



We are very blessed to live so close to each other and to the graves of our dear ones!

Poem of the Week: The Unknown

The Unknown

by E.O. Laughlin

I do not understand...

They bring so many, many flowers to me—
Rainbows of roses, wreaths from every land;
And hosts of solemn strangers come to see
My tomb here on these quiet, wooded heights.
My tomb here seems to be
One of the sights.

The low-voiced men, who speak
Of me quite fondly, call me The Unknown:
But now and then at dusk, Madonna-meek,
Bent, mournful mothers come to me alone
And whisper down—the flowers and grasses through—
Such names as "Jim" and "John"...
I wish I knew. 

And once my sweetheart came.
She did not—nay, of course she could not—know,
But thought of me, and crooned to me the name
She called me by—how many years ago?
A very precious name. Her eyes were wet,
Yet glowing, flaming so...
She won't forget!

HT: Discover Poetry

Awesome Geography: Russia

 For our last class for the semester we did Russia and a May Crowning and a party!

For our art activity, we did this lovely icon craft from Orthodox Pebbles.

All you need is cardboard, foil, and their printout (at the link above).  The kids "engraved" the foil with dull pencils, then added some "gems."

 Not only did they really enjoy it, but the icons themselves were really lovely!

And it tied into our May Crowning!


We even had a First Communicant to do the crowning!


And, for the snack, my friends surprised me with birthday cake!

Wordless Wednesday: New Jersey, Mothers Day and Birthdays

Kids' Paleontology: Not Dinosaurs

This final class was all about animals that were there at the same time as the dinosaurs.

I was here before ducks. They are platypus billed birds.

We started with animals that are still around: crocodiles, horseshoe crabs, jellyfish, turtles, clams, snakes, lizards, bees, sea stars, duck billed platypuses...

Seriously, I did not know that about platypuses, that's part of the fun of doing these classes!

 Then we moved on to the pterosurs!

The smallest were sparrow sized, the largest were giraffe sized.  Most of them ate fish, but those giants ate the dwarf sauropods, and that just seems wrong!

It was really interesting to see how pterosaurs  were like and unlike birds.


 
They had hollow bones, beaks, and flying wings, but they also had fur, soft shelled eggs, teeth, and weird hands that they used for walking and climbing.

Most fascinating to me was how the birds have filled all the niches the pterosaurs did, and how their crests and beaks diversified in similar ways and for similar reasons to what we see now with birds.

If anything, this ecological overlap is even more pronounced with the marine reptiles!  Just like our marine mammals, the reptiles developed on land, then returned to the sea, while retaining the need to breathe air.

It's a bit eerie to think of the icthyosaurs as similar to dolphins, but their diet and shape are very similar.  Then it gets uncanny: they apparently gave birth to live young, tail first, exactly as dolphins are born today!

It makes sense because their body shapes don't allow them to return to land.

The plesiosaurs are the long necked ones that make you think of Nessie.  They were like seals in that they returned (awkwardly) to land to give birth.

Unlike most seals, they dragged their heads in the mud to scare up fish and other creatures..

Then there are the 60 foot mosasaurs.  Think whales.  Really scary carnivorous whales.

Our fossil this week was mosasaur teeth!

To finish up, we talked about the volcanoes and meteor strike that ended the Age of the Dinosaurs.

I had set up a large pan full of flour, and the kids enjoyed spiking a volleyball in it to see the ejected dust.

I also had set up (indoors) a lamp with an incandescent bulb shining on a glass pie plate perched on a can.  Half the plate was dusted with flour, and they could see and feel beneath the pie plate how less light meant less heat.

We talked quite a bit about the Deccan Traps, the site of those enormous eruptions which started before the meteor hit, but intensified after.  After 65 million years of weathering, there are still some 200 million cubic miles of basalt left over from those eruptions!  Geologists think that may be half or less of what was there when the eruption finally stopped.


So we ended the class with a bang!

Then we had one last hurrah, down by the Bay to collect their own fossils.











Also, I have to add that one of my 7 year old students made me this for my birthday.

And I don't think a class gets more successful than that!

Although the Emperor also gave me this beautiful ammonite.

Awesome Geography: Turkey

 We had a good time with Turkey.  We did a lot with Istanbul (Constantinople), the Hagia Sophia, and some great travel videos before class.

Our art activity was making marbled paper using shaving cream as a base with liquid watercolor (food coloring works also) swirled into it.





You press the paper onto the cream, then scrape off the foam with a popsicle stick.

The results wee strikingly beautiful!

For our snack we had actual Turkish Delight from Turkey!

I have to say, having tried some from England a while back, it is seriously worth it if you can find the real thing!

One of the gifts of this class is having younger kids for my younger kids to play with.

