Voting Week

I've gotten way behind on blogging, so I'm going to start trying to catch up. First things first: Voting Week. This was another one of those weeks that's more fun for Mom than anyone else. Still, I did feel the kids learned something from it.

I love voting. It's honestly one of my favorite things to do in life -- completely don't understand why so many people don't do it -- and it makes me want to celebrate my country. So for me, the first week of November is a very patriotic week, and Election Day is a very patriotic holiday. On top of everything else, I'm currently reading David McCullough's John Adams, which is making me feel sentimental about the early days of America. Every day last week we had something "all-American" for dinner, such as clam chowder, fried chicken, pancakes, and hot dogs. Every day I sang a different patriotic song (or two). Most of this, I'm pretty sure, went soaring right over the twins' heads.

On Monday we read some books about voting, and then we actually voted on something: what to have for dessert the next night. I provided an "Official Voter Information Guide" with photos of the three choices (apple pie, apple strudel, and apple crisp), and we had ballots to fill out. Dad had taken the day off to do some phonebanking, so he voted too. There was one vote for apple strudel and three for apple pie. I sang "My Country 'Tis of Thee," but boos were not impressed.

Tuesday of course was Election Day, so we read another book about voting and then we went with Mom to vote. For REAL. Only problem was that it was too scary. I've taken the boos with me to vote in practically every election since they were born, but this is one of those things that gets harder as they get older, not easier. We finally had to go home, and I voted later in the day, when they were at daycare. We sang "America the Beautiful" and for dessert that night we ate...

...this beauty! It was very good, as were the election results....

On Wednesday I was too blissed out by those election results to concentrate on school. But we did make oatmeal chocolate chip cookies, and we sang both "Yankee Doodle" and "Yankee Doodle Dandy." I told the boos that I've always liked "Yankee Doodle Dandy" because of that line about "Born on the 4th of July" which of course I always change to "Born on the 5th of July." Boos were concerned because their birthdays are not in July, so how could they sing the song? I told them it didn't matter, but they were not convinced. We sang "Yankee Doodle" again instead.

On Thursday we made flags. I'd gotten some little American flags from Walmart (made in the USA, amazingly enough, not China), and we'd been waving them around all week. I'd printed out a sheet with lots of different countries' flags, so we looked at those too. Then I made a German flag out of paper (since boos have German relatives), and some other flags out of pretty colored cloth, and attached them to skewers. Baby A made a flag in the shape of an H, and Baby B made a large flag with different colors on it. We sang "The Star-Spangled Banner" and "You're A Grand Old Flag," and we said the Pledge of Allegiance. Then we stuck our flags in the dirt outside, where they continue to wave in the breeze.

On Friday, we sang "God Bless America," and looked at money and talked about the US presidents whose pictures are on the money. (This was supposed to be a math exercise, but we didn't do much with it.) I'd wanted to get a placemat with all the presidents' faces on it, but hadn't made it over to our local toy store during the week. So I'd printed out something off the internet, but it was blurry and not very helpful.

On Saturday, I finally took the time to go to Just Imagine and get the placemat -- so it's mine now (the twins have Thomas Train placemats and Rocket Boy has one with a turkey on it that the twins made at daycare last year). I cannot express how happy I am that there will be no need for a new version until 2016, the universe willing.

This morning, Baby A said to me, "Mom, where are all the girl presidents?"

"There haven't been any yet," I told him. "But there will be." (I'm rooting for Hillary.)

Big Bird

Thank you, America!

Pumpkin Week

Pumpkin Week wasn't much of a school week, but I want to write a post about it just to keep the records up to date. My suspicions were confirmed -- a holiday disrupts one's teaching schedule. But not necessarily in a bad way.

The week began early, on Saturday, when we went to the local "pumpkin patch" in town -- a church parking lot -- and chose SEVEN pumpkins. Three were tiny ones that we didn't carve. Our main activity for the first part of the week was carving the other four pumpkins. The days after Halloween we kind of took it easy.

One day we made pumpkin bread (from a mix), which we ate for dinner with carrot-apple soup:

One day we weighed and measured our pumpkins.

