Learn-O-Rama

Easter 2011

2011-05-02T06:45:00.001-07:00

We didn't get any pictures of the girls in their Easter dresses. Church was really crowded. Scott and I got there 20 minutes early and there wasn't even standing room left. They set up rows of chairs outside, and we sat out there. Mary, of course, was guaranteed a seat in the choir stalls, and Audrey went to Children's Chapel.

HMMM, can Mary reach this egg?

No, but Audrey can!

A rare picture of all four kids together, along with our dog and the neighbor's dog.

Audrey's creations

2011-03-18T16:26:00.000-07:00

Final day of knitting class: a finished...something. Bunny? Kitty? Mouse?

She was pestering Mary, who is getting over being sick, so I suggested we go outside and nail some boards together. But nailing our shoes to boards turned out to be much more fun.

Doll wheelchair

2011-02-15T08:54:00.001-08:00

Audrey has been wanting to make something with wheels. Yesterday we went shopping for parts, and today we made this doll wheelchair out of cardboard, duct tape, pencils, casters, furniture moving pads, a dowel, and a couple screws and nuts. We looked at images of wheelchairs (and chariots, our next project) on Google, and studied the bottom of a wagon to see how the wheels were attached. We used the drill and saw together, she used her new screwdriver, and I used the box cutter. Now she's adding a seat belt made of a rubber band.

It sort of rolls.

Ta dah!

Dressed for the dance

2011-02-04T17:51:00.000-08:00

Tonight is the Girl Scouts' Dad/Daughter dance. Scott took the girls out for dinner before the dance. I ate junk food for dinner and worked on saxophone reeds.

I've got pizza dough on the brain!

2011-01-21T13:48:00.000-08:00

Spelling

2011-01-21T13:38:00.001-08:00

Those bugs can bite! (She used an upside down i for an exclamation point)

these cute cats (with a close-up of one of the cute cats)

Elbow Lickin' Good

2011-01-21T13:18:00.000-08:00

Must edit!

2010-12-09T08:33:00.000-08:00

Audrey likes riddles. She got a lot of reading practice telling us the jokes from Laffy Taffy wrappers from her Halloween loot. So, last night I printed out a list of Christmas riddles that came in an e-mail from a spelling program publisher. I left it in the printer, and when I came downstairs to check my e-mail this morning, I found that the riddles had been marked up by our resident author/editor-to-be, Mary. She bracketed one of the riddles with the comment "takes longer to get" and reworded another riddle so the punchline wasn't in the question.

Original version:

Q. What do you call an Eskimo cow?

A. An Eskimoo.

Mary's version:

Q. What do you call an Alaskan cow?

A. An Eskimoo.

I just thought it was very funny that Mary, seeing a page of riddles, would assume they were there for her to comment on and improve. She's also been having lots of fun with Google Translator lately, translating Girl Scout songs into Latin. And of course, editing the result if she disagrees with Google's choice of phrasing.

Braces off!

2010-11-26T10:20:00.000-08:00

Mary has something extra to be thankful for this Thanksgiving: no more braces! She celebrated by eating Laffy Taffy, and biting into a whole (not sliced) apple. How was the apple? "Satisfying."

Here's where we started, over a year ago:

Zome bubble fun

2010-11-01T18:09:00.000-07:00

Every time Mary finishes a unit in math, she gets a change of pace. Today it was making bubbles with Zome tools.

Mary did most of the building, and Audrey did most of the dipping.

The spiral was hard to figure out from the illustration in the book. I helped out with that one.

Here it is, the amazing bubble square.

Halloween

2010-11-01T06:47:00.001-07:00

All dressed up for the neighborhood party:

Audrey was the first one to bob for apples.

Stephen came over to go trick-or-treating on the hayride around our neighborhood.

Lucy decided to try her hand, I mean her teeth, at carving a pumpkin.

Owl Pellets

2010-10-27T09:21:00.000-07:00

Mary has finished reading the entire Harry Potter series, and has started watching the movies. She wanted to do some Harry Potter related lessons, so today we dissected owl pellets, so we would find out what our Owl Post owls have been eating.

The pellet is a regurgitated wad of fur and bones:

Audrey didn't mind using her fingers to pull it apart, but Mary preferred to use the tools.

Audrey found lots of tiny bones, including top and bottom jaws with sharp little teeth.

Mary's owl ate something bigger. We found a section of tail in her pellet.

Pumpkin Carving

2010-10-27T09:15:00.001-07:00

Boating

2010-09-20T18:08:00.001-07:00

Highlights of our weekend:

We picked up our boat on Saturday. Driving it around the lake was great fun. We got it up to the top speed of about 50 mph before we read the manual and found out you're not supposed to go full throttle during the engine's breaking-in period. (You're also not supposed to tow anything during the car engine's breaking-in period. But that's what we got that car for!)

The faster you go, the smoother the ride. The kids enjoy bouncing over other boats' wakes, though. It's better than the roller coasters at Carowinds.

Backing the boat trailer down the boat ramp and getting the boat on and off the trailer is not as much fun. The first day was really stressful. The public boat ramp was very crowded. It seems everyone who wasn't at the UNC game was at the lake. We had to back the boat around another boat that was tied up at the dock. We kept waiting for them to move, but they had a dead battery and couldn't go anywhere. Luckily, we managed to get the boat in and out of the water without destroying anything.

We had planned to park the boat in our yard. We had measured out where we thought it would go, and the boat could fit. But there's not enough room to maneuver the boat plus trailer plus car. Our steep driveway is a problem, too. We parked the boat in the street in front of our house, wedged rocks under the trailer tires to keep it from rolling down the hill and crashing through the neighbor's house, slept badly, and took it to the marina the next day.

Since we had to drop it off at the marina, we figured we might as well get more practice. So on Sunday afternoon, after church and lunch, we tooled around the lake a bit, then found a secluded section of shore and tied up. The girls loved swimming around near the boat, and we all enjoyed having a picnic on the back of the boat.

The marina's boat ramp area is much better laid-out than the public ramp. Trailers are only entering the ramp area from one side, instead of all directions. Instead of docks where you have to avoid boats loading and unloading passengers, there's a little beach area next to the ramps for loading and unloading. I felt a lot safer with the girls waiting on the beach rather than on the dock, and they had more fun playing in the sand while they waited for us to get the boat down or up the ramp. After using the ramps at the marina, Scott and I relaxed and stopped feeling so panicky about owning a boat. We still need a lot of practice getting it in and out of the water, and backing it in and out of parking spaces, but now we feel like we can do it.

Bug Fest

2010-09-11T17:07:00.000-07:00

We interrupt your regularly scheduled vacation photos to bring you this message about what we did today. We went to Bug Fest at the NC Museum of Natural History. Bug exhibits were set up throughout the museum and along several streets outside. We talked to bug experts about the exciting one-day life of adult mayflies, saw a beekeeper wearing a bee beard, cheered on our favorite contender in the cockroach race, learned about mummy berry blight, held bugs, ate a chocolate-covered bug larva (I was the only one brave enough to try it), and slurped snow cone syrup from a flower-shaped bowl.

The first thing we saw when we got there was a giant dead beetle lying on its back:

The most unusual thing we saw was a real, old-fashioned flea circus. Scott and I were standing in the back, so we didn't actually see the fleas, but the kids were sitting on the ground up front, and Audrey swears she got splashed when the high-diving flea landed in the tin can of water.

Scott was impressed by the real, mechanical street organ that the flea circus ringmaster played by turning a crank. Digital everything is taken for granted so much now, that anything non-digital seems amazing. Like watching a crowd scene in an old movie and realizing, "Wow, those are all real people!"

Here's Mary holding her new friend. She held praying mantises and stick bugs. Audrey petted hissing cockroaches and held a small stick bug.

The bug I ate didn't taste gross. It was chewy and chocolatey. The only gross part was picking little exoskeleton bits out of my teeth afterwards.

