More Squid!

Continuing my quest to keep you up to date on breaking squid news: the colossal squid they are thawing in New Zealand was found to have the largest eye of the animal kingdom! It would have been 40cm across when the animal was alive - the size of a beach ball!! This knocks the giant squid off it's pedestal, the giant squid's eyes are only the size of a dinner plate.

More details here. But, if I may correct the article, 495 kg is NOT 78 lbs. No lightweight squids here!

495 kilograms = 1 091.2882 pounds! (HT: Google calculator)

And they think other Colossal squid may be up to 700 kg...

The Circus!

No, not my usual life, I mean the actual circus!

I must admit, I had never been a big fan of the circus, largely because it seemed too much: too much noise, too much to see, way too far away to really see it, all for too much money. I had only ever seen a circus at an arena.

Surprise! 3 years ago I saw my first "Big Top" (in a tent) circus. It was the Cole Bros. Circus and it was astounding!! Everything felt like it was happening nearly in our laps! Clowns, acrobats, elephants and tigers! It was truly a wonder.

We've been anxiously waiting for them to come round again, and they finally did! Alas, this time around I was home with Oob and Choclo (Oob was still pretty sick) but the rest went and had a marvelous time.

Klenda's favorite was a very funny horse which acted rather like a toddler I know. The boys loved the motorcycles in the giant sphere. Leena liked the human cannonball. All the kids liked riding on the elephant (enough to spend their allowance on it!). The Emperor liked the acrobats and thought the clowns were the funniest he has ever seen.

It really was a fabulous time. The kids spent the whole next day drawing pictures and explaining all the things they had seen. Seeing their delight as they recounted their circus adventures, I might not have gotten more out of the circus if I'd gone!

More Sites

I started this blog partly as a way to share easy fun home school ideas, partly to keep me motivated to come up with easy fun home school ideas, and partly to keep in touch with distant family. Kate (from NJ), I can't thank you enough for the encouragement!

It works for me for all that, but I have also found it works for me as a portal to the sites I visit regularly. So, partly to tell you about my favorite home school sites, and mostly for my own lazi, er, convenience, I have been putting up new lists of sites in the sidebar. I hope to eventually sort the home school sites into categories (many, many more are coming!). And, of course, I hope you have fun with them!

Bird Song

Angel taught this to Choclo and when they do it together it is a marvelous combination of heart-meltingly sweet and hilarious.









Way up in the sky,
The big birdies fly (flap your arms).
While down in the nest,
The little birds rest (circle child with your arms).
With a wing on the left (flap child's left arm),
And a wing on the right (flap right arm).
The little birds sleep (snore)
All through the night (head on folded hands, eyes closed).
SHHHHHH! They're SLEEPING!!!!
The bright sun comes up! (raise arms)
The dew melts away! (lower arms with "raining" fingers)
Good Morning! Good Morning!
The little birds say!

Repeat as often as the child jumps up and down and shouts, "AGAIN!"

The photo is from this enchanting website.

Have You Hugged Your Mummy Today?

Yesterday we brought back the Fun Jar. This is a quart Mason jar (decorated with sticker glue stickers) filled with slips of paper with fun things written on them. At various intervals (like after a particularly tedious chore) we draw a slip and do what it says. We just finished cleaning the family room and drew: toilet paper mummies!

That's Klenda in the top picture, Klenda wrapping Zorg in the middle, and Leena (wrapped by Klenda) at the bottom. Mxyl was off running errands with the Emporer.

Other things in the Fun Jar include: baking soda volcanoes, playdough, board games, watercolor paint, Simon says, singing silly songs, freeze dance, telling knock knock jokes in foreign accents, special things for each person in our family (we all do a special thing for the person whose name we drew), Optimath Prime, Bumblebee spelling bee, Frisbee, superhero body trace, obstacle course, nature walk, random science experiment or art project, etc.

Nothing fancy, nothing expensive, just a long list of all the fun things we can forget to do regularly.

And, no, I do not reuse the toilet paper!

The Frugal Not Quite Gourmet

I love to cook and the kids love to cook. It's a good thing since we cook for 9 people 4 times a day (snacks and dessert are considered indispensable around here). Our favorite thing, really, is baking and I do it a lot: cookies once a week, bread twice a week, and various muffins, cakes, quick breads, etc a few more times a week.