I pointed out about twenty times how interesting it was that the already carved pumpkin weighed a lot less than the other one of similar size. MAYBE boos understood why. MAYBE.

Otherwise, our energy was devoted to carving pumpkins. We (i.e., Mom) carved one pumpkin on Monday night, one on Tuesday night, and the last two on Wednesday morning. We modeled the faces after jack-o-lanterns in children's books (boos got to choose which ones). Here are our models:

And here are our jack-o-lanterns:

And here they are in the dark:

Halloween

The days can seem long, but the years are oh so short.

Six months old (pumpkin and spider)... 

Eighteen months old (mouse and bear)...

 
 Two and a half (spiders)...

 
Three and a half (frogs)...

 

 
Four and a half (shark and tree)...

Bat & Cat Week

There were two problems with Bat & Cat Week. The first problem was that Rocket Boy was out of town the entire week (came back tonight, thank goodness). So I was Nervous, as I always am when he is out of town. Yes, we know a few more people in Ridgecrest now, but I still feel as though if something bad happened, I would really be in trouble. Also, I always feel that our meth-using, pedophile, psychopath neighbors somehow KNOW that Rocket Boy is not home. (NOTE: I really don't think we have any meth-using, pedophile, psychopath neighbors, we have very nice neighbors. There's just this strange transformation that takes place when Rocket Boy is out of town.)

Rocket Boy is almost never at home when we are doing homeschool preschool activities, he's at work, so his absence shouldn't have affected our mornings. But it did.

The second problem was that Pie Bear, our cat, refused to make any appearances during Bat & Cat Week, since he does not like the twins. So with Exhibit A missing, the week was somewhat lackluster.

We did a few worksheets. My attitude toward worksheets now is that I will only use them if they look like they would be fun. For instance, the twins like doing mazes, and dot-to-dot pictures, and they also enjoyed the worksheets in the photo above. One had a cat surrounded by objects and you were supposed to circle the ones a cat might use. Boos circled all the objects. The instructions said to accept "any logical answer," but I really argued against the cat using a lamp. "If it was dark," Baby A argued back, "the cat would need to turn on a lamp!" I pointed out that cats do not know how to turn on lamps. "Someone could help him!" Oh, all right.

The other worksheet was just a blank drawing of a house and yard, and I gave them a bunch of cat stickers and asked them to put a cat on the roof, on the fence, at the front door, etc. Then they could color the picture and put cats in other places, such as the sun, if desired.

Wednesday found us making cat and bat sugar cookies, of course (with a few pumpkins and mice thrown in for good measure). I can't think when in my life I've ever made so many cookies (as the last two months). My grandmother would be proud.

As the week progressed, I did what I always do when Rocket Boy is out of town -- got more nervous, stayed up later at night doing nothing, was more tired in the morning. Wednesday night I needed to prepare the materials to make foam bats on Thursday, but I was just too tired (and nervous). So on Thursday morning I got out the playdough, told the boos they could play with it (it's their favorite), and then sat down at the big table (just a couple feet from their little table) and proceeded to try to make a foam bat. Of course, within minutes the playdough was abandoned and they came over to see what I was doing.

And I began to realize that I don't have to have everything all perfectly worked out ahead of time -- they're old enough that we can kind of work along together, experimenting with things. I made bats (it was really too hard for them), and they cut out random pieces of foam and stuck them together in interesting ways. At the end of the morning, we had three foam bats, a car (I helped make the wheels), and an unidentified brown thing, and we were all happy.

According to the twins, the bats' names are Stellaluna (the black one), Teeter Tot (the purple & brown one), and Neepy (the Cal colors one).

And on Friday we went to the special program on bats at the Maturango Museum which had inspired the week's theme. That was fun, and they sent us home with materials to make a bat mobile. But I kind of like our bats better.

Tortoise Dreams, Part 2

Yes, I have the dream about being back in high school or college, not having studied for the math test (or ever having attended the class, for that matter). Yes, I have the dream about being in a public place with important items of clothing missing.

But the dream I have the most often, my real recurring dream, is of being in a house and realizing there's a room in it I've never seen before, often wonderful in some way -- spacious if I need space, light and airy if I need light and air, once it was full of beautiful toys. I have this dream a few times a year, every year. I've been dreaming it for decades. It's always a little different, but the basic idea is the same. I assume it means that I have untapped potential of some sort, but I don't understand why I have to keep dreaming it over and over.