I mean, Choclo is 13, so my younger kids aren't too young, but they missed out on having little ones around all the time.

It's delightful to see them enjoy little ones the way the older Zoomlians enjoyed them!




UPDATE: I forgot the most surprising thing I discovered about Turkey!  I can't remember who asked the question: Which came first, the name for the bird or the country?

Turks (people from Turkey) visited India, and found them cultivating a food bird we call the Guinea Hen (as in Guinea from Africa, where it originated).  The Turks imported them, calling them India birds, which got shortened to indians.  Seriously, Turks ate indians.

The British visited Turkey and found these birds as marvelous as the Turks did, so they imported them to  Britain, calling them... turkeys.

British immigrated to America where they found a similar looking (and equally tasty) bird in the wild, so they called it a wild turkey.  And since they were calling the native people Indians, Indians were eating turkeys before the Turks were eating indians.

It makes me wonder if residents of Hamburg find it unsettling that Americans eat hamburgers.

Poem of the Week: Wedding Hymn

Wedding Hymn

By Sidney Lanier

Thou God, whose high, eternal Love

Is the only blue sky of our life,

Clear all the Heaven that bends above

The life-road of this man and wife.

May these two lives be but one note

In the world’s strange-sounding harmony,

Whose sacred music e’er shall float

Through every discord up to Thee.

As when from separate stars two beams

Unite to form one tender ray:

As when two sweet but shadowy dreams

Explain each other in the day:

So may these two dear hearts one light

Emit, and each interpret each.

Let an angel come and dwell tonight

In this dear double-heart, and teach.

HT: Poetry Foundation

And happy 29th anniversary to my Sweetie!

Kids' Paleontology: Dinosaurs, Round 2

Last class we did the bird hipped dinosaurs (tanks and beaks), this time we went for the lizard hips.

There are two basic kinds here also: long neck dinosaurs (sauropods) and two foot carnivore dinosaurs (theropods).

The sauropods are the largest. Except for some weird island dwarfs, the smallest of these was larger than an elephant.

 They were all plant eaters with air sacs in their bones that helped support those massive bodies as well as helping them manage their body temperature.

One thing I always thought interesting is that these enormous plant eaters couldn't chew.  That's a lot of energy to get from leaves when you can't chew!

We used a sandwich bag and a spinach leaf to illustrate the problem.  The bag is like the stomach: when the kids mushed the leaf inside the bag, it hardly broke down at all.

But these dinosaurs, like some birds today, swallowed rocks (gastroliths: stomach stones) to grind the food in their stomachs.  We added a bit of bird grit (like coarse sand) and the leaves were quickly pulverized.

The fossil gift of the week was dinosaur eggshells, almost definitely from sauropods, probably from saltosaurus.

 We saved the favorites for last: theropods! T Rex, Velociraptors, Deinonychus, Spinosaurus, Allosaurus, and Archeopteryx are all in this category.

These start out as all two legged carnivores, although a few late cretaceous ones become herbivores.

Here we get the birds: all theropods have wishbones, and most of them seem to have had feathers.

Then it was time to look a bit more at how we know what we know about these animals.

We put paint on kids' feet and had them walk, run and hop, to look at how we can tell so much about dinosaur bodies and movement from trackways and prints.

Only a few kids were actually up for getting paint on their feet, but they were all interested in the tracks!

Then it was time for my all time favorite dinosaur activity: chipping bones out of plaster.

They loved this!   I'm always amazed at how long they want to do it.

 And then the T Rexs showed up...

This may be my new favorite dinosaur activity!

I was concerned that some of the younger kids might be freaked, but they all LOVED the dino visit!

And many thanks to Zorg and friend for suiting up for science!

Happy Birthday, Oob!

 Oob is 12!

We went out to dinner at Hunan Treasure with Pop, then came back for a "fudgy chocolate" cake.

Mmmmmmm.




Also, Oob got a great new camera to bird with- it has a 60x zoom!






12 Great Things About Oob

1. He is crazy about birds!

2. He loves to go biking.
2. He's a Minecraft master.
3. He is always willing to help out.
4. He's a very loving brother and son.
4. He likes to build contraptions.
5. He's a job thief!
5. He tells funny jokes.
6. He's always up for an adventure.
6. He's a Lego master builder.
7. He's a good Scout!
8. He likes to cook.
8. He loves taking care of cute furry things.
9. He's really good at drawing complicated things.
9. He knows a LOT about birds. Like a crazy amount. 
10. Like, definitely more than you think.
10. He has an eye for detail.
11. He tells great stories.
11. He likes to explore physically and intellectually.
12. He takes great care of Mike, and Mike loves him!
12. He loves God very much!

Wordless Wednesday: Shark Tooth Hunting