Month of poetry

For April we're making NaPoWriMo (National Poetry Writing Month) part of our homeschool. Instead of posting our poems every day on this blog, we started a new one to put them on, along with other writing projects from our family. I'm hoping to encourage my children to write more and share more. I'm committing to a poem every day in April myself; the kids may not keep to that schedule, but I'll be happy with whatever they do produce! If you want to check in on us during the month or afterwards, the new blog is Word Finding.

Science subjects

We've just started our latest chemistry class. The older kids are using Ellen McHenry's book Carbon Chemistry, and the younger kids are doing various experiments, some the same as the older kids and some different. Yesterday everyone's favorite was mixing cornstarch and water to make what I've heard called "goo," "ooze," "plasma," or "oobleck." Last time we did this with a group, I had just bought a new tablecloth. This time I was smarter and had saved our old tablecloth specifically for this activity.

This class will run for about a month and a half, and I've been thinking about having a class for some other science subject later on in the spring. I printed out a list of different sciences and went through it yesterday with my children to see what they would be most interested in learning about. Predictably, each had a different top choice. M. wants to study psychology, A. wants to study forensics, and T. wants to study computer science. (Mike says we should cover all three at once by programming a computer to analyze criminals' thinking patterns.)

So now I need to figure out which of these three choices will work best in a group setting and which we should do on our own, and then start finding resources for them. Not just that, but all three children also want to learn about astronomy, geology, engineering, and archaeology, and there were also individual requests for genetics, environmental science, geography, botany, and nutrition.

That's what happens when you ask an open-ended question! I guess I had better get busy learning about some of these myself.

Life, lately

Well, it's November 1 and the NaNoWriMo site is overloaded, so I can't enter my first wordcount for this year's novel. (1,144 so far.) So instead I'll give a quick update on what we've been doing.

Gerbils - After a year or more of talking about getting a pet, then researching different animals, we finally got two gerbils last week from the Humane Society. I'll post photos sometime. They are friendly and very cute and should give the kids some good hands-on biology experience. (Not the breeding kind of experience, though. They are both female.)

Music - Last Friday I got to sing in the Assembly Hall in Salt Lake City with a four-stake choir for the annual Relief Society Music Festival. We rehearsed for two months with a wonderful director, and it was an amazing experience to finally perform. I was asked to play a small bell solo for one of the songs, and despite several nightmares about various ways of messing it up, it went just fine.

Chemistry - We have finished 4 out of the 6 chemistry class sessions we're holding this fall. We tried a cool color-changing experiment last week that we got from Home Science Tools. This week we will be testing for acids and bases with litmus paper and red cabbage dye. We may even bake some cakes using different chemical reactions.

NaNoWriMo - This year A. and T. are participating in the Young Writers Program, so there's a lot of writing going on in our house today.

More soon!

She's a reader!

It's the start of a new school year, and during the past few weeks I've been talking with each of my kids to plan what they'd like to learn and how they'd like to learn it. My 12-year-old middle child decided that she would like a reading list for the year. Through several conversations I discovered:

1. She wanted to read every book on the list, "even the ones I don't want to read."
2. She didn't want to choose the books herself, "except I might want to choose some."
3. She wanted the books to be listed in order of difficulty, starting with easier ones and ending with the hardest ones, "except maybe not all the hard ones together."



This is not a surprising set of requirements if you know this child. (Thanks to my dad for the great photo!)

After more negotiation about the details, we went through our shelves. She suggested some books and I suggested some. We added one or two that we don't own but can get at the library. I was surprised at how excited she is about this "assignment." I think having the list typed up and numbered makes it seem somehow more official to her, and right now she likes official.

Four or five years ago, she was just starting to master reading enough to enjoy reading independently. (The Magic Tree House books were the transition books for her.) Now I look at this list that she helped create, and I can tell she's caught on to how amazing books can be. Some of the harder ones will be a challenge, and we may need more than one year to finish all the books, but she is determined and I know she can do it!