New York Trip, Day Two

2010-09-11T15:05:00.000-07:00

The Prospect Park Zoo in Brooklyn was our destination for day two. Kerry sometimes runs in Prospect Park, but had never been to the zoo. There were two baby baboons we especially wanted to see. The babies were old enough to explore their surroundings, but they couldn't go far from mom, because before they made it out of her reach, she would grab their tail.

At an animal encounter, we met a 20 pound rabbit. These Belgian rabbits were bred for their size during the age of long sea voyages to the New World. They provided a lot of meat, and replaced themselves quickly, since they breed like, well, rabbits.

We also saw various monkeys, birds, snakes, fish, and a sea lion show. After seeing so many animals, we were ready to turn into animals ourselves!

We popped out of holes in a prairie dog town...

Narrowly avoided being eaten by a giant spider...

Hatched out of eggs...

And hopped across lily pads...

New York Trip, Day One

2010-09-11T14:42:00.001-07:00

We went to visit my sister Kerry in New York during the last few days of August. We stayed with her in her Brooklyn apartment. It's about the size of a hotel room, spacious compared to her previous apartment in Manhattan. We arrived at about lunch time on a Saturday, so after we admired her place, we walked down the street to get some lunch from the food vendors at the flea market. Mary got some good shots of the fun we had exploring the rest of the vendors after lunch.

After we left the flea market, we took the subway into Manhattan and walked back over the Brooklyn Bridge. Nobody tried to sell it to us, but there were plenty of guys selling, "Ice cold water, only one dollar!" Kerry had brought some trail mix and small candies in case the girls needed extra energy to make it over the bridge.

That evening we ate at a Mediterranean restaurant in Brooklyn. A couple of neighborhood kids got into a fight outside the restaurant, and the owner went out to chase them away. Mary decided that New York would be a good place for a writer to live, because there's always something interesting going on.

First week of school

2010-08-26T11:29:00.000-07:00

This actually happened a couple weeks ago: Mary and I decided to turn some of her commemorative T-shirts into drawstring bags and pillow covers.

This week, Audrey wanted to try the sewing machine. She did a good job of keeping the fabric straight while she tried the various stitches the machine can do.

We built some crazy creatures with our Zometool kit. I bought a pack of lesson plans that have topics in math, engineering, science, and art. Pretty soon we'll try the bubble lesson plans and make cube-shaped bubbles!

We started our school on Monday. Audrey is doing school for the first time. Here's what they're studying:

Audrey (5 1/2)
Math (Right Start B) - we're skimming over and through the first several lessons. This was a hand-me-down from Mary.
Spelling (All About Spelling Level 1) - again, skimming and skipping. She already knows consonants and short vowels well
Reading - whatever beginning books we have around the house or get from the library. Last night we sorted out the "too easy" books from the "just right" and "too hard" ones.
Writing (Handwriting Without Tears) - we reviewed the capital letters, learned the numbers she didn't already know (4 and 8 are tricky). Today she copied our address and phone number (always good to know).
Other subjects: read-alouds, geography (basic map skills, continents and bodies of water, land and water forms), science (looking at interesting things with jeweler's loups or under the microscope), art (haven't done any lessons yet, but I have Artistic Pursuits from when Mary was little, and she draws a lot on her own)

Mary (10 1/2)
Latin (Latin Alive Level One) - she likes this a lot so far. She enjoyed Greek, but there wasn't a Greek program at the appropriate level. We started with Elementary Greek, but the readings, which made her eyes light up, only came every five chapters, and the rest was grammar charts. All scales and no music. We tried Athenaze, but it's meant for high school or college students, so the readings got too long too fast, and it didn't have all the nice hand-holding things, like recordings to show you how to pronounce the vocabulary words, that you get with courses aimed at younger students. And we had to adapt the grammar exercises to fit an 8-year-old's attention span, so she wasn't getting as much grammar practice as she needed. Latin Alive is aimed at middle school students, so the pace of instruction is very comfortable for Mary. I bought the DVDs, so she watches the lesson and follows along in her book. The written exercises are pretty short so far. The readings start with a few short sentences, ramp up to a couple short paragraphs, and by the end of the book she'll be reading close to a page in Latin. Each unit has a reading with questions in the style of the AP or National Latin Exam, so if she wants to take either exam when she's older, she'll be familiar with the format.

Math - I didn't buy a math curriculum this year. We are going to use a combination of Life of Fred, lesson plans from Zometool, Mythmatical Battles and other card games, books like "The Number Devil", and Singapore 5B, which we have left from last year. I did buy an interesting book called "Is Democracy Fair? The Mathematics of Voting and Apportionment" which we probably won't use until the 2012 election, assuming I can still find it then. The math in it looks a little advanced for her right now.

Writing - A lot of her academic writing skills (note-taking, writing paragraphs and essays) will be done through her history studies. She writes lots of fiction on her own, and I'm sure she'll want to do NaNoWriMo again this year. For mechanics, I have a book on homophones and some diagramming resources that we can pull out from time to time. Before NaNoWriMo starts, I'll need to remind her how to punctuate dialog.

History - Mary wanted to find out all about everybody who came to America, and when they came and why. Right now she's reading a great book called "Before Columbus" by Charles Mann. I found a good Smithsonian website on Viking settlements
and we'll get into some European history as we learn about the early colonists and the big wave that came through Ellis Island. She and Scott are going on a field trip to an archaeological dig site of an inland Spanish settlement.

Science: she's taking a physics class for homeschooled middle-schoolers through the university's Carolina Center for Educational Excellence.

Other stuff: piano, maybe some logic, Movies as Literature, reading good books, Girl Scout badges and her Bronze Award, and whatever else comes up.

The last unicorn

2010-08-26T11:07:00.000-07:00

Last Sunday, we visited an unusual place nearby. The Last Unicorn is a cross between an antique store, outdoor sculpture garden, and junkyard. The owner has been collecting interesting wrought iron and stained glass for decades, and displays them in his five-acre wooded yard. There are cottages with walls made entirely of stained glass windows, themed areas such as Narnia Forest.

Audrey enjoyed going over the troll bridge. The owner enjoys putting together creative displays of his antiques, and combining pieces in interesting ways. Scott was impressed that he managed to get "The Last Unicorn" as his URL. He figured the Rankin-Bass movie would have scored thelastunicorn.com.

Beach vacation

2010-08-16T17:13:00.001-07:00

For Scott's "company picnic" this year, we spent a week at a beach house. It was our first trip to one of the Carolina beaches, and we had a great time playing in the sand:

And surf:

Mary mastered boogie boarding:

We saw baby sea turtles make their way into the surf. This nest had 125 eggs. We watched them crawl down the turtle racetrack and into the ocean.

For a change of pace, we caught the ferry to Bald Head Island one afternoon. Old Baldy is the oldest lighthouse in North Carolina, dating from 1817. Yes, the light is off-center.

It's a bit tight at the top:

But there's a pretty view of the tidal creeks:

Garden critters

2010-07-28T17:21:00.000-07:00

I saw this butterfly puddling on a mound of dog poop. Rich in nutrients, I suppose. This is some kind of swallowtail, possibly pipevine swallowtail, or a black form female Eastern tiger swallowtail, or spicebush swallowtail. The tails aren't very prominent. It hung around for a really long time, until Lucy came over to see what I was looking at.

More butterflies, maybe Pearl crescent, although it looks more like Phaon crescent to my untrained eye. Here's my source for North Carolina butterflies.

Lucy's determined to catch a frog. She's caught squirrels, voles, lizards, bugs, bunnies, and chased a big ole deer out of the yard.

A rare sighting of the elusive red-shirted ice cream eater!

We tried out the Crayola 3D sidewalk chalk. It's fun to see the pictures float off the driveway. Red flowers, like our lonely canna, float off their stems, as well.

Summer Garden

2010-07-28T16:55:00.000-07:00

My friend Charlotte asked How does your garden grow? in her blog. Here's what's growing in my garden.

