A short Family Week

This week in homeschool preschool, the theme was Family, and it was not very successful. I thought it would be a nice easy theme, and appropriate too, since at the end of the week (i.e., tomorrow) we are planning to go visit some of our extended family. But I'm beginning to see that these themes work better if there's an exciting hook to them -- either the theme is something the boos want to learn more about or there's some really concrete way for them to relate to it. "Family" was too abstract, I think. Also, it might work better in a classroom, AWAY from one's family. Maybe it's hard to think about family when you're surrounded by it.

Still, we did a few fun things. Here are the dolls we played with on Tuesday, with the furniture sorted into outdoor and indoor stuff (and indoor stuff sorted by room). We talked about who can be in a human family (I argued in favor of tortoises, but boos were skeptical):

 Here are the gingerbread family cookies we made on Wednesday:

 And here we are playing with playdough today (Thursday):

You can see my valiant attempt at making a playdough "family" on the left. Boos were mildly interested, but did not want to try to make families of their own. However, they enjoyed the playdough and didn't want to stop when I said school was over. Also, I got them to do a short worksheet first by promising playdough as a reward (will have to remember that one).

I meant to take one more photo but forgot -- and can't right now, because my camera's battery is charging. I'll try to add it later. Anyway, that would be a photo of the family tree we started to make, using the trunk from last week's apple tree, and adding leaves with family photos on them. All I managed to get onto the tree was four leaves representing our little family. I wanted to at least add the boos' aunts and uncles and grandparents, but immediately we run into trouble. One aunt and all the grandparents are gone from this world. I thought of putting their pictures on orange and yellow leaves instead of green, but I don't know.

Then there's their uncle, who's been causing us a lot of grief -- I won't go into the details, but suffice it to say that we learned this week that most of the money we've given him over the last 10 years was unnecessary. So I wasn't in the mood to make a leaf for him.

I wanted to put enough leaves on the tree to reach the extended family that we're going to visit this weekend. Even if it didn't make any sense to boos, it would have been nice to look at. But that's a lot of leaves! It would take a lot of leaves to get to Rocket Boy's relatives in Germany, too, though I'd really like to get them on there.

Well, next week's theme is -- can you guess? -- LEAVES! So I have some more time to think about this.

The Very Hungry Hornworm

Here is my cherry tomato plant about 3 weeks ago, just when it was starting to wake up after the horrible long hot summer.

And here is my cherry tomato plant this morning, after hornworms ate almost all the leaves. (If you look closely at the left side of the first photo, you'll see it was already starting to happen.)

Sometimes my ignorance -- or poor memory -- or poor thinking skills -- choose one of the above -- amazes me. I noticed that the leaves were gone from some of the branches and did I conclude from that that we had hornworms? NOOOOO, I concluded that the leaves were falling off the plant because -- well, I didn't really know why. Nor did I know why these "fallen" leaves weren't lying on the ground anywhere. It took the absence of almost every leaf to reveal some really large green caterpillars on the bare branches of the plant, and FINALLY I realized what the problem was.

For the last three days we've been picking hornworms off the plant. I don't see how there could be more every day, but somehow there are. Here's today's crop:

Nasty little buggers, aren't they? They are actually TOBACCO hornworms, not tomato hornworms (thank you Wikipedia). I can hardly bear to touch them. But boos like them.

Soon after this picture was taken, boos loaded up the caterpillars into the dump truck and began carrying them around the yard. Euuuuuwwww GROSS!

But you know, it kills me. How many books have we read about caterpillars and butterflies? Boos looked at the one big and two small hornworms and said, "The big one is the Dad!"

"No," I protested. "Don't you remember? Caterpillars come from eggs that are laid by butterflies and moths. The mom and dad of these caterpillars are moths!"

Boos stared at me, uncomprehending.

Oh well. What's really a drag about all this is that according to Wikipedia, the moth that sired these nasty things, the moth that they'd turn into if we'd let them, is a sphinx moth! Rocket Boy and I love sphinx moths! It feels terrible to kill their larvae.

But on the other hand, I've spent all summer watering this tomato plant and I WANT SOME TOMATOES FROM IT!

I know. You can't always get what you want. Especially when what you want is to have a garden in Ridgecrest.

Apple Week and a trip to Tehachapi

This week's theme was apples, once again with mixed results. I'm realizing that every week is going to be like this -- some good, some bad, some learning, some fun.

On Monday we read apple books, wrote the alphabet, and played this game (above) where I said things like "Put an apple under the tree... put an apple on top of the tree... put an apple between the trees." They liked that and were disappointed when we ran out of stickers.