One real advantage to all this time in the kitchen is being able to stretch the food budget. This is a high priority for us (9 people /1 income = need to eat frugally). Still, this isn't something I would advise for anyone who doesn't like to cook because I can imagine this being sheer misery if it isn't your thing: it's hard to put a price on your sanity!

One thing I do is buy my baking supplies at a baking warehouse. This isn't like Sam's Club or Costco, and they sell very few things in quantities smaller than 50 lbs. Still, I am picking up 50 lbs of "Sir Lancelot" (the King Arthur Bread Flour) for under $10, about as much as I would pay for 5 lbs from the catalog when you count shipping! I buy bread flour, pastry flour, sugar and oatmeal there, but if you have special food needs (like say a wheat allergy) this would be far and away the cheapest place to get specialty flours (soy, rice, powdered whey, etc.) To find a similar deal, check your yellow pages for bakery supplies and just start calling.

Another big money saver is to buy big what is locally cheap. Here in Maryland there are a lot of poultry farms and, once every 6 to 9 months, chicken goes on sale super cheap. I spent an hour yesterday with 50 lbs of leg quarters. They were 47 cents a pound! When I get meat on sale like this, I do all the prep work at one time.

With the chicken, I removed the skin and cut apart the quarters into drumstick and thigh, seasoned them (rosemary garlic, curry, taco seasoning, Italian dressing, whatever you like) and froze them down in labeled bags. They marinate as they freeze and then can be cooked in any way from crockpot to grill. We got 8 meals for us and 7 meals for other families not counting planned leftovers for lunches- as much as 20 individual lunches depending on how often we have guests for dinner (we take our dinner leftovers and package them as mini meals for The Emperor and Angel to take for lunch).

We'll eat from this chicken stash once a week or so, interspersed with other meat frozen down and our meatless meals. We go meatless two days a week and have soup with fresh bread once a week.

I'd love to hear from you how you stretch your food budget!

The Robins Return!

They are back and have built another nest in the same spot: right on top of the flagpole holder outside the kitchen window, hidden amongst the roses.

We have been having fun watching Mama Robin build her nest. She is sitting in it at this moment (laying eggs!?!).

Naturally, this called for some robin research. Besides a number of websites, we have a book called A Nest Full of Eggs which was as perfect a book as if it had been written for this situation.

Among other things, I was relieved to learn that they build a fresh nest each year (I took down the last nest so we could look at it, but dropped and broke it when the bird mites swarmed onto my hand -ugh!).

This pair hatched out 4 chicks last year and we watched the parents teach them to fly. Turns out all robins are home schooled.

Mxyl Has a Plan

He wants us all to stop walking around and start crawling.

This, he figures, will delay Oob learning to walk and keep him a baby longer.

Do you need to ask why?

I tried to explain that all that delicious baby cuteness wouldn't just go away. I tried to sell Mxyl on the idea that Oob would eventually be a fun kid to play with. But, finally, we had to agree to just enjoy Oob's babiness as much as we can, as long as we can.

So that's what we've been doing: kissing the top of his fluffy head, holding him so he can nuzzle our necks, and listening to that lovely baby laugh as much as we can.

What can you do? Love grows.

He's Crossed Over!

Mxyl did it! He was awarded the Arrow of Light and crossed over from Cub Scout into being a Boy Scout!!! Way to go Mxyl! We are so proud of you! You're getting so big! Sniff!

Would You Please Write a Blog About My Cheese Man?

Zorg asked.

Sure, why not! This is Zorg's Cheese Man. You can also see Leena trying for her own Cheese Person, but I think she got distracted and ate it.


I feel like I should say more.

Zorg's Cheese Man shows Zoomlian cheese sculpting at it's finest. Note the Cheese Man's exuberant posture! It is positively bursting with joie de vivre and ... cheesy goodness.

Perhaps I've said too much. Great art speaks for itself.

[Edit: I just remembered, Leena didn't eat her Cheese Person, she carved herself some Cheese Lips. All Cheese Sculptures were responsibly recycled as lunch.]