The beets managed to beat the heat. And there are some teeny tiny carrots.

Parsley and sage, above. But no rosemary or thyme, so you can stop singing, Mom. The oregano, below, looks a bit scraggly, but still tastes good. On those 100 degree days, you can smell it baking in the sun as soon as you step out of the garage.

The basil looks healthy. I think these seeds came from a box of Triscuits.

One sad gladiolus, above. A few others bloomed earlier in the summer. One canna, below.

Lots and lots of this flower. I finally found out its name: Cleome or spider flower. We've been calling it fireworks flower. And this gigantic weed below. Princess tree (Paulownia tomentosa).

And lots of poison ivy. Not actually in the garden, but there's plenty of it all around the yard.

That's it for plants. I think I'll save the critters for another post.

Finally moving in

2010-07-25T17:12:00.000-07:00

We've been living in our house for two years now, and we're finally moving in. There are no more books in boxes. Now there are books in the computer niche in the basement...

... in the other niche created by load-bearing walls in the basement...

... and on bookcases in the storage room in the basement.

It looks like "the stacks" in the music library at Northwestern. The main part of the music library was a beautiful historic building, but the stacks were in a dimly lit, temperature and humidity controlled underground concrete room. They probably didn't keep their furnace and water heater and leftover construction materials in with the books, though.

The girls have their bookcases up in their bedroom, as well. I moved Audrey's bookcases out of the playroom because no one could get to them there. Now she's rediscovering some old favorites, most of which she's grown out since she last read them.

Finally moving in also means putting holes in the walls. Scott hung up some shelves in the dining room, and now we have a place to display some pottery. There's a piece by a local potter, a candlestick Mom and Dad brought back from Hungary, the tea set from our trip to Singapore, things Scott's mom collected, and pieces the kids have made in classes and camps.

Before, our knick-knacks were hidden in the hallway. Now the cookbooks live there.

Getting all those cookbooks off the kitchen counter made a lot of room for the stuff that won't fit in the baking supplies drawer. The counter's still cluttered, but not like it was before. The oils and boxes of breadcrumbs came all the way to the edge, before. It was hard to reach the knives.

I think we were holding off on finally moving in because we were waiting until we finished renovating the rest of the house. But we've decided we're done renovating for a while (probably a long while). So, it's time to just enjoy living in our house.

I cleaned the guest room

2010-07-22T16:28:00.000-07:00

Hey, Mom and Dad, I'm getting ready for your visit! All the stuff we moved out of the rest of the basement during the renovation was piled up in the guest room, but now it's ready for guests.

Lovely Lunch

2010-07-22T16:25:00.000-07:00

Audrey noticed that her hard-boiled egg had a flat end and could stand up. She wanted to put some fruit around it. Here's her lovely lunch. There are two blueberries between each strawberry, but they don't all show up in the photo.

Junk drawer robots

2010-07-16T14:09:00.000-07:00

Audrey built a robot called Jewels. She used jewels, and Play-Doh for the construction material. Then she built a KangaRapsor out of Play-Doh.

Mary's robot is called the All-Purpose-a-Tron 3000. You can use it to magnify stuff, and it has a compass, and a tape roll (just to balance the magnifying glass), it has a night light that's not taped on (for easy removal), and a head made out of a fairy doll. The head is stuck inside the body, which is made of a magazine. The legs are inside the body. She did a lot of work to get everything to stand up. Her construction material is Scotch tape, and she was wishing she had used duct tape.

Finally fingerpainting

2010-07-12T13:29:00.001-07:00

Now that we have our basement set up, we can finally fingerpaint! Audrey has not had as much chance to fingerpaint as Mary did when she was little. We were in California for a year during Scott's fellowship, living in someone else's apartment with someone else's walls and furniture, then when we came back to Florida it wasn't long before we started fixing up the house to sell to move here. Fingerpainting in a house you're trying to keep show-ready in a slow real estate market is not recommended! Since we moved here, we've been remodeling, and a lot of our stuff has stayed packed away. Audrey has done some messy painting and some cornstarch goop outside, but not like what Mary and I used to do on our back porch in Florida, on Papa's old potting table. But I finally bought Audrey some fingerpaint, and a new pack of fingerpaint paper (I'm sure we have some around here somewhere, packed away). It took her a while to get into it. At first, she washed her hands each time she changed colors, and then she used a craft stick to spread the paint around. But finally she got into it:

Audrey's first lost tooth

2010-06-11T14:39:00.001-07:00

Easter pics

2010-04-04T18:13:00.001-07:00

Rain, rain, go away

2010-02-05T18:41:00.001-08:00

It's been in the upper 30s and raining all day. The bottom of our driveway is a lake. The creek is whitewater rapids.

Here's what's left in the yard

2010-02-03T10:19:00.001-08:00

Quick, before it melts!

2010-02-01T18:47:00.000-08:00

Finished basement

2010-01-28T19:16:00.001-08:00

Basement doors

2009-12-03T14:28:00.000-08:00

They replaced the old sliders with new French doors. Ta dah!

Muddy fun

2009-12-03T14:19:00.000-08:00

It rained like crazy yesterday. Today the sun came out and it was warm enough for playing outside. The creek is rushing, and the pile of sticks and leaves in it shows that the water reached the top of the bank.

How did the dog get so muddy?

By digging in the sandbox?

Audrey says Lucy was rolling in the yard, but I think there might be more to the story.

Braces progress

2009-11-20T19:32:00.001-08:00

September 16, 2009:

November 14, 2009:

The dog's gone bananas!

2009-11-20T17:07:00.001-08:00

Three guesses who put the banana sticker on Lucy's head...

For you, Mom

2009-11-18T17:08:00.000-08:00

Here's where you'll plug in your blow-drier when you come visit.

This is what you'll look like standing in front of the sink and plugging in your blow-drier (if you had gingerbread man pajamas.)

Living room rearranged

2009-11-18T17:03:00.000-08:00

The fireplace looks like it's part of the living room now. We angled the rug to cover up the parts of the floor where the columns were. Audrey got a huge splinter before the floor was patched, and we had to take her to the doctor to get it taken out. They used the biggest tweezers I've ever seen. She was very brave at the doctor's office. When Scott and I tried getting the splinter out at home, Audrey screamed like her face was being chewed off by a chimpanzee.

The living room opens up

2009-11-08T18:03:00.000-08:00

During the planning stages of the basement remodel, the structural engineer suggested removing the living room columns now rather than in a few years when we remodel the main floor. That way, they won't have to re-do the structural walls in the basement in a few years. I have been eager to see the columns go, and the leftover wall bit that served no purpose. Mary liked climbing the columns, but it turns out it was a good thing we got rid of them when we did, because nothing was supporting them from underneath, and they were starting to sink through the sub-floor into the basement. The crew put 700 pounds of steel in the living room ceiling to support the 2nd floor. They jacked up the floor from below to make it more level, so they'll be able to get the new joists into the basement ceiling. It was quite an operation. I love standing by the front door and looking into that newly opened space. Without that leftover wall piece in the way, you can see all the way into the back of the room, rather than staring at the dead end of a hallway. It looks extra big, since we haven't moved the furniture back in yet.

Audrey's Seinfeld impersonation

2009-11-05T18:28:00.000-08:00

"Why do they call it a toilet? It isn't a toy, and it's not lit."

Halloween

2009-11-02T18:38:00.000-08:00

The week before Halloween, Mary and Stephen went to a party given by Mary's orthodontist (with braces-friendly treats, of course). Audrey was going to go, but she didn't like the decorations, so she and I didn't stay. Mary is a zombie and Stephen is a Transformer. Audrey is a black cat.

The kids each carved a pumpkin. Mary didn't like scooping out the pumpkin guts, but she did most of the work on hers. Audrey designed her pumpkin's face, but I did the cutting.