Tuesday we worked with real apples. We lined them up, looked at them, and talked about how they were the same and how they were different. Then we did a taste test and rated them. I didn't try to graph the results -- too random.

After this, I cut up what was left of these apples, plus a bunch more, and we made applesauce! Boos found that thrilling and ate the warm applesauce with gusto.

Wednesday we strung pony beads on colored shoelaces -- a big hit. You can see my bead string in the foreground -- I kept making patterns and showing them, but they completely didn't get it. They would string a dozen random colors and tell me it was a "pattern." No problem -- their little fingers were getting lots of exercise.

Thursday of course was taken up with our trip to see the shuttle. Friday we did some little apple-related educational games, but they were not a hit. Above you can see "Apple Bingo" (with letters instead of numbers) and Baby A gave up after about two letters. Baby B stuck it out until his whole card was filled with apple Post-It notes, but it just wasn't a very interesting game.

And here is the other unpopular game. I made an apple tree out of construction paper and they rolled a die to see how many apple Post-Its to put on the tree -- except they changed the rules so that each time they rolled they would put ONE apple Post-It on the tree -- but they would write the number on the die on the apple Post-It. This was good for about six rolls and then school was over for the week...

...except of course for the finale, our trip to an apple orchard in Tehachapi today. Although boos don't look very happy in this picture, I think they really did enjoy the experience. We went to Kolesar's Apples, where you can pick on-site, and picked a bucket of Golden Delicious and Empire apples. We had read a book earlier called "A Day at the Apple Orchard," and in the book they talk about how to pick apples correctly: "turn the eye (the bottom) to the sky and tug gently." I reminded the twins of this, and we found that it worked very well and was a good way to tell if an apple was ripe or not.

After visiting another apple place (RB Family Orchard) for cider, dried apples, apple crisp, and more apples, we headed west to see the Tehachapi Loop again. Here we are waiting for a train -- we waited about 40 minutes, with a bunch of other people, until a train FINALLY arrived.

And here's the train going around the loop. It is so cool.

Then it was time to head for home. We were home before 5 pm, with all those apples. No doctor is going to be coming near us for a while!

Spot the shuttle!

The space shuttle Endeavour flew through the Mojave desert today, so we decided to take a break (from work, preschool, etc.) and watch it go. It was scheduled to land sometime around noon at Edwards Air Force Base, which is about an hour's drive (maybe just a bit more) from Ridgecrest. We probably could have gotten on base and seen it up close and personal (using Rocket Boy's pass), but we weren't sure about that, so we ended up parking on a Highway 58 off-ramp just above Edwards (along with lots of other people including two TV news teams) and watching from there.

We arrived around 11:45, got out of the car, and started scanning the skies. It was hot, over 100, as it has been out here in the desert for the past four months.

Around 12:30 there started to be activity. We heard a loudspeaker on the base announce something (but couldn't understand the words). A plane flew by, but it wasn't the one we were looking for. Finally people with binoculars started shouting about a dark spot in the clouds. And here it came, followed by its little chaser plane.

Right over our heads! It was very exciting!

Even though the twins have a toy shuttle (see first photo), I don't think this meant much to them. Baby A did ask when the shuttle was going to separate from the plane and go off into space, which was sweet. But Rocket Boy and I and all the other people there were quite moved to see the last little shuttle fly by.

Pretty soon it was all over (we saw the shuttle land in the distance) and everyone went back to their normal lives. We (because we are insane) continued down Highway 58 to Kramer Junction to have lunch in the diner there and then back to Ridgecrest on everyone's least favorite highway, 395, and back to our regular lives. But we have our memories.

One last thought: I've been reading the Twitter feed about people spotting the shuttle all over California and there's a real sense of pride in America coming through. A lot of "We (i.e., our scientists and engineers, paid for by the government, with our tax dollars) built this, and it went into outer space and came back again. We're so proud!" Kind of an alternate Patriot Day -- we love our country not because we think God has blessed it, but because its government pays for people to do great science. There was another, more sinister, echo of Patriot Day -- the big plane flying around rather "creatively" was just a little bit nerve-wracking, now that we know what damage big planes can do. But it had a happy ending -- the big plane carried the shuttle over lots of California landmarks, did not crash into anything, and landed safely where it was supposed to. Kind of an anti-9/11. I'm sure someone else out there will express these ideas much better than I can, but I hope I'm making some sense.