Last night, for the first time, I had the tortoise version of the dream. I dreamed that in addition to our awful barren tortoise pen and burrow in our awful barren backyard here in Ridgecrest, we also had an extra tortoise pen and burrow in a section of yard I'd never noticed before, full of leafy green plants. It reminded me of the little garden area in the backyard of the house I grew up in, in Palo Alto,

and in fact I think the tortoise in the dream was the tortoise we had back then too.

In the dream, our tortoise was spending each night in its burrow in the leafy green part of the yard, and each morning when it woke up and came to the surface, we would put it in the barren awful Ridgecrest tortoise pen. And I suddenly realized that we should just leave it in the leafy green pen. If we had this wonderful section of yard, why didn't we use it properly? (This is always the question in these dreams.)

However, the leafy green pen didn't have high sides (unlike the photo above), and the tortoise could have just walked out and escaped. So I decided to dismantle the yucky tortoise pen (i.e., the real one) and move its cinder blocks over to the (dream-world) leafy green pen. I went to do this, and the first cinder block I picked up had a huge, I mean massive, black widow spider under it. It was the size of a tarantula, and fortunately it ran away and hid. The next cinder block I picked up ALSO had a black widow spider, but this one was a more normal size. Unfortunately it jumped onto me and then I couldn't find it. I was swatting at my clothes, trying to find it or kill it. Then, of course, I woke up.

Spider Week

I must say I'm glad Spider Week is over, though I tried to be a good sport about it. I wore spider earrings every day (shades of Ms. Frizzle from the Magic School Bus) and talked a lot about how spiders (other than black widows) are our friends.

All week long I kept thinking something was crawling up my leg, or in my hair.

The planned activities for the week were OK, but could have been better. It's always a crap shoot. We sang the Itsy Bitsy Spider song once or twice, and recited Little Miss Muffet a few times.

Drawing spider webs worked out OK, I guess.

Spider brownies were a horrible failure, because I overbaked them. They were rock hard and we couldn't get any of the pretzel stick legs to go in them. So we wrote letters on them with frosting instead.

Spider hats were more successful.

And math with spider balls worked out quite well, except that now there are spider balls all over the house.

We hung our spider windsock outside as an early Halloween decoration.

Finally today we did the activity I'd been avoiding all week: we went looking for real spiders. I had a book out of the library called "Spiderology" and it gave instructions for making a spider "inn." So we made one.

There were two spiders in Dad's bathroom that I'd been kind of "cultivating" all week (i.e., not killing), so with extreme cautiousness and squeamishness I managed to get them out of their corners and into the spider inn.

The spiderology book recommended catching bugs for the spiders to eat, but that would have involved taking the plastic wrap and rubber band off the jar, and I was sure that while putting the bug in, the spiders would have come out, so we didn't do that. We looked at them for a while, photographed them of course, attempted to count their legs... and finally gave up and ran outside and let them go. Over by the tortoises, where there are already many other spiders.

((((shudder))))

These are the most harmless little spiders you could ever imagine, and still they gave me the creeps. OK, Spider Week is over, onward and upward.

 

Postcript: One more bit of Spider Week. Dinner

Tortoise Dreams

A few days ago I received an email from an old friend, Andrea, telling me about a website where you can buy German books etc. for kids (http://www.alphabet-garten.com/). She and I were graduate students together at the University of Michigan, long long ago. Although we exchange holiday cards each December, we don't usually communicate directly, so she had to google me to find my (old) email address (which fortunately redirects to my current one).

Thinking about Andrea and Michigan and German led me to a funny little memory, just a blip. One of the requirements for the PhD when I was there (I suppose it's still a requirement, but don't want to assume too much) was a reading knowledge of two foreign languages. One of my languages was German, and a professor in the department administered a test to me and another grad student to see if we really could read articles in our field written in German. We were allowed to use a dictionary,  and both of us made extensive use of it during the test. We passed -- barely -- but the professor really chewed us out for how little we knew and how clunky our translations were.