Here's her list:

1. Magic by the Lake – Edward Eager
2. The Blue Fairy Book – Lang
3. Way to Be! – Gordon B. Hinckley
4. The Time Garden – Edward Eager
5. The Wind in the Willows – Grahame
6. Number the Stars – Lowry
7. The Borrowers – Norton
8. The Black Stallion – Farley
9. The Forgotten Door – Alexander Key
10. The Keys and the Candle – Mary Hale Woolsey
11. Summer of the Monkeys – Rawls
12. 10 poems Mom selects
13. Carry On, Mr. Bowditch – Latham
14. Time Cat – Alexander
15. Amos Fortune, Free Man – Yates
16. The Westing Game – Raskin
17. The Jungle Book – Kipling
18. The Incredible Journey – Burnford
19. Code Talker – Bruchac
20. LDS Stories of Faith and Courage
21. Powers of Ten – Eames
22. The Fledgling – Langton
23. Johnny Tremain – Forbes
24. A Wizard of Earthsea – LeGuin
25. The Bulletproof George Washington
26. 10 poems Mom selects
27. The Tempest – Shakespeare
28. Tom Sawyer – Mark Twain
29. Kon-Tiki – Heyerdahl
30. A Midsummer Night’s Dream – Shakespeare
31. The Story of My Life – Helen Keller
32. Treasure Island – Stevenson

(If you've been looking for a good book to read, I'm positive there's at least one on this list that you'd enjoy reading or re-reading. Try it!)

Still alive

The longer I don't post, the more I feel like I need some big reason to post. But nothing big is happening -- not that I'm complaining, since big events come in negative varieties too -- so I'll just manufacture some excitement.

Local homeschooler wins award for making it all the way to June -- Early predictions were proved wrong as Tamary successfully refrained from screaming, running away, and inflicting bodily harm on her children during the last grueling months of the school year. Forecasts for next year are cautiously optimistic.

Children are allowed to sign up for library's summer reading program -- Surprisingly, library officials made no protest about giving M., A., and T. their reading program materials. They must not be aware that these children would cheerfully spend half their summer reading without any incentive at all, and thus the library is, in effect, giving them prizes and free books for doing what they would do anyway. Their mother pondered the ethical issues for a moment, then signed up for the adult reading program so she can get prizes and a free book too.

Home still standing despite science classes -- There is no discernible damage to the home that hosted several months of physics classes for experiment-loving youths. In fact, now that Tamary has finally cleaned up her kitchen, there is no sign at all that leftover equipment like lasers, homemade electromagnets, and a near-lethal air hockey table were only recently getting in the way of her family here. "Don't look in the basement, though," she warns.

Symptoms of wasting disease recognized, prognosis hopeful -- A potential epidemic has been averted, thanks to early intervention. When A. and T., within hours of each other, began to approach their mother, loll down on whatever furniture was nearby, and moan, "I'm bored," she immediately guessed that the cause was Summer Syndrome. Acting quickly, she applied the recommended antidote by informing her children that "I'm bored" means "I would really like an extra chore to do right now." The symptoms have decreased, or at least progressed to a less virulent form -- "I'm bored, but not bored enough to do chores" -- and the moaning is quieter and less insistent. Plans are in place for some summer projects and even resuming school activities within a few weeks, in hopes that the disease can be wiped out completely before it spreads any further.

Geology

A couple of weeks ago we finished our 3-week geology class. We had 7 children participating besides my 3 kids. We looked at different rocks and minerals, used books to identify some, and even tasted one (halite, otherwise known as rock salt). We went to the Hutchings Museum where we had a wonderful personalized tour. We broke open geodes (small ones) and looked at fossils. One of the activities my kids liked was our homemade seismograph.