Tortoises again

I feel the need to take a break from preschool posting, in part because there are so many preschool mommy blogs out there (most of them very religious) that it frightens me to be a part of that community, and also because I'm drowning in CRAFTS and other such activities, and want to think about something else. Ergo, tortoises.

A month or so ago we decided to get another tortoise. Why, you might ask, since you're planning to leave Ridgecrest in less than a year, would you get another tortoise? And the answer would be... because we can? And soon we'll be back in Colorado where we can't? (You can't take California desert tortoises out of California, it's ILLEGAL.) I guess that's it, we wanted one last tortoise experience.

So Rocket Boy started building a new tortoise burrow. He acquired an irrigation pipe from a local hardware store, about a foot in diameter, and had them cut it about six feet long. Then he took it home and sawed it in half. Then he dug a six-foot long trench, about two feet deep at its lowest point, and set the half pipe in the trench. I found a blue plastic tub at K-Mart and Rocket Boy trimmed it down and cut a half circle out of it so it fit over the pipe, and we got that all fit snugly into the trench. (I should note that only a small section of the burrow is actually in the tortoise pen -- most of the underground part sticks out into the yard. You can see this better in the photo further down the page.)

Then we put an arched paver at the front of the pipe and put mud over it to form a seal as it dried. And then we buried the whole thing with the dirt from the hole.

In the photo below you can see the whole tortoise pen. The opening to the burrow is toward the back, near the black pipe (which is the other half of the pipe we used in the burrow -- we just left it in the pen for tortoise entertainment).

Once the pen and the burrow were ready, we walked over to our neighbor's house and got a couple of tortoises. These are foster tortoises -- we'll just have them this year and then we'll (hopefully) give them up to someone else for adoption. They're both males, but they get along well (males sometimes fight) and happily share the burrow. The one on the left is very old (we call him Grandpa), and the one on the right is a youngster. That may be why they get along.

We're lucky that they're not climbers, because the cinder blocks fencing our pen really aren't high enough -- we should have a double layer all the way around. But it seems to be enough for now.

And here are my big boys, enjoying a little quality time with the tortoises. Each morning after breakfast we go out and give the tortoises some "leaves" (usually dandelion greens, which Stater Brothers carries, since our bare dirt yard has NOTHING, not one thing a tortoise would like to eat).

In about a month, they'll hibernate, and then we probably won't see them until March. After which, we'll probably move. It's crazy, I know. But kind of neat, too. A home with a tortoise (or two) is a happy home.

Star Week

 

Another week of preschool is over, and boy am I ever tired. Star Week was harder than Bear Week, as I imagine most weeks will be. Still, it had its high points.

On Monday we looked at all our star books (from the library) and read some of them. Then I pulled out this sheet of black paper and started writing the alphabet on it. "Mom! You can't draw on black paper!" "Oh yes, I can," I said. "It's a special kind of crayon." "I want to draw with the special kind of crayon!"

So that's what we spent the rest of Monday doing, drawing on black paper with these special crayons. I showed them how to draw a star and I wrote their names and I gave them some star stickers to play with. Everyone was very happy.

For Tuesday I had prepared some math activities, but they didn't turn out very well. Here we are working with the stars I'd made -- some with numbers on them, and some with little stars on them, and boos had to match up the numeral star with the right numbers of little stars. This was accomplished in SECONDS and then what were we supposed to do? (Later it occurred to me that we could have done some addition and subtraction.) But boos were delighted with the exercise, so I guess it was OK.

Wednesday was Daddy's birthday, so we made him a star cake!

We made a lemon cake from a mix, stirred up some buttercream frosting, frosted the cake before it was quite cool, and then cut out stars from fruit roll-ups using cookie cutters. It worked pretty well, although if you want to try this at home I have two pieces of advice: (1) Use SHARP cookie cutters and (2) Chill the fruit roll-ups a little, and maybe the cutting board and cookie cutters too. I ended up having to put everything in the freezer for a few minutes, and after that it worked fine. Dad was quite amazed by his cake.

Thursday was art day. Now, Aunt Baba has been reminding me that art doesn't have to RESULT in anything -- the art can be the process. Maybe for next week! This week I had cut a bunch of stars out of posterboard ahead of time, and then we painted them, using both glitter paint and regular watercolors. It was fun.

And then we strung them together using thin yarn and cut-up straws to make mobiles. Kind of dumb. Next time we'll just paint, I think.

Friday, today, was outdoors day. Since there are no stars out in the morning (except the sun, which I spent all week trying and failing to convince the boos is a star), we just went for a walk in the field near where we used to live. There's a nice new covered bench on our old walking path.