I was very fond of this particular professor, in fact had rather a crush on him for a while, and chose him to be my advisor originally. (Incidentally, I'm not trying to be coy by not mentioning his name -- you can figure it out quite easily from the link below -- I just don't want the search engines to pick it up from here.) But I found him difficult to work with, and eventually fled to the security of a more "normal" advisor, though I kept the first prof on my committee. Here we are, just after my defense. Gosh, I look young.

So, anyway, I googled him, just to see what he's been up to. What he's been up to can be found here: http://www.dogonlanguages.org/

He was working in Mali even when I knew him -- in fact, he once mailed me a review of a chapter of my dissertation from Bamako. I saved it, still run across it now and then. But to see this website, all the amazing information and photos of what he's working on -- the scope of it, the death of one of the researchers involved -- it was quite overwhelming. Also, some of the photos reminded me of Ridgecrest. Seriously. Desert is desert.

I was filled with an immediate -- and completely insane -- wish to leave my family behind and fly off to Africa to help him with the project. A lot of help I would be. Can't even read German, much less speak French, which appears to be the language one would need out there.

Then I noticed a list of flora and fauna, and checked it to see whether the Sulcata tortoise was mentioned. Sulcatas come from northern Africa, though they are now all over the southwestern US, sold as tiny little tortoises in pet shops, growing to weigh 100-200 pounds, abandoned by their horrified owners in the desert and elsewhere. Sure enough, the Sulcata tortoise was on the list: "said to still exist in desert, also found as pet in villages and towns (e.g. Douentza)." I found a wonderful Sulcata photo on the website, which I just have to reproduce here:

reptile_turtle_Geochelone_sulcata_Douentza_2008_entire_moving_60625_JH.JPG

(Found at http://www.dogonlanguages.org/florafauna_dump.cfm?pg=37.)

That night I had a dream.

I dreamed that I left my family behind and flew to Mali to help with the project. Two young women came with me -- not sure who they were, maybe grad students who could actually be of some use. In the town of Douentza, we found the research group's headquarters, a small, rough, dimly-lit building. We went inside. My old prof recognized me, but did not seem especially surprised, or pleased, to see me. The group was polite, talking to us about the project, offering us tea and something to eat. The phone kept ringing and someone would answer it (the implication being that this was a very important project and many people wanted to talk to them about it). Then, down the hall from the back came an enormous Sulcata tortoise. It walked straight up to me and bit my hand, but it was only a nip -- I knew it wouldn't hurt me. And then, of course, it spoke to me.

Of course, I can't remember what it said.

Rock Week and the Gem-O-Rama

Rock Week was an absolute blast. There are so many fun things you can do with rocks!

Actually, I must confess that I have never been even remotely interested in rocks, geology, or any type of earth science. Our house is full of rocks (Rocket Boy being a geophysical engineer and all that), and I don't think I've ever asked him what any of them were. Throughout our marriage, as we've driven or hiked past rock formation after rock formation, he's explained all sorts of things about rocks to me, and most of it goes, yes, in one ear and right out the other.

It took homeschool preschool to make me think rocks were interesting. There are all kinds of suggested activities on the homeschool blogs (though I skipped the one about reading from the Book of Revelations about what kind of gemstones the streets of heaven are going to be paved with). It's amazing that all these homeschooling moms are interested in geology, when you consider how many of them think the earth is only 5000 years old or whatever.

Monday was Columbus Day, which meant RB was home from work, so on that day, after the twins and I had looked at the rock books I'd laid out and talked a bit about rocks, I asked him to help identify all the rocks I'd gathered the day before, when we were looking at fall color in the Eastern Sierra. Patiently he did so.

And much to my dismay, they were all igneous. (For those who don't know, there are three main types of rock: sedimentary, metamorphic, and igneous.) I certainly had not meant to find only one type. But as RB patiently explained to me, in the Sierra you're mostly going to find igneous rocks. Rocks are all about place. And then that night we went out to the desert and gathered about 30 more and a few of those were different types, so I felt better.

On Tuesday we made rock candy, using two methods. First we melted sugar on the stove, then we poured it onto a baking sheet that was really cold because it had been in the freezer, and then we put it back in the freezer for a few minutes. It froze solid with no crystals (because it cooled so fast). Not sure boos got any of that, but it was tasty, like peanut brittle without the peanuts.