We got the idea from the book Geology Rocks! We used a rolling pin with paper taped around it, a cardboard box the right size to hold it, a pencil, and a nice wobbly card table. In the picture, Mike is holding the pencil steady while A. turns the rolling pin, and T. has his favorite job, shaking the card table to simulate an earthquake. Needless to say, our earthquakes went way off the Richter scale as the table-shakers got wilder and wilder.

We borrowed an amazing "Teaching Toolbox" from the Utah Museum of Natural History. It had around 20 rock samples -- big ones we could hold and examine -- along with reference books, magnifying glasses, and an activity kit we used to test minerals for conductivity. It's a great resource they offer free to teachers and homeschoolers. When it was time to return it, my kids and I stayed to see the museum, since it was a free day (free admission the first Monday of every month). It had been several years since we'd gone there.


We always have to stop outside the museum to look at the sundial.


T. likes to feed pennies to the dinosaur in the lobby and listen to it growl "THANK YOU!"


M. is getting tall -- taller than me, now -- but she's still not up to this Brontosaurus's knee.


There's a new sand and water table at the museum. My kids love to play with these forever, or at least until I tell them we have to go. I'm not sure if they're really learning much about rivers and erosion, but does it matter? They're busy, happy, and not arguing. Next time I should bring a book and let them shape their riverbeds for as long as they want.

Poetry 11

We had a star party tonight to finish off our astronomy class. It was amazing to look through telescopes and see the craters on the moon, Jupiter with three of its moons, and the far-away blur of the Andromeda galaxy. But I had just as much fun staring up into the sky and trying to pick out stars that were on my star chart. Later, after we came home and the rest of the family went to bed, I opened up A Child's Garden of Verses to find a poem I had in mind to post, and I came upon a different poem I don't remember reading before. But just look how appropriate it is after an evening of star-watching! I'll have to read it with my kids tomorrow.


Escape at Bedtime
by Robert Louis Stevenson

The lights from the parlor and kitchen shone out
    Through the blinds and the windows and bars;
And high overhead and all moving about,
    There were thousands of millions of stars.
There ne'er were such thousands of leaves on a tree,
    Nor of people in church or the park,
As the crowds of the stars that looked down upon me,
    And that glittered and winked in the dark.
The Dog, and the Plough, and the Hunter, and all,
    And the star of the sailor, and Mars,
These shone in the sky, and the pail by the wall
    Would be half-full of water and stars.
They saw me at last, and they chased me with cries,
    And they soon had me packed into bed;
But the glory kept shining and bright in my eyes,
    And the stars going round in my head.

Daily necessities

I was reading a blog I like, Here in the Bonny Glen, and the author linked back to a post from 2006 about her "Rule of Six" -- that is, six things she tries to include in her family's lives each day:

-meaningful work
-imaginative play
-good books
-beauty (art, music, nature)
-ideas to ponder and discuss
-prayer

Then in the comments, someone mentioned this quote from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe:

"One ought, every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words."

I'm a list-loving person. I make plenty of to-do lists, goal lists, and priority lists, and my lists tend to be long and always getting longer. But a very short list, distilled down to the most important, most indispensable things that could enrich each day, would be interesting to think about and create. (Not to mention more memorable than a long list, and more doable on busy days!)

Golden Spike visit

Yesterday we finally went to see the Golden Spike National Historic Site. I grew up in Utah and I'd never been there -- maybe because it's truly out in the middle of nowhere and not just somewhere you can drop by on your way to somewhere else.

We've hit the in-between fall weather, where the mornings are chilly and then it warms up by afternoon. T. insisted that he was freezing when we left.



Needless to say, coat, hat, and gloves came off before too long.

We spent some time in the visitor center, looking at the exhibits about trains and the construction of the railroad. Not ever having spent much time near railroad tracks, I thought it was fascinating to see how they're put together. Then we watched a movie. They have several to choose from, and the kids unanimously voted for the Charlie Brown one, which had a surprising amount of detail for a kids' show and also kept T. laughing and interested.