And here's the beautiful sky (looking west). We miss living near this big wide-open space:

Finally tonight, after daycare, we went to the annual Star Party, up at the community college on the hill. This was our third time going, and this time we decided to skip the tri-tip sandwiches (which made us sick last year) and just eat the "sides." That meant we each had a scoop of beans, a scoop of potato salad, a cookie, and a bottle of water. A scanty meal for $15 each, but of course it was a fundraiser, so OK. Everyone around us seemed to be enjoying their tri-tip.

When it got dark we walked up the hill to where they have a bunch of little observatories and looked at stars and planets.

Boos were kind of naughty at the Star Party, whined a lot and ran away from us. But there was one great moment for me. Several of the books we read this week talked about the Big Dipper and how you use it to find the North Star. I asked Baby B if he wanted to see the Big Dipper and he said "NO!" So I asked Baby A and he said "Yes." I picked him up and pointed out the stars -- and he could see it! And he found the North Star!

It was all worth it.

And then we went home and finished up the last of the star birthday cake (because we were hungry, having had so little dinner). Keep looking up!

Flags

I know I wrote about this last year, so I won't write a lot this time. Saturday was Ridgecrest's annual Parade of 1000 Flags, in honor of the anniversary of 9/11, otherwise unfortunately known as Patriots Day. I thought I'd take the twins again, since it is quite an amazing sight to see all those people carrying all those flags, especially in such a small town.

Rocket Boy didn't want to go, and I didn't blame him at all. But I did want to go, kind of. 9/11 is a day that I do want to remember, and watching Ridgecrest celebrate it reminds me of how problematic the whole thing was even at the time: nowadays everyone talks about how the country "came together" around 9/11, but it didn't, really, it divided up very quickly. I think only New York City itself really "came together." In Colorado, all the conservatives started plastering flags on their cars and screaming God Bless America.

I figured the twins were still young enough that the parade wouldn't warp them. Of course they thought it was going to be like the annual Christmas parade, with candy thrown at them, and were sorely disappointed when no candy appeared.

There was the problem of what to wear. If I had an Obama 2012 t-shirt, I would have worn that, but I don't, and anyway none of my t-shirts fit me -- I am not t-shirt shaped. I finally settled on my Death Valley t-shirt, despite the fact that it doesn't fit either. It seemed to celebrate America, but not quite the America that the other participants were celebrating, if that makes any sense.

The twins and I got to City Hall early enough to watch the parade approach. First came a whole lot of fire trucks and boos wanted to know why.

And then I realized that I needed to explain 9/11, but how to do that? Finally I said this: "Almost eleven years ago there was a very bad accident. Some bad men crashed some airplanes into some tall buildings, in New York City... which is a place in America... and a lot of people died, including lots of firemen. So today we're remembering how sad that was." (How'd I do? Too much scary detail? What would you have said?)

Boos were cranky and ran away from me repeatedly. I figured there was no point trying to stay for the singing of "God Bless America." And my new camera, which has a battery that you have to charge, reminded me that I hadn't charged it since I got it and so it was now going to shut itself off. So these are all the photos I have. Might as well stop here.

NOTE: Thought I'd come back and add something to the paragraph above about how to talk to little ones about 9/11. After I wrote that, I searched online for answers to the question and came up with some useful advice. In retrospect I wish I had left out the part about people and firemen dying. I wish I had said "...and a lot of firemen helped clean up all the mess." Or something similar. Other than that, I think I did OK. The online advice said basically to avoid showing your kids the scary photos/videos of the Twin Towers coming down, especially the people jumping out of windows to their deaths. Don't talk about how many people died. And don't talk about it a lot, whatever you do. Give a brief explanation and leave it at that. If they ask more questions, answer them, but as mildly as possible. Stress that it won't happen again. In my case, the twins barely listened to me and did not ask any more questions, so I plan not to bring it up again until next September. And maybe not even then. We'll see, play it by ear.

Bear Week

I thought I'd write a quick summary of our second week of "homeschool preschool." This was the first week with a THEME (the previous week I was totally winging it). The theme of the week was BEARS (real and teddy) -- chosen because I had lots of bear "materials" around the house already, and also because September 9th is National Teddy Bear Day.

Monday is get-to-know-the-theme day. I put most of our storybooks about bears (as many as would fit) out on the big table in the family room for the boos to choose from -- and left them there all week. I had some workbook pages for them to do, and a bear picture to color. I wrote the alphabet on a piece of paper while they chanted it, and put some bear stickers on it. I sang "The Bear Went Over the Mountain" and performed "Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear" with all the movements. Since it was a holiday, school didn't last too long, but it was pleasant.