While we were carrying the pumpkins to the front yard, Audrey tripped and fell on top of hers. She cried a lot, but we were able to rebuild it with duct tape and toothpicks, turning it into a mummy Jack O'Lantern.
Audrey had a fever on Halloween, so she didn't get to go our trick-or-treating. Mary and Stephen went out together, and Mary shared her candy with Audrey. Audrey got all the braces-forbidden candy, and half the braces-friendly candy.

Lucy pics

2009-10-21T18:31:00.000-07:00

When Lucy gets kicked off the couch, this is where she likes to sleep:

The basement opens up

2009-10-21T18:25:00.000-07:00

They knocked out the wall that blocked the view from the stairs to the sliding glass door, so now you can see the whole space. Same view, two different days:

Basement remodel

2009-10-17T18:39:00.000-07:00

The vision:

The reality:

Here's what it looked like before demolition started:

In just a couple months (we hope), the chilly toy pit will become a great hangout. It'll be a school room, craft room, media room, sleepover party room -- in other words, a flexible rec room. With a heated floor and a doggie door, and better storage. And the closet under the stairs will still be a secret clubhouse.

On our honor

2009-10-09T16:35:00.001-07:00

Here we are in our Girl Scout uniforms. Mary is a Junior this year, Audrey is a Daisy, and I'm a Daisy leader.

Lucy's new trick

2009-10-01T19:48:00.000-07:00

She's moved up from just catching crickets. Now she's managed to catch a squirrel. When we first got her, I made a dog toy by tying a piece of yarn around the handle of an empty half-gallon milk bottle and dragging it around for her to chase. I had no idea I was teaching her how to catch squirrels. Now we call that game "squirrel on a string", and it's her favorite game.

Audrey's new trick

2009-10-01T19:41:00.000-07:00

Audrey called me into the computer room because she needed help finding the Disney Fairies website. She had typed "diznefarez" into the Google search window, but didn't get any matches. Better not leave my credit card laying around, or she might figure out how to order "diznefarez" toys and movies.

Review: Tools for Young Historians from Brimwood Press

2009-09-25T17:30:00.000-07:00

We bought the whole deal from Brimwood, including the scroll timeline and the toothpick lessons. Here's the verdict so far:

Worldview lesson package: She LOVED it. She liked the readings, the crafts, and the discussions.

Toothpick Time: she found it a bit tedious, but it covered important concepts about how centuries are labeled.

Calendar Quest: she loves the story approach to learning history, and wants to read ahead

What Every Child Should Know about Western Civilization: she likes the information in this guidebook, and she especially likes sticking the stickers on the backs of the Hats of History cards as a visual reminder of what each civilization we read about accomplished. The information sparks some good discussions about everything from the roots of our system of government to whether time can be measured using the metric system. She does the map work, and adds new historical terms and names to her glossary. Some of the questions are discussed orally, and some are answered in writing.

Scroll Timeline: I was reluctant to shell out the big bucks for this, but having a timeline we can unroll in the upstairs hallway is useful, and she likes adding the stickers to it, and seeing which countries are represented and when they began. I'm glad I got the timeline, since it's a good way to see all of history at a glance. The CD ROM has an Excel file that can serve the same purpose.

Historical Fact Sheets: I print one off the CD ROM whenever it's recommended in the curriculum and have her fill it out and add the corresponding sticker to the timeline. So far she's done a Form of Government fact sheet about Sumerian theocracy, and Arts and Architecture about the Pyramids of Giza. Up next, she'll fill out a Famous Men fact sheet on Hammurabi and a Literature and Theater sheet on a Babylonian creation myth.

Color the Western World: we're not really using this, but it'll probably be a good reference when we're done

I also got the four historical novels to use after we finish the whole course. There's a literature guide for the first one.

I also bought the guide on how to write historical fiction based on family stories, since she loves creative writing.

We're taking a lot of time with this curriculum, since she's enjoying it so much. I've decided to do history this semester and science next semester, since that allows us to "go deep" and not feel like we have to rush through anything to try to get a certain number of subjects done each day.

Gymnastics

2009-09-17T16:48:00.000-07:00

The girls are enjoying their gymnastics classes. Here, Audrey shows off how flexible she is. Mary is in the background on top of a big cylinder mat. The kids like to roll in it like a hamster wheel.

Mary is demonstrating the grapevine move on the balance beam. Cross front, cross behind, cross front, cross behind ...

Audrey is doing "ice cream scoops" on the beam. When she gets to the end of the beam, the teacher tells her to land with her knees bent and then do a "ta dah" with her arms.

Mary's braces

2009-09-16T18:56:00.001-07:00

She's been smiling a lot since the braces went on, not because she wants to show them off, but to keep them from rubbing the inside of her lips.

Studying The Music Man

2009-09-11T18:43:00.000-07:00

Last month I went into the Homeschool Gathering Place (a great store in Raleigh that sells popular homeschool curricula and used books and other cool stuff) to get two things and came out with a whole stack. One item in my stack was Movies as Literature. It was something I had seen online a while back and thought I'd have to remember it for later. Well, it's later. The manual gives discussion and essay topic questions for 17 movies. It's meant to be a high school literature course, so most of the movies are over Mary's head, but there are two we're going to study this year: "The Music Man" and "E.T."

We started by attending an outdoor showing of "The Music Man" at Duke Gardens. They've been showing free movies on Wednesday nights all summer, and the theme was musicals.

The gardens hired a company to come in and set up a giant inflatable movie screen. Mary and I drove out to Duke after supper for the twilight movie. We brought lawn chairs and bought refreshments from the popcorn cart. It was a pretty chilly evening, and Mary was pretty sleepy by the time the show ended at almost 11:00, but we enjoyed it. It's a lot easier to focus on a movie in a dark theater, even an outdoor one, than it is at home. All around me, I could hear other movie-goers who just couldn't help singing along.

Mary watched the DVD again at home later that week, with the subtitles turned on so she could catch all the words. Today, I had her read the questions pertaining to a specific scene, then watch just that scene, then discuss the questions. She had to look up some background information to be able to answer some of the questions, like finding an image of "American Gothic", looking up the definition of "legitimate" and so on. We talked about what the couple in "American Gothic" would think if their son rebuckled his knickerbockers below the knees, and memorized jokes out of Cap'n Billy's Whizbang.

I downloaded the soundtrack, and Mary's been borrowing my iPod and singing all over the place, with the headphones on, just like her Grandma. (Finally, something other than "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat"!) I ordered some easy piano arrangements of songs from "The Music Man", and when the book comes, she can learn to play them.

I told her she's not allowed to watch the DVD bonus features until we're finished with all the discussion questions.

Here are some "Music Man" links I found:
Music Man Square in Meredith Willson's hometown of Mason City, Iowa
Music Man Glossary in case you weren't around in 1912 and don't get all the references

Lucy's breed

2009-09-02T20:45:00.001-07:00

(not Lucy - from the Black Mouth Cur website)

We haven't done any DNA testing, but I'm pretty sure we've got a Black Mouth Cur. The rescue organization woman wrote "lab mix/black mouth cur" on her paperwork, but I thought black mouth cur was a description, not an actual breed. They were bred to be good all-around farm dogs, the kind of dog you'd like to have if you lived in Texas Hill Country in the 1860s. Although Old Yeller was played by a lab mix in the movie, in the book he was a cur dog. Once we get our Lucy trained, we can take her out boar huntin' in the swamps.

Meet Lucy

2009-09-01T18:46:00.000-07:00

We met her on Saturday and brought her home today. She came from PetSaverNC.
The rescue operation called her a lab mix. She's got the coloring and head shape of a great dane. You can't see it in this front view picture, but she has the black around the mouth like this guy:

She shouldn't get as big as him, though. We hope.

Oh, and we didn't intentionally choose a dog that matches our floor. But the shedding won't be as noticeable, and not having to sweep as often is a nice bonus.