We went out to see the place where it happened:



Not a great photo, but T. is looking at the replica of the polished laurelwood tie that was ceremonially placed for the four ceremonial spikes to go into. (Then, of course, they were all removed and a real tie and real spikes were used to finish the railroad.)



All these tracks have been rebuilt for the historic site. The original tracks were taken up in the 40s to use the steel for the war.



We found out that just days before, the trains had been put inside for the winter. Usually they are out on the tracks. We did get to go in the engine shed and look at the trains, though. The photos didn't come out well here either, because of the lighting, but here is the Jupiter replica, with the No. 119 replica behind it. The original trains are long gone, but these were built to be almost exactly like the originals. The only differences are safety features.

It was an educational trip and worth the drive. Some other time it would be fun to go in the summer when they do a reenactment of the 1869 ceremony.

Sidewalk astronomy

First of all, happy National Punctuation Day!

Basic celebration technique: Use proper punctuation in all your writing today.
Next level: Read a chapter of Dickens or Austen or another 19th-century book with long sentences, paying attention to the punctuation.
Advanced: Take the quick punctuation symbol quiz at Quizicon.


Yesterday we had our first astronomy class. We talked about the solar system and how it's hard to get a sense of the distances involved when you just look at numbers. We did two activities that I highly recommend, both for scientific interest and for the jaw-drop factor!

The first one was a scale model of the earth and the moon. We followed the general outline from this site. We used a basketball for the earth, measured it and calculated the diameter, then calculated the circumference needed for the moon. It turns out that a tennis ball is about the right size. Next, I asked the kids to guess how far apart the basketball and tennis ball should be placed. They moved the balls around and made different guesses, but all were between about 1 and 5 feet. Then we did the math to figure out what the distance really should be in this scale. It comes out to about 24 feet. I had someone hold the basketball at one end of the living room, then got the tape measure and showed them how far 24 feet is -- all the way across the living room, up the stairs and back along the hallway! It's amazing when you see it represented visually. Before doing this, I had never comprehended how far away the moon really is.

The second eye-opening activity was a scale model of the solar system. There are many sites online that give instructions for this, but I used this site because it has a spreadsheet where you can put in different numbers and tweak the scale however you want. I went out early that morning and measured how long our block is (with our homemade hodometer or measuring wheel, which has been surprisingly useful over the years) and then twiddled the spreadsheet until the whole solar system fit onto our block. The spreadsheet gives you all the distances from the sun, but I also wrote down the distances from each planet to the next planet.

In the class we used a ruler marked with millimeters to draw the sun and planets in the scale we were using. The sun ended up being 50 millimeters, or almost 2 inches across. Jupiter was 5 millimeters. The earth was a tiny dot, 0.4 millimeters.

We went to the end of the block and placed the sun. (We taped our sun and planets to water bottles so they wouldn't blow away.) 7 feet from the sun was Mercury, then 6 more feet to Venus, 5 more to the earth, and 9 more to Mars. The kids were fairly impressed, but then I announced the next distance: 65 feet more to Jupiter. Wow! Now jaws were dropping. 76 to Saturn, and then an incredible 170 feet more to Uranus, 192 to Neptune, and 167 to Pluto. That took us just about to the end of our block, where we could barely see the sun at the other end.

This is an amazing activity because when you see pictures of the whole solar system, the sizes of the planets and the distances between them can't be in the same scale. It wouldn't fit in a picture. So we get the impression that those distances aren't as big as they are. Seeing our tiny dots of planets and the huge distances between them made those numbers much more real.

The spreadsheet also pointed out that in the scale we used, the distance to the nearest star (other than the sun, of course) would be 901.6 miles. That puts the solar system back into perspective as a relatively close family, far from our nearest neighbors!