Tuesday is math day. I collected all the teddy bears in the house (nine) and lined them up in the hallway. I asked boos to line them up by size (shown in the photo above), then group them by color, and then rank them by softness (that took some thought). Then I asked them if they could divide them in half, two equal groups. Baby B said "Sure." They came up with one group of five and one of four. I pointed out that that wasn't equal. They switched them around and came up with different groups of five and four, then groups of six and three. It's so fascinating to realize that adults know things that kids don't know (such as the concept of odd and even numbers and the fact that only even numbers can be divided by two). Eventually I showed them that we could do three groups of three, and they were puzzled but pleased.

Wednesday is art day. I woke up feeling kind of low -- I just don't like art. Not my thing at all, never has been. I admire other people's art works, and I can do crafts like sewing, but the whole concept of me doing art makes me uncomfortable. But I'd planned out the day's project (making circle bears) pretty carefully, had all the materials set up already, and it went just fine. Boos impressed me by actually being able to cut on a straight line, and also being able (and willing!) to follow my instructions. After we made our bears and glued them to the paper, Baby A borrowed my marker and drew all around his bear, following the edges very closely. I don't know what skill that is, but it seemed good. I had given each of them three plastic googly eyes, since of course little things like that get dropped and lost a lot, but they decided that their bears would have three eyes. I also sang "The Bear Song" with Baby A doing the responses -- lots of fun.

Thursday is cooking day, and I had found a cute recipe for bear cookies. Of course, when it came right down to it, I made bear cookies (center rack above) and boos made interesting blob cookies. But I thought that was OK. They had their hands in the dough, getting all down and dirty, shaping things the way they wanted to. It didn't seem necessary for them to make perfect, uncreative little bears like mine. And all the cookies tasted the same (not great, but better than last week's). I sang "The Teddy Bears' Picnic" and boos even asked me to sing it again (instead of screaming "Don't SING!" as is their wont).

Friday is supposed to be out-of-doors day, but I woke up with an intestinal complaint that I thought was going to derail us. However, my stomach quieted down long enough for us to go on a walk around the block, while we chanted the words to "We're going on a bear hunt." It would have been better to do it in a park (easier to find the various things you're supposed to go through, like grass and water and mud and a forest), but we just faked it and it was fine. As we neared home, I spotted one of those standalone basketball hoops and I pretended it was the bear. So then we had to RUN home, open the door, remember to CLOSE the door and lock it, and jump under the covers (where we found one of OUR bears lurking, see above). Great fun and much better for everyone than workbook pages.

This weekend we may go on a Teddy Bears' Picnic. Or not. But it could be fun.

So, I have to say I'm psyched. I know all the weeks won't be as fun as this one -- I'll calm down a bit, not put as much time into planning, and we'll probably end up doing workbook pages some of the time. But I think overall "homeschool preschool" is going to be a good experience.

It is TOO still summer

This is a photo of my dashboard, taken around 4:30 pm on Labor Day, September 3rd. Take a look at that green rectangle (almost) in the middle. (Ignore the much too high mileage.) At the bottom you can see the outside temperature: 100 degrees.

And here's what we could see through the window, when my car showed this temperature:

CLOSED. Closed for the Season. That's the Ridgecrest swimming pool we're parked in front of. Closed for the season on Labor Day.

People, this is not Vermont! It's not Montana! It's not Minnesota! It is 100 degrees outside. Do NOT close the pool!

I admit it, there are signs that the seasons are changing. All summer long, my cherry tomato plant has produced little yellow flowers (and stunted little leaves), but no fruit. All summer long, I have watered and fertilized the darn thing, but nothing. Now, finally, in September, as the temperature drops down to 100, we have fruit. There are at least a dozen little tomatoes started on that plant, and one that's actually visible to the naked eye (on the far right). The pepper plant still doesn't have flowers OR fruit, but the leaves are pretty, so I go on watering it.

The night of the closed swimming pool, we had an amazing sunset, reminding me that I do like a few things about this place. Well, one, actually: the sky. Here's the view to the east (there's a rainbow in there somewhere, but it's hard to see):

And here's the view to the west:

We were on our way to Pony Espresso for a treat when I took these photos. As we walked, admiring the sky, I thought: "Oh, the sun is setting, that means it's going to be dark soon." And yes, it was, much sooner than it used to be.

Maybe summer is ending. Maybe.

But couldn't they at least keep the pool open until it gets to 95?