Then we attempted to make regular rock candy, boiling sugar and water and dumping them into a jar to cool slowly.

As of today (4 days later), it still looks pretty much like this. But they say to give it a week, so maybe it'll turn into rock candy like they sell in stores. It is crystallizing, it's just not climbing the skewers. Should have used a string.

On Wednesday, we learned about the Rock Cycle. Most of our (mostly fruitless) efforts can be seen in this photo.

First we crumbled up graham crackers and sugar (sediment), mixed them with butter (fossil fuels) and baked them in the oven for 15 minutes. They were supposed to turn into a hard rock, but they didn't, just crumbled like buttery, sugary graham crackers. (Maybe I should have added water too?) Boos did not mind, and ate them up. Then we took a Snickers Bar (representing a sedimentary rock), cut it in half to look at its layers, and then smashed it to bits to turn it into a metamorphic rock. (You can't see the Snickers Bar in the photo because it's been eaten, but the potato masher in front of Baby B was used to destroy it.) Finally, we lit a candle in the hopes that the wax would run down the sides like lava, creating igneous rock. But I just could not get the wax to run down the sides. Oh well. These science experiments are tricky!

On Thursday we looked at a book about gemstones, examined Mom's paltry collection of (mostly fake) jewels, and then decorated paper crowns with gemstone stickers. Then we read some fairy tails about kings and queens wearing jeweled crowns. Boos enjoyed wearing their crowns and have continued to wear them now and then.

Friday was supposed to be another rock-collecting hike, but Rocket Boy (home for Flex Friday) wasn't feeling well, so he went back to bed, and boos and I had a nice messy time painting some of our rocks. We also watched some videos on Mom's computer -- there are some great rock songs on YouTube, such as "Rocks and Gems and Minerals", "Song of the Rocks", and my favorite, "Rocks Song". Boos have been going around humming these.

Finally, Saturday -- today -- was the Trona Gem-O-Rama! This was our FOURTH year attending this extravaganza -- and it will probably be our last. Every other year, of course, boos did not study rocks the week preceding the Gem-O-Rama, and I wondered whether this week's study would make any difference in how they perceived the event. I think maybe it did.

They were interested in the rocks for sale at the show, and watched the geode cutting with awe. They were thrilled when I found a vendor selling Actual Rock Candy and bought a stick for them to share. They were excited when Dad bought a few more rocks for his collection. And they had a great time on the Blow Hole Field Trip (our fourth time on that too).

For nostalgia, here they are 3 years ago, same event (same buckets, too):

And 2 years ago (don't ask me how they could be wearing the same shirts they are this year -- at least the hats are different):

And here's Baby B last year (yes, I know it's the same shirt, this is blowing my mind, I obviously think of these shirts as their Gem-O-Rama shirts):

Last year, when they were three, Baby A was frightened by the contraption that spews water and rocks for the crowd to pick through, and he wouldn't even participate in the digging. This year he was braver -- of course he's a year older. He dug and dug, collected lots of crystals, and was fascinated by the rock blower. I took a video of the rock blower, but for some reason I can't get it to upload here -- if I figure out why, I'll add it in later.

Anyway, fun week. We didn't work much on letters or math concepts, and we didn't do a single workbook page, but I hope it's obvious that the week was full enough without them!

Ghost stories

It's that time of the year... though to be honest I haven't paid too much attention to it yet. Nothing like the old days, when I wore black (or purple or gray) clothes with spider or lizard jewelry every day in October, and read only scary stories at night. And dyed my hair green, of course.

That was then, this is now. In homeschool preschool we aren't going to start doing Halloweenish themes until next week -- and even then, they'll be low key, of course. I considered having a Ghost Week, but quickly nixed that. Our still unfinished family tree on the wall in the hallway has caused enough problems, with all the dead relatives on it. I need to look online for how to talk (or avoid talking) to small children about death. My general sense is that one should avoid the topic, but in our case that also means avoiding the subject of grandparents. I would like to be able to talk about my mother and father, make them part of the boos' history. But as soon as I start talking about them, the fact that they are dead comes up too, and then boos start asking me about death. The question for the last week or so has been, "Mommy, when we are all grown up, are you going to die?" (Because I told them, in response to another question, that I wasn't going to die until they were all grown up, married, with children, etc.) I say, "I'm not going to die for a LONG LONG LONG TIME. I am very healthy and so is Daddy." And then I change the subject.