I had to laugh during our activity as I realized the odd picture we made. Here were 10 kids, ages 7 to 14, marching together down the sidewalk, chanting the distance aloud as we watched the arrow on the hodometer. "63, 64, 65..." I wondered if the neighbors were thinking, "Oh, it's just those homeschooled kids, practicing their remedial math."

Back to school

We started school today. This is our first year having a connection with the public school schedule. M. is taking seminary (LDS religion class) at the local junior high school, so we're jumping into the confusing world of A days and B days, "early out Fridays," and assembly days. Maybe after a while my brain won't overheat when I try to figure out what time Mary's supposed to be there.

All the kids were excited to start. Of course they've been learning things and reading all summer, but I think they are more than ready to go back to a more structured day.

I'm excited too. We have some fun plans and some great resources. We're going to study astronomy and geology before Christmas and physics afterward. M. and A. both want to work on their math, so that's going to be a main focus of our year. We'll resume swimming lessons sometime soon, and I'm hoping M. and A. will finally break through into independent swimming. (If you have any tips for reluctant swimmers, I'd love to hear them!)

And then there are the group activities. It's nice to have so many homeschoolers in our area because there are plenty of groups for the kids to participate in, but because there are so many, we have to make hard decisions about how many is too many.

We've had a good start today and we're looking forward to a good year of learning!

Spelling lesson

We're getting ready to start our new school year. (The original plan was to keep doing school through the summer, but then ... well ... summer got in the way.) I've signed M. up for seminary, stocked up on notebooks at the back-to-school sales, and ordered a few new books and things for the coming year. (I love ordering new school things. I love it way too much.)

This is also the time of year when we'll likely see an article in the paper about those strange (but cool, oh so cool) people who educate their kids at home. So here is a spelling lesson for (1) my kids, (2) any other homeschoolers, (3) anyone who writes about homeschoolers.

Home school (noun). Use this when writing about the actual entity or location of home education. You wouldn't write "highschool" or "privateschool." My children attend home school. We are starting home school in two weeks.

Homeschool (verb). When it's a verb, the concept runs together. (It's not just "home schooling" -- that might be used when a child is ill and receives home study work from a public school. "Homeschooling" is a whole different thing.) I homeschool my children. We have homeschooled for ten years. Homeschooling is a valid educational option.

Homeschooler (noun). A person who is educated at home or educates at home. There's no good way to distinguish between the two -- really, are you going to say "homeschoolee"? Extra credit question: Why isn't it "home schooler"? Because it derives from the verb, not the noun. I met three other homeschoolers at the park. Homeschoolers see education from a different perspective.

Now, this is just according to me. Other linguists may have different opinions. But as I tell my kids, I have an English degree, which is really a certificate authorizing me to make up any words I want to, set any language rules I want to, and have the final say on any language discussion. And so far, the kids aren't completely sure whether I'm joking. Ah, the power!

And this is how the story began...

(Remember that line? "It was a dark and stormy night. All of the boys were gathered around the campfire. One of the boys spoke up and said, 'Grandpa, tell us a story.' And this is how the story began. 'It was a dark and stormy night...'")

T. is writing a book. He's made the title page and the table of contents (he's very fond of the dot leader tab in Word). Today he finished chapter 1 and he said I could put it on my blog if I wanted. I hope you enjoy it half as much as I did!

chapter 1
a kid named alix

There sat Alix, in front of “the castle.” Memories rushed back as he sat. One of them was the time he defeated a troll, and another one was the time he defeated a bandit, also he remembered that the first number of the address was the number of the key to the padlock. There is always an adventure to be done inside, he thought. I might want to bring my sister, too. Then he went home and thought about it. To take my sister on an adventure, or not to take my sister on an adventure. To take my sister on an adventure, or not to take my sister on an adventure. To take my sister on an adventure, or not to take my sister on an adventure. To take my sister on an adventure, or not to take my sister on an adventure. To take my sister on an adventure, or not to take my sister on an adventure. he kept thinking about it like this for a hour or so. and then, he finally decided, to take his sister on an adventure. then he went upstairs to his sisters room. the door was open.