How to build a LEGO dog, by Audrey, age 4 1/2

2009-08-25T13:47:00.000-07:00

First put the collar on your head:

Then you put the body on your collar:

Then my feet go on my body:

I'm happy now. My feet are all repick. (Ellen's note: she didn't explain what "repick" means):

more summer photos

2009-08-06T18:29:00.000-07:00

After Mary and I got back from the Galapagos, we spent July 4th in Belleview with Mom and Dad, then went to visit the Orlando cousins. All of us girls went to Cocoa Beach together. Audrey had a great time playing with her cousins in the water, but Mary was so exhausted from all the traveling that she slept the whole time.

On the drive to North Carolina, we stayed one night in Fernandina Beach. This time Mary stayed awake long enough to enjoy the water and sand.

We visited the fort before leaving Fernandina Beach.

Mary spent a week at Girl Scout camp riding horses, swimming, canoeing, learning archery, and NOT being homesick at all!

The day after Mary got back from camp, we drove down to the Charlotte area for Scott's company picnic weekend at the Carowinds amusement park. They've got roller coasters and a water park with wave pools and water slides. Mary found a couple of rides that didn't make her sick. Audrey was just tall enough to go on the rides the next step up from the baby rides, which was fortunate, because she LOVES LOVES LOVES roller coasters.

The park straddles the border between North and South Carolina, and one (maybe more) of the roller coasters goes through both states. Here are Mary and Audrey straddling the border.

Quito and Equator

2009-07-29T18:01:00.000-07:00

On the way back from Galapagos, Mary and I had a full day in Quito, so we took a tour of the old city. It's very European looking, with cobblestone streets and beautiful churches. Our tour included a visit to the equator, about 30 minutes drive north of Quito. They've made it into a tourist destination, with displays showing Indian life in the different regions of Ecuador, and activities demonstrating how the clockwise and counterclockwise forces of the Coriolis Effect cancel each other out at the equator. And of course, there's a line painted along the equator that you can walk on, or straddle to have one foot in each hemisphere.

This is the first half of the instructions on how to make a shrunken head. It was part of the display about the Amazon region of Ecuador. There were also creepy animals, like giant spiders, a humongous anaconda, and the fish that swims up your urinary tract if you pee in the Amazon. Mary hid in the coastal Indian exhibit until our group left the Amazon area.

Tortoises

2009-07-29T17:33:00.000-07:00

On our last day there, Mary and I took a boat over to Santa Cruz, the main tourist island, to visit the Darwin Research Station. When we got to the tortoise hatchery, all the baby tortoises were eating lunch, so we had a good time watching them. One of the journalism students was interviewing Lonesome George, the last tortoise from Pinta Island, when we were there, so seeing her working on her story became part of our story.

Hiking and snorkeling

2009-07-29T17:28:00.000-07:00

Scott was working most of the time, but Mary and I took him out for a long lunch break a couple of times. This time, we hiked up to a scenic overlook, then down to a beautiful lagoon for a swim. We only had Mary's mask and snorkel, so we took turns using it. Scott saw a sea lion doing somersaults in the water. I saw lots of brightly colored fish and some seaweed that looked like fan coral.

San Cristobal waterfront

2009-07-29T17:22:00.000-07:00

We spent most of our time on San Cristobal, the capitol of Galapagos. It's not the biggest tourist island, so even the big hotels on the tourist strip are only a few stories high. In this photo, Mary is playing with a bunch of local kids after school let out for the afternoon. This little lagoon area is completely dry at low tide, but turns into a fun waterpark at high tide. Sea lions like to play there, too. It's just down the block from the soft-serve ice cream place where Mary would order un helado mixto, por favor every afternoon.

Galapagos adventure: Sea lions

2009-07-29T17:16:00.000-07:00

Our internet's been cranky lately, but I'll try to upload some trip photos whenever it's working.

We saw more sea lions than any other animal on our Galapagos trip. Mostly, you see them sleeping on the beach. They also sleep under park benches, and on rocks. There are usually a few out swimming as well. One time when I was sitting on the beach, a sea lion came up to investigate. It walked all around me and sniffed my beach towel and my shoes before choosing a new spot to snooze. The first day we were there, Mary gave all the sea lions names and built a sand castle right next to a little one sleeping on a rock. We saw lots of mothers and pups on the beaches.

Catching up

2009-05-06T17:07:00.000-07:00

We've been busy lately, but I've slacked off on posting photos of our activities. Here's what we've been up to:

Visiting local farms on the annual Piedmont Farm Tour. We visited two dairy farms, ate ice cream cones, and sampled cheese, chocolate milk, and hamburgers (that's what happens to the bulls on a dairy farm).

Finding our way through the woods at an orienteering event. Mary and I had an electronic scanner, and we had to use our map and compass to find 9 checkpoints in the right order. At each checkpoint, we scanned our device, and when we finished the course, we got a printout showing how long it took us to find each one. It took us about 90 minutes to do the whole course. The longest it took to find a checkpoint was when the most direct route was blocked by an "Area Closed" sign, so we had to backtrack and figure out another way to get there.

Showing Flat Stanley around town. In case you haven't heard of him, Flat Stanley is a character from a children's book. He was a normal kid until his bulletin board fell on him and flattened him. He discovered he could fit into and envelope and visit places. This is a popular elementary school project, and our niece Megan's class is doing a Flat Stanley project now. Her school sent us the Flat Stanley Megan made and asked us to send him back with pictures and other information about our area. Stanley visited my fencing class, Audrey's ballet class, helped out in the garden at home, met Anoop from American Idol and got his autograph, went sight-seeing around campus, and treated us to popsicles. We made him a UNC T-shirt and sent him back with a bumper sticker commemorating the college basketball championship.

Meeting Anoop from American Idol. We haven't watched the show in several seasons, so the kids had no idea who he was, but Flat Stanley was a big fan, so we all went to the meet-n-greet. Mary was impressed by the bowl of potato chips he had sitting out.

Visiting the NCSU College of Veterinary Medicine. The rain was kind enough to stop long enough to let us do the outside part of the tour. We saw all the farm animals the vet school students practice their large animal medicine on. The big pile of fluffy stuff is cotton seeds, which the cows love to eat. The pig area was pretty smelly, but the kids enjoyed petting a piglet. After the tour, a professor showed us animal skulls, lungs, stomachs, and other parts, and talked about the differences between carnivore and herbivore skulls and digestive tracts. Then we moved to another classroom to learn about careers in veterinary medicine. Mary, of course, was a lively participant in every discussion.

Scrap Art Zoo

2009-04-23T13:40:00.000-07:00

The mall near here has an art exhibit called Scrapel Hill Art. Area artists created pieces out of recyclable and non-recyclable materials. In the spirit of Scrapel Hill, we decided to make our own Scrap Art Zoo.

Here are all the animals. There are two giraffes, an elephant, a bear and a mouse.

Mary made the giraffes. Most of the parts she needed were in the recycling bin, but she had to dig through the bathroom garbage for a toilet paper roll.

Audrey made the elephant. The can lid is the tail, the milk container is the trunk, and two plastic lids from salad containers are the big ears.

I made the little mouse.

Mary didn't think the zoo had enough animals, so she used whatever was left to make this bear. Lucky for our zoo I forgot to put the recycling bins out last week. We'll save our zoo critters for a while, but everything else gets put out tonight for tomorrow's pick-up.

Bean Teepee

2009-04-22T17:17:00.000-07:00

We planted a bean teepee! First we tied six 6-foot stakes together. Luckily I knew where to find the twine!

The girls planted two different kinds of pole bean seeds. If they grow, we'll have an nice, beany hide-out this summer.

Mary's day at work

2009-04-19T18:37:00.000-07:00

Scott has a scheduling conflict with the official Take Your Kid to Work Day, so he took Mary to work last Wednesday. She made her own video game. In the morning, she came up with the concept and did the artwork, and in the afternoon, Scott showed her how to program it. She's got it up on her blog. Check it out!

Audrey's new trick

2009-04-18T18:42:00.001-07:00

Audrey has learned to skip!