Anyway, Ghost Week just sounded like it was going to be a little too complicated, so we're going to learn about various Halloween animals and vegetables instead.

But in my spare time, I can't help noticing what month it is. Some of my favorite blogs have been linking to various scary things on the web, and I always seem to click on those things when it's very late at night. Here are some I enjoyed recently (thanks to http://ivebeenreadinglately.blogspot.com/ and http://bourbonandtea.blogspot.com/):
http://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2012/10/03/letter-from-a-haunted-house-part-one/ (I'm anxiously awaiting Part Two)
http://meanjin.com.au/articles/post/encounters-with-the-uncanny/ (This one is creepy creepy creepy, especially the part about the kangaroos.)
http://worldweaverpress.com/2012/10/04/ghost-walk-at-the-sweetwater-county-library/ (A bit scary on its own, but then you might want to move on to the library's ghost blog: http://www.sweetwaterlibraries.com/sclsblogs/ghostblog/ which links to some creepy, entirely black, YouTube videos (they do have sound). I spent way too much time one night listening to all of them and now consequently I am afraid to walk down my hallway in the dark.)

October was plenty fun before the internet, but it certainly has added an interesting dimension.

And now I must head to bed... before the ghosts in the hallway get me... and because I need lots of sleep to have the energy to continue making Baby B's Halloween costume (he's going to be a tree).

Leaf Week

Leaf Week is now officially over, despite the fact that the leaves are just barely starting to turn in this part of the world. I decided to do leaves now rather than later because I wanted to end the week with a visit to the Eastern Sierra when the leaves were pretty.

We had the usual range of activities during the week. Perhaps the most successful was the first thing we did: walked around our house and yard and collected examples of all the leaves we could find. There were a surprising number, considering how little vegetation we have in our yard!

Art with leaves was OK. Painting with leaves didn't turn out too well...

but boos just ignored what I was trying to do and made lovely paintings unrelated to leaves. Leaf rubbings, on the other hand, were wonderful:

And of course we made leaf cookies, which were delicious.

 

Sometimes the best things that happen during homeschool preschool are completely unplanned. On Monday, as we finished collecting our leaves, Baby A suddenly looked up. "Mom!" he shouted. I looked up, expecting to see the usual fighter jet (an everyday occurrence around here), but instead it was an enormous flock of geese. Not Canada Geese either. And absolutely silent (maybe because they were so high up?). I ran inside for my camera, but they were moving fast, and by the time I got back, they'd almost vanished. I was frantically zooming in on the disappearing flock, but when I zoom I often lose what I'm trying to capture. Here's my one shot that caught one departing goose:

If you enlarge it, you might see the goose (in the lower lefthand corner). And here are the geese we probably saw:

Snow geese, and maybe Ross's Geese. Just gorgeous.

Anyway, back to leaves. Today we took the planned trip to the Eastern Sierra. I had read online (http://www.californiafallcolor.com/) that now was the time to go, but there sure wasn't much to see as we drove through the Owens Valley. But when we reached Bishop, we turned west and took Highway 168 up Bishop Creek toward Lake Sabrina. And there we did see some nice color. My photos aren't great because I was usually looking west into the gradually setting (or at least lowering) sun, but you can kind of get a sense of it.

Lots of other people had come to see the fall color too. So many people to see so few trees. It made me a bit homesick for Colorado, I have to admit. And of course, the first few years I was in Colorado, I was so homesick for Michigan, which has trees that turn COLORS OTHER THAN YELLOW. But you know, you make do with what you've got. The trees we saw today were lovely. And next year we'll be back in Colorado, where there will be even more lovely trees, and maybe someday -- who knows? -- I'll be back in Michigan in the fall.

Then we went back down to Bishop and played in the park for an hour.

Doesn't look much like fall, does it? Early days, yes, but it is here.