Intriguing, mysterious, and suspenseful! Watch for the final product at bookstores everywhere, someday.

How to Improve at Geography

Step 1: Get a nasty cold.

Step 2: Keep the cold for at least a week, long enough to be frantic for any distraction you can find that involves sitting still so you're less likely to cough your lungs out.

(Steps 1 and 2 can be left out if for some reason you'd rather proceed directly to step 3.)

Step 3: While dawdling away time on the computer, play the geography game at FreeRice. (The default game is English Vocabulary, but click on "Change Subjects" and you can choose "Identify Countries on the Map." Thanks to Harmony for telling me about this great web site!)

Step 4: Discover that your geographical knowledge is not so great. Luckily, this is a multiple-choice game, and your guesses are often pretty good. But you are not satisfied with this. No, you want to know where those countries are instead of getting the same ones wrong all the time and dropping back down to the lowest level of play.

Step 5: By chance, discover some more geography games listed on another web site.

Step 6: Try the fill-in-the-map games at JetPunk.

Step 7: Download the free software for the simple but helpful game Seterra and marvel at what a great resource it will be for the kids. When you're done with it, that is. Play it numerous times to work on your weak areas. (Oceania and Africa and Asia . . . and Europe . . . and Central America . . . oh, just work on everything like I had to do.)

Step 8: Now you can reign supreme over at FreeRice. That wimpy little multiple-choice game doesn't have a chance against you. But wait -- what is this? You find The Traveler IQ Challenge. Scroll down and look condescendingly at the world map. You know those countries now, or most of them, anyway. With a confident click, start the challenge.

Step 9: Quickly realize that this is a whole different level of geography game. It's timed, and you have to answer fast or lose your chance. It asks you to pinpoint cities and landmarks rather than just countries. It measures the distance between your answer and the correct location. It gives you a "Traveler IQ" score at the end. It's awesome.

Step 10: Spend the next week obsessively trying to improve your score. Revisit the other geography games, but for serious training this time. Try to get all those tiny countries that start with "B" straight. (Bhutan, Bahrain, Burundi, Benin...)

Step 11: As your cold finally starts to go away, notice the blank Africa map on your homeschool bulletin board. Realize that you now know the names of ALL of those countries (except maybe those little "B"s), and the rough locations of major cities in a few of them. Look at the world map on the wall. Recognize countries that until a week ago, you had heard about on the news but weren't even sure which continent they were on.

Step 12: Like a total-nerd-and-proud-of-it, put your Traveler IQ score on your blog (in the right-hand sidebar).

Step 13: Play some more. Every time you get even 1 point higher, update your blog badge. You must be feeling good about this new knowledge or something.

Step 14: When the kids beg to have a turn playing the geography games too, graciously allow them to do so, in moderation. Notice how they start to comment on the Africa map during meals. Tell them some of the islands you're still working on learning, and watch them run to the world map to find them for you. Realize that your guilt over not doing much geography this year in home school is melting right away.

Step 15: Very important: Don't forget to keep practicing so your score can stay ahead of the kids'!

Butterflies (and beans)

Here is an update on the "insects in my kitchen." A couple of months ago we sent away for caterpillars. They came in a little cup with food. There were 6 of them, very small. Over the next couple of weeks we watched them eat and get huge. Then they hung upside down and molted their skins to show the chrysalides they had formed. We put the little paper disk into our butterfly enclosure.





Here are all 6 chrysalides. You might be able to see that 3 of them are darker than the others. We were told that when they get dark, they're close to hatching.










Later that same day, those three butterflies hatched. We'd been checking periodically to see if anything was happening, but they hatched while we weren't looking. They hung for a while, getting their wings ready, then by evening they were crawling around and opening and closing their wings.








Two of the other chrysalides had started to get dark by this time.

