Duke Gardens

2009-04-18T18:35:00.001-07:00

Here are some pictures from our visit today to the Sarah P. Duke Gardens at Duke University.

Legend of the Dogwood

2009-04-18T18:32:00.000-07:00

Mom sent me this poem:

The Legend of the Dogwood Tree

When Christ was on earth, the dogwood grew
To a towering size with a lovely hue
Its branches were strong and interwoven
And for Christ’s cross its timbers were chosen
Being distressed at the use of this wood
Christ made a promise that still holds good:
"Not ever again shall the dogwood grow
To be large enough for a tree, and so
Slender and twisted it shall always be
With cross-shaped blossoms for all to see
The petals shall have bloodstains marked in brown
And in the blossoms center a thorny crown
"All who see it will think of me,
Nailed to a cross from a dogwood tree.
Protected and cherished this tree shall be
A reflection to all of my agony.

Flowering Dogwood (Cornus florida)

2009-04-18T14:31:00.000-07:00

Now that spring is really here, every scrawny twig in the woody corner of our yard has turned out to be a dogwood, and every bush is an azalea. We have a pair of dogwoods next to the front walk, and this one by the creek, besides all the little ones in the corner.

They also come in pink.

We don't have any pink ones in our yard. This photo was from our visit to the Duke Gardens.

According to mom, the dogwood represents the Easter story. The bracts are in a cross shape, and the cluster of flowers inside represents the crown of thorns.

1. Poison ivy
2. Virginia creeper
3. Wild blackberry
4. Lamb's Ear
5. Great laurel
6. Fireworks Goldenrod
7. Orange Jewelweed
8. Blue Anise Sage
9. Sage
10. Greek oregano
11. Rosemary
12. Azalea
13. Stilt grass
14. Crocus
15. Daffodil
16. Hyacinth
17. Camellia
18. Little Sweet Betsy
19. Tulip
20. Andromeda
21. Redbud
22. Dogwood

Redbud (Cercis canadensis)

2009-04-15T17:35:00.000-07:00

I can see the redbud trees in my yard from the window next to my bathroom mirror. The trees up the hill bloomed several weeks before ours, and I watched and waited for spring to come down the hill. At first, I had to look really hard to see the first touch of pink. When they finally bloomed, they were a treat to look at each morning when I woke up. Now, they have put out their leaves and there are only a few blooms left on the trunk.

1. Poison ivy
2. Virginia creeper
3. Wild blackberry
4. Lamb's Ear
5. Great laurel
6. Fireworks Goldenrod
7. Orange Jewelweed
8. Blue Anise Sage
9. Sage
10. Greek oregano
11. Rosemary
12. Azalea
13. Stilt grass
14. Crocus
15. Daffodil
16. Hyacinth
17. Camellia
18. Little Sweet Betsy
19. Tulip
20. Andromeda
21. Redbud

Andromeda (Pieris japonica)

2009-04-15T17:22:00.000-07:00

The bees and hummingbirds love this one. I was watching the fat, furry bumblebees hover around the andromeda while I talked to Dad for his birthday (April 2), when a hummingbird zoomed up for a taste. My first hummingbird sighting of the season.

Andromeda is also called Lily of the Valley Shrub, Japanese Pieris, and probably a few other common names I haven't come across. The tags at the local plant store called it Andromeda, so that's what I'll call it.

1. Poison ivy
2. Virginia creeper
3. Wild blackberry
4. Lamb's Ear
5. Great laurel
6. Fireworks Goldenrod
7. Orange Jewelweed
8. Blue Anise Sage
9. Sage
10. Greek oregano
11. Rosemary
12. Azalea
13. Stilt grass
14. Crocus
15. Daffodil
16. Hyacinth
17. Camellia
18. Little Sweet Betsy
19. Tulip
20. Andromeda

Easter pics

2009-04-13T14:40:00.001-07:00

Easter morning was pretty chilly, but by the time we got home from church, it was warm enough in the sun to snap a few pictures without coats on. Don't the azaleas look beautiful? By mid-afternoon, it was really gorgeous. My stuffed cabbage turned out well. I added some liquid about half an hour before it was done, even though it still had liquid in it. The last couple years, when I made it the day before, it was dry for Easter, even though there had been enough liquid at the end of the cooking. This time, it was still moist and there was enough juice to soak up with bread when we ate it.

Danny brought his lacrosse gear over. He kept finding Easter eggs before the little kids got them, and then he'd re-hide them up in the gutters where only he could reach them, the stinker. There were plenty of eggs, though, so nobody got shortchanged. Of course, the kids ended up in the creek in their pretty dresses. It hasn't rained in a while, so they didn't get too wet and muddy. Mostly chocolatey.

Another Greek connection

2009-03-31T19:26:00.000-07:00

In Elementary Greek, we learned the verb pher- meaning "to bear or bring". In our new Greek course, Athenaze, they translate it as "to carry". What English word can you think of that has a similar sound and a similar meaning? Besides pheromone, of course, or any word that looks like it comes from Greek. How about ferry, either the noun or the verb? We had to look it up to see if it came from Greek. Nope, it comes from an Old English word "ferian", to transport, from Germanic "farjan", to ferry. So now we have to look back at Indo-European roots, to see if there's a connection. The Online Etymology Dictionary gives the Proto Indo European root *por as the source of ferry, and *bher as the PIE source of pherein. Thefreedictionary gives the Indo-European root as per-.

So far, no connection, but I'll keep looking.

Tiptoe through the Tulips

2009-03-29T18:57:00.000-07:00

The pink tulips have been around for a week or so, but I didn't know what they were. The pointed tips threw me off, because I've only seen tulips from the florist, and they usually have rounded tips. When the white one popped out yesterday, I realized that the pink ones must be tulips as well, because they have the same leaves. There are about 150 species of tulip.

Were these supposed to be tulips? I don't know, but they must have been yummy.

And here are the tulips opened up:

That was another thing I didn't know about tulips, that they open during the day and close in the evening. When I took the open pictures, I was disappointed that I hadn't gotten a picture of them looking tulipy. But, a few hours later, they had closed up. Audrey was with me when I took the closed pictures, and she asked, "Now can I pick them?" So she picked the white one, and we put it on the dining room table in one of the little blue bottles from Chuck and Nancy's wedding.

1. Poison ivy
2. Virginia creeper
3. Wild blackberry
4. Lamb's Ear
5. Great laurel
6. Fireworks Goldenrod
7. Orange Jewelweed
8. Blue Anise Sage
9. Sage
10. Greek oregano
11. Rosemary
12. Azalea
13. Stilt grass
14. Crocus
15. Daffodil
16. Hyacinth
17. Camellia
18. Little Sweet Betsy
19. Tulip

Little Sweet Betsy (Trillium cuneatum)

2009-03-29T18:47:00.000-07:00

Scott and I went for a walk in the Coker Arboretum while the kids were in Sunday school, and I found out the name of this plant that's blooming in my backyard. Today the arboretum was full of people with cameras. Spring is that beautiful.

I couldn't find any interesting information about Little sweet betsy on the internet, except for one person who posted a photo of it on Flickr, and described the smell as "between green apple and new car plastic." I'll let you know after I smell it for myself.

1. Poison ivy
2. Virginia creeper
3. Wild blackberry
4. Lamb's Ear
5. Great laurel
6. Fireworks Goldenrod
7. Orange Jewelweed
8. Blue Anise Sage
9. Sage
10. Greek oregano
11. Rosemary
12. Azalea
13. Stilt grass
14. Crocus
15. Daffodil
16. Hyacinth
17. Camellia
18. Little Sweet Betsy

Big Art

2009-03-29T18:40:00.000-07:00

We got out the big roll of paper the other day and did some big art. Mary worked on a mural of our forest hike. She drew Audrey's toy mouse going on an adventure down the creek. Audrey and I traced each other and then drew faces, clothes, jewelry, and assorted decorations.

Balanced Smarts

2009-03-24T18:45:00.000-07:00

Here's an excerpt from a book review in the New Yorker:

Reading is a form of explicit learning. When you play a video game, the value is in how it makes you think. Video games are an example of collateral learning, which is no less important.
Being “smart” involves facility in both kinds of thinking—the kind of fluid problem solving that matters in things like video games and I.Q. tests, but also the kind of crystallized knowledge that comes from explicit learning. If Johnson’s book has a flaw, it is that he sometimes speaks of our culture being “smarter” when he’s really referring just to that fluid problem-solving facility. When it comes to the other kind of intelligence, it is not clear at all what kind of progress we are making, as anyone who has read, say, the Gettysburg Address alongside any Presidential speech from the past twenty years can attest. The real question is what the right balance of these two forms of intelligence might look like. “Everything Bad Is Good for You” doesn’t answer that question. But Johnson does something nearly as important, which is to remind us that we shouldn’t fall into the trap of thinking that explicit learning is the only kind of learning that matters.
In recent years, for example, a number of elementary schools have phased out or reduced recess and replaced it with extra math or English instruction. This is the triumph of the explicit over the collateral. After all, recess is “play” for a ten-year-old in precisely the sense that Johnson describes video games as play for an adolescent: an unstructured environment that requires the child actively to intervene, to look for the hidden logic, to find order and meaning in chaos.

("Everything Bad is Good for You" by Stephen Johnson, reviewed by Malcolm Gladwell)

So, if we work on Greek and math steadily four days a week, go on hikes, have lunch at various ethnic restaurants with Scott, the kids play together a lot, read some history, get ready for Script Frenzy, dig up worms, use stuff in the garage to create carnival rides for stuffed animals, earn science-related Brownie Try-It badges, label capitals and measure distances on maps of Asia, and play video games, we're learning a lot, right?

Duke Forest hike

2009-03-23T18:11:00.000-07:00

Today some families from our homeschool group went for a hike in Duke Forest. One of the moms used to work there, and she led the hike and told us about the ecology and management of the Forest. It's owned by Duke University, and they use the land for research. About 100 years ago it was all meadow. It had been farmland, but when the farmers abandoned farming in favor of factory work, pine trees started to spring up. Several girls from our Girl Scout troop worked on some of the requirements for a forest Try-It badge during the hike.

The most exciting part was crossing New Hope Creek. The sidewalk was underwater, so we all took off our shoes and socks and splashed across (and back, and across, and back, and....).

The end destination was an old farm site. I was bringing up the rear with Audrey and her friend Deanna, and we didn't make it that far. We picked up lots of pieces of quartz, then found a stump to sit on and eat our snacks. The rest of the group explored the ruins of the farm and ate snacks there. Mary carried her own pack because I knew we would be going at different speeds. The weather was great. It was a beautiful day for a hike.

Camellia (C. japonica)

2009-03-21T17:18:00.000-07:00

Camellia is one of the plants I already knew before moving here, because Papa had a beautiful camellia bush in his yard. I don't think I would recognize it just by its leaves, though. Some of the camellias here bloomed in the fall, and they're blooming again now. There are about 100-250 species of camellias, including the tea plant (C. sinensis). Most camellias grown for their flowers are hybrids or cultivars of Japanese camellia.

1. Poison ivy
2. Virginia creeper
3. Wild blackberry
4. Lamb's Ear
5. Great laurel
6. Fireworks Goldenrod
7. Orange Jewelweed
8. Blue Anise Sage
9. Sage
10. Greek oregano
11. Rosemary
12. Azalea
13. Stilt grass
14. Crocus
15. Daffodil
16. Hyacinth
17. Camellia

Hyacinth (hyacinthus orientalis)

2009-03-21T17:08:00.000-07:00

I'm pretty sure this is a hyacinth. There are more and more plants in the yard deciding it's spring. One of the trees (I don't know its name yet) has real leaves, not just buds. The redbuds up the hill are really blooming, but ours are just budding so far. The azalea under the deck has a few flowers. There's a circle of grass in the front yard. From a distance the trees still look bare, but looking closer will reveal tiny leaves or buds, and even flowers.

Here's my list now:
1. Poison ivy
2. Virginia creeper
3. Wild blackberry
4. Lamb's Ear
5. Great laurel
6. Fireworks Goldenrod
7. Orange Jewelweed
8. Blue Anise Sage
9. Sage
10. Greek oregano
11. Rosemary
12. Azalea
13. Stilt grass
14. Crocus
15. Daffodil
16. Hyacinth

Spring Weather

2009-03-21T15:23:00.001-07:00

Spring weather sure is changeable. On March 11, the weather was like this:

Then on March 13, the weather was in the 30s and rainy for Mary's Girl Scout Camp-out:

We had to make sure she had enough clothes to keep her warm and dry. She's got 5 layers on top (shirt, sweater, fleece jacket, raincoat, coat) and two on bottom (fleece pants, rain pants) plus wool socks and rain boots. Doesn't she look ready for adventure? She loved the hike, the food, the stories in the tent, and helping the Juniors. The leaders said she had a hard time sleeping, because of some problems with her sleeping bag, but when I picked her up, she was cheerfully sipping Adventure Hot Chocolate and excited about her first real camp out.

Thankfully, it's warmed up a bit this week. Here they are exploring the creek. All that rain really added up. The frogs like it, too. They keep singing, "Creeeeeek, creeeeek, we live in the creeeeeeek."

What's this plant?

2009-03-07T17:50:00.001-08:00

Wacky weather

2009-03-07T17:41:00.000-08:00

Monday it snowed, and today it was warm enough to wear shorts. Mary and Audrey really enjoy playing in the snow, but they enjoy wearing their sundresses even more.

Burwell School

2009-03-07T16:50:00.000-08:00

Mary's Time Travel class visited Burwell School, one of the earliest female academies in North Carolina. The Burwells opened their school in 1837. The house, school building, and Necessary still stand on the property.

The kids took a tour of the house and school room. While they were mixing up some home remedies from household items, Audrey and I explored around in the garden and found the Necessary. Apparently, brick ones were rare.

After the home remedy workshop, there was a choice of an architectural scavenger hunt or a demonstration of getting dressed. Audrey and Mary both went to the clothing demonstration. The docents talked about the different items of clothing women from different stations in life would wear, and then the girls got to find out how many layers a lady would have to put on each morning.

Daffodil (Narcissus)

2009-03-07T16:30:00.000-08:00

I didn't know that the daffodil was a narcissus. Mary and I read the story of Narcissus earlier this winter when she was working on the Mythology Try-It for Brownies. This picture is of the first daffodils to bloom in our yard. I took this picture on February 20. Spring had already sprung higher up in the neighborhood, but it took a while for it to get downhill into the bowl where our house is. These daffodils are at the highest point of our yard near the driveway. Now, two weeks later, we have a crowd, a host of golden daffodils down in our garden.

So here's my plant list:
1. Poison ivy
2. Virginia creeper
3. Wild blackberry
4. Lamb's Ear
5. Great laurel
6. Fireworks Goldenrod
7. Orange Jewelweed
8. Blue Anise Sage
9. Sage
10. Greek oregano
11. Rosemary
12. Azalea
13. Stilt grass
14. Crocus
15. Daffodil

Bennett Place

2009-03-07T16:20:00.000-08:00

Mary has been taking a history class called "Time Travel into America's Past" with the homeschool Friday Enrichment group. We've gone on some field trips to nearby historical sites. This one is Bennett Place, a Civil War-era farm. The largest troop surrender of the Civil War was negotiated there, but our visit focused on farm life during the mid-1800s. The tour guide showed the kids the house, separate kitchen, smokehouse, and a film about what farm life was like for children.

Crocus: First sign of spring

2009-02-04T17:14:00.000-08:00

It's still cold here, but we had a nice day last week, and the weather page said it's supposed to be nice this weekend. We've got lots of green shoots sticking up all over the yard, but this is the first one that bloomed. This photo was taken last week. Now there are more of these yellow flowers.