The next day butterflies #4 and #5 hatched. It must be a very fast process, because we were checking frequently and still missed it.














The next morning we knew the last butterfly was going to hatch. We watched as much as we could, and still missed the actual event! But we did catch this one just after it emerged. Its wings were still crumpled and wet.











We've been feeding the butterflies sugar water (on crumpled-up Kleenex, which seems to work well) and orange slices. It's hard to see in the picture (which is taken through the netting) but the butterfly on the right has put its proboscis into the orange (to sip the juice through it like a straw).




These are Painted Lady butterflies. They're easily available through science supply catalogs or from Amazon. They have been well worth the cost! It's been amazing to watch the whole process. We will be letting these butterflies go as soon as the weather warms up a little. Then my kids want to order another set of caterpillars and do it again.


Another ongoing project that is just about done is our bean plants. We wanted to see how the roots and stem develop out of a seed, and we found this idea in a book of science experiments.

You fold a paper towel so it is the height of a jar, then put it in the jar against the inside of the glass. Then you stuff the middle of the jar with more paper towels to hold the first paper towel firmly against the glass. You put the seeds around the outside of the jar, between the glass and the paper towel. (We used pole beans because they grow quickly.) Then you dampen the paper towels and wait. It took almost a week for us to see anything happening. We kept putting a little more water in when the paper towels started to dry out. Finally the roots began to emerge, and then the stems grew upward. It's been fun to watch exactly how it happens! And now we have more patience when we don't see results right away in our garden.

Visit at your own risk

There are insects in my kitchen.
The kids watch them fly.
The bacteria have started
To greatly multiply.
The bread on the counter
Is nicely growing mold.
And these jars of water stink--
It’s a good sign, I’m told.
I would surely love to have
A visit from you,
But you might want to wait
Till biology class is through!

The thee-a-tah

Monday night M. and A. and I went to the "thee-a-tah," as we say in our fake British accents when we want to be silly, which, of course, is most of the time. Our local theater is putting on Taming of the Shrew and both girls had said they'd like to see it. Shakespeare 6 minutes away? And kids who want to go? An easy decision. I knew from the art on the playbill that this wasn't going to be a traditional production, because Petruchio had a cowboy hat and gun, so I was intrigued too.

M. and I read the play (together, aloud, taking turns with parts) in the days before the performance. A. listened to some of it, and we gave her a synopsis of the rest. Then we went to see the play. It was hilarious! They used almost all of the original play and wording, with a few side comments of their own thrown in, but it was all set in the Old West. Grumio was staged as a Mexican who would break into loud, rapid Spanish at some of the parts where the original character goes on and on for comic relief. The actors did a great job, and all of us thoroughly enjoyed it. It was a great help to read the play beforehand so we knew what was happening in each scene and could understand what the actors were saying.

A few days before that, Mike and I saw another play called Home School Musical, put on by a theater called Desert Star that does musical parodies. This one, of course, was a parody of High School Musical, with a lot of Utah jokes and even Napoleon Dynamite thrown in. We had wondered if the script would be positive or negative in its attitude toward homeschoolers. Home school was definitely made fun of, just like everything Desert Star does a play about, but not in a mean way, and the general tone was positive toward home school by the end of the play. It was very funny and clean, and I wish we had time and money to go see it again and take our kids!

We're pretty lucky to have all these theaters within easy driving distance. And with the questionable quality of most movies coming out now, it's very nice to have other options when we want an evening out.

Science experiment vote results

Well, the kids in the chemistry class have voted and all votes have been counted. Because this is a benevolent dictatorship and not a democracy, I get to break all ties and veto any vote I don't like. (The write-in vote for "build an incendiary device" was vetoed promptly and firmly.) And I have to say I did pretty well predicting the results of the voting. Here's what we'll be doing at our last class, two weeks from now:

Playing with fire: Making lamps from paper towels and vegetable oil; producing oxygen from hydrogen peroxide and yeast and using it to make fire; lighting steel wool on fire to make molten-iron "sparklers."