UPDATE:
Mom identified this as a crocus, and I found a picture of one on Wikipedia that looks just like the one in my yard. The genus name is Crocus, and there are lots of species, hybrids, and cultivars. The name crocus comes from Greek, and means saffron or saffron yellow. It also refers to egg yolks of the same color. The leaves look like pine needles. The flowers will be cup-shaped when they open all the way. It's been a while since I've added a plant to my 100 Species Challenge list. As more things start blooming, I'll have more to add. There have been buds on the dogwood trees (identified by Maggie's parents) since the fall, and I know which trees in my yard are redbuds, but I won't post pictures and add them to my list until they bloom.

1. Poison ivy
2. Virginia creeper
3. Wild blackberry
4. Lamb's Ear
5. Great laurel
6. Fireworks Goldenrod
7. Orange Jewelweed
8. Blue Anise Sage
9. Sage
10. Greek oregano
11. Rosemary
12. Azalea
13. Stilt grass
14. Crocus

Snow Day!

2009-01-20T06:10:00.001-08:00

It's snowing! This is big deal not just for transplanted Floridians, but for everyone in North Carolina. Schools are closed, and the weather was the big story on the local news last night. The kids were eager to get outside and play. Even Scott ventured out to show the girls some snow fun. Audrey refused to wear mittens, so she found out quickly how cold your hands can get playing in snow. She came in, put mittens on, and fell asleep on the floor. Mary stayed out for a long time, making snow angels and knocking snow off branches and the deck railing. We lit a fire in the fireplace and now it's time for some nice hot breakfast.

Almost done!

2008-12-11T18:44:00.000-08:00

Here are some photos of the master bathroom. The towel bar is a piece of driftwood from our first visit to California in 1996. Scott cut it to the right length and screwed it to the wall. You never know when your beach treasures might become part of your decor. The pebbles are in the floor of the shower/toilet room. The shower is still waiting for the glass for the top part of the partial wall.

Mary's NaNoWriMo

2008-11-29T19:10:00.000-08:00

Mary just won NaNoWriMo! (That's National Novel Writing Month) I offered her a month off from narration, copywork, dictation, and any other writing assignments if she wanted to try it. She enjoyed filling in the novel planning workbook during October. Toward the end of October, we looked at the word count recommendations on the NaNoWriMo website and set a goal of 4000 words for her, with a daily goal of 175 words. That was more words than she'd ever written at one time. On November 1, she was a little intimidated by the blank page in front of her, so Scott helped her with an opening line. After that, there was no looking back, and we were both surprised that her first day's writing produced over 200 words! Some days she knew exactly what she wanted to write, and some days there was a lot of pencil tapping and sighing, but she stuck with it. We talked about her novel between writing sessions, about ways to get unstuck (just skip over or sum up the boring parts), about the relationships between characters. We noticed how other authors handled the passage of time in our read-alouds. Tonight we uploaded the first 4000 words of her novel into the NaNoWriMo word count validator and celebrated her win. She wants to keep working on her novel until she finishes the story, since 4000 words barely introduced the main characters and problem. Scott asked her if she learned anything about writing and her first response was, "I learned that writing can be exciting if it's something I want to write about!" I thought that was a great lesson to have learned.

Master bath

2008-11-29T16:32:00.000-08:00

George the tile guy offered to trade jobs with me for a while. Under his supervision, I cut a hole in one of the tiles for our shower (the top hole in the picture) and set six tiles in the shower. He hasn't done any Barbie hairdo's yet, though.

Here are more pictures of the master bath.

Audrey's Wedding Cake

2008-11-25T17:19:00.001-08:00

Audrey created this lovely wedding cake while Mary and I were doing our Greek yesterday. Each tier is separated by a layer of blackberry jelly, and the cake is topped with a smiling Inuit couple, also whimsically decorated with blackberry jelly.

Jaguar Girls

2008-11-25T17:04:00.000-08:00

Mary put together a diorama of a jaguar habitat as part of her unit on Central America, and to fulfill part of a Brownie Try-It badge requirement. She made the jaguar out of Sculpey and drew the spots on with black Sharpie marker. The display shows the jaguar eating a peccary in the jungle, and a road nearby to represent the shrinking habitat. Audrey is not part of the diorama, but she had a good time leaping out of a tree (dining room chair) to attack a peccary (couch pillow). Fortunately, Mary used washable marker for Audrey's jaguar disguise.

Renovation update

2008-11-24T18:25:00.000-08:00

It started to look a lot more finished when they got the walls up and the doors and trim done.

Here's the progress in the girls' bathroom.

Bike riding in the park

2008-11-24T18:19:00.000-08:00

A couple weeks ago, before it got really cold, I wrestled the kids' bikes into the back of the car and we drove to the park for the morning. Mary never rode much in Florida, and our neighborhood is too hilly for a novice bike-rider, but the park has a nice flat paved trail where you don't have to worry about cars. Mary rode back and forth and got better at starting and stopping, except when she panicked and stopped by jumping off or falling over. Audrey met a little boy her age, and the two of them explored a ditch at the edge of the park and rolled down the big hill together.

It's Beepin' Cold Outside!

2008-11-22T19:45:00.000-08:00

Scott's car is complaining about the weather, too. When he was driving to Lowe's his car suddenly beeped and displayed the temperature: 37 degrees. Same thing on the way home. So he looked it up, and found out from other Mini owners that the Mini is programmed to alert the driver whenever the temperature drops below 38 degrees. He hasn't checked the car manual yet, because the car is outside and it's beepin' cold out there!

Brrrrrr!

2008-11-22T19:03:00.000-08:00

We had our first snow flurries on Tuesday. When I went into the kitchen to clean up the lunch dishes, I saw little white pellets hitting the black grill cover. Audrey was napping, but I called Mary to look out the window, and we went out on the deck to play in the snow. It only lasted a few minutes, but Mary said she realized that we actually live where it snows, rather than just visiting.

When I went out for the newspaper Friday morning, I thought the wet driveway meant it had rained during the night. Later I found out it had snowed, but melted before I got up. We have to wear all the clothes we own all at once, and we're resisting it. In Ft. Lauderdale, the girls wore sundresses and went barefoot year round. The entire state of North Carolina is teal on the newspaper's weather map. Teal! We never had any intention of living where the temperature got down to teal. South Florida is yellow right now. The HVAC guy said it occasionally gets down into single digits here. I think we'll be in Florida visiting the grandparents that week!

Halloween

2008-11-05T17:32:00.000-08:00

One of our neighbors does a hayride around the neighborhood for trick-or-treating. We invited Stephen over to trick-or-treat with us, but we weren't quite ready when the hay wagon came by, so Don drove me and the kids around the block to catch up with the hayride after we were dressed. Scott did a great mummy make-up job on Mary. Audrey kept going back and forth on what she wanted to be - a princess or fairy, and what color princess or fairy. We bought a Snow White costume, but in the end she decided to wear her cape from last year and be a cherry fairy. Stephen had trouble with his ghost costume, so he ditched the sheet after a few houses. At the first house we went to, the man answered the door wearing a monkey mask that looked like it might be from an Asian puppet show. The mouth even moved when he talked. Audrey wouldn't go near him, and talked about the monkey man for days afterwards. After trick-or-treating, a bunch of the neighbors got together at someone's house for hot dogs and hamburgers and other treats. It was a fun Halloween!

Gatlinburg trip, part 3

2008-11-04T17:02:00.000-08:00

We hiked the Laurel Falls trial in the Great Smoky Mountain National Park because it was listed as being wheelchair and stroller accessible. It was paved, but it was a lot steeper than we expected, and the trail didn't have guardrails on the side where there were some pretty steep drop-offs. The scenery and waterfall were beautiful, though.

Gatlinburg trip, part 2

2008-11-04T16:55:00.001-08:00

The town was decorated for fall.

Scott had a hankering for something deep fried, so we bought deep fried Oreos to share with everyone.