Worrying the neighbors: Setting off film-canister vinegar-and-baking-soda "rockets"; dropping Mentos into bottles of Diet Coke. (Good thing the lawn is already muddy.)

Making a big mess: Testing the gel inside disposable diapers to see how much water it will hold; using soap to make pepper move on water; and, of course, making slime (from glue and borax) and "oobleck" (from cornstarch and water).

I think you'll agree that these three main categories are probably the way a lot of famous scientists got started.

The chemistry class has been a lot of fun. I hated chemistry in high school because I had a hard time understanding it and kept getting farther and farther behind. Now that I've gone through the subject on a more basic level, I understand it better and I'm amazed to find that I really like it! It's also been fun to see the enthusiasm of the kids in the class and how much fun they have with the experiments, often coming up with new things to try that I would never have thought of.

Bird show & museum

The bird show turned out to be well worth the drive! It was at the Hutchings Museum in Lehi. We'd never been there before. We spent some time looking through the museum before and after the show. I was surprised how large the museum is and how well they've used their space. There are a lot of interesting things there. T. liked the woolly mammoth tooth and using Morse code on a telegraph. The huge room full of different rocks and minerals was one of A.'s favorite parts, and M. liked the video about the Pony Express. They all loved the bird show, which was funny and informative -- the best combination.



Here's a gyrfalcon, with a little kestrel sitting on the glass case behind it.




And the one we especially came to see -- a peregrine falcon. The man who's holding it said when he read My Side of the Mountain in third grade, he knew he wanted to work with falcons. Now he's the head of an organization that breeds falcons and helps rehabilitate injured ones, and he gets to go around teaching other people about them too. I wonder how many other falconers got their inspiration from the same book. Probably a lot!

And this is a golden eagle -- a young male, only 8 pounds. They said they would have brought a female (20 pounds), but then they wouldn't have been able to fit the other birds in the van.

We also got to see a goshawk, a Harris hawk, a screech owl and a great horned owl. Even T. stayed interested for the whole hour, and he's not one to sit still for most things!

Back to school

I was sick for a couple of weeks around the beginning of December, and then with Christmas preparations, school days were sporadic the rest of the month. So we've already had our Christmas break and now we're starting back in. Today's big goal: Figure out where all the kids are in math. Tomorrow we're going to a bird show at a museum. A couple of years ago we read My Side of the Mountain, so when we heard that this bird show is supposed to include a peregrine falcon, we were all interested!

I also need to sign T. up for more swimming lessons for January and look into lessons for the girls. We're trying to get swimming out of the way before soccer starts up again in the spring. Luckily a local fitness center runs classes all year for kids who are off track. The trend toward year-round schools has helped homeschoolers -- not only are there more daytime activities available all year, but when we go out during the day, people just assume the kids are off track. Not that I mind strange looks and questions, but sometimes it's easier to remain anonymous and avoid awkward moments. Like these that come to mind:

Supermarket exchange #1

Cashier: Wow, did you all have a dentist appointment today or something?
Me: (wondering if we look like we're anesthetized) No. Why?
Cashier: Oh, I just wondered why all your kids are out of school.
Me: Actually, we homeschool.
Cashier: Wow. Really?

Cashier goes into a long explanation about how she used to know someone who was homeschooled and was really smart, but then she went back to school, and, like, she had a hard time fitting in, you know. Meanwhile, the four shoppers in line behind me are giving me dirty looks because they just want to buy their groceries and get out of there.

Supermarket exchange #2

Cashier: So, did you kids get out of school early today?
M. (who was about 7 at the time): No, we go to homeschool.
Cashier: That's neat. So what did you learn today?
M.: Nothing. We just watched TV. (Pause) We mostly do that every day.

If I remember right, we were taking a day off that day and I did let the kids watch TV that morning. But we went home and had a little talk about how to answer questions.