"Did You Hear the One...

...about the southern belle and the fireman?

Trick or Treat!

Recital

Rick and I owe many thanks to the Presbytera and our friend, Polly for bringing the Artist along on a home school retreat to Ft. Wayne.

Along with meeting some new friends and learning some new games, the Artist was able to attend some interesting lectures and take part in a recital.

The Artist attended talks about the history of deaconesses, about altar guild responsibilities, and about missions in Kenya.

On Friday afternoon several members of the group performed various recitations, vocal and piano pieces they had prepared. The Artist assured me she did well, but we still regret we could not hear it ourselves. Thank you, Presbytera, for the photos! The Artist performed A Classical Moment from her Alfred's Basic Prep Course Level E. I figure I won't ask where her shoes are... I did see her take them out of her suitcase when she got home, so I know they are not lost.

Fossils

In Earth Science class we have been reading about fossils. The Engineer showed a mild and fading interest in the topic. I think part of that is due to the fact that science is the last subject we come to in the day. By the time we get there, he is usually quite ready to be done with school.

To spur his interest a little I got out my old rock collection. I happen to have a beautiful wee sand dollar preserved in rock. You can see how tiny it is by comparing the sand dollar to the ring on my finger.

The fossils the Engineer made were less dramatic. Still, he was fairly excited to do the project because I started out by showing him some fossils his sister had made when she was in second grade. She had pressed some sea shells into modeling foam and let the foam dry holding the imprint of the shell.

The Engineer selected some different shells from those his sister used and made his own fossils.

Artist at Work

This year for her art classes the Artist has a coloring book of classic paintings she is to use. I like that it has biographical information about the artist and the work depicted.

I do wish the book also had color plates of the works, however. As it is, the Artist is looking up the work in question on the internet and using the information there as a guide for how to color. Now, for example, she is working on a detail of The Battle of Constantine by Piero Della Francesca. This site, which shows this picture, has been most helpful to her:Still, it is very painstaking work to get all those horses legs colored the right colors in the black and white line drawing she has to work with they all jumble together. As much as she is enjoying the coloring book, I think she gets more joy from the sculpting book she works with on her second art day of the week. Art class is saved for the end of the school day to her her relax, enjoy and get rid of some stress. She worked on this goldfish project for a couple of hours. I continue to be amazed and the things she can shape. I fall so short in this area, I can't imagine making the things she makes.

Food Groups Project

The Engineer recently completed his food groups project for health class. I wrote a bit about it a little while ago when he was at the cutting out pictures of food stage.

He is very pleased with himself! And true to his passions, he glued the pictures on the poster being careful to save the sugary junk foods section for the very last.

I found myself uncertain of where to put the ice cream -- sugary junk foods or fatty junk foods. I explained to the Engineer, ice cream has the distinction of fitting in both categories. Then I lot him choose its destination.

Some close ups:

Reading

How to tell whether your daughter likes this week's reading book:She cannot put it down, even for meals!

The Artist completed the nearly 300 fine print pages in three days. She does not know it yet, but I found some of the King Arthur legend books on tape at the library. The children and I had so much fun with books on tape this summer, I'm hoping they will enjoy this set with me too.
And just for the Engineer I found some Arthurian legends in the juvenile collection at the library. I have not opened them yet to see if these are books he will read to me (for reading) or if I will read them to him (for history). As I brought home a handful of books there are probably some of each in there.

Math Meets Art

The Engineer had math and art in one today when learning about lines of symmetry.

First we practiced making lines of symmetry by folding a sheet of copy paper in half. Then we put some dots of tempera paint of one half of the paper.After folding over the other half and squishing the paint around, or rolling it with the rolling pin we slowly peeled open the paper.

Voila! Inside is a symmetrical design. He almost always enjoys his math lessons, but I could tell this one was extra special.

More Math Boy

Charts and graphs are glittering jewels attracting the Engineer's attention. Last Friday when I planned out the school activities for the week I saw the math lesson teaching about Venn diagrams was coming up. As I suspected, The Engineer's attention was completely wrapped up in putting data on the chart.

First he had to make some lists of families. Then, we wrote the names of those families' children on data cards by family. Once that was done, it was time to graph our data. Girls' names on one side, boys' names on the other.

This is supposed to be when the student gets stumped because several of the cards contain both boy and girl names. The Engineer must have learned something the day he spent 2 hours reading the math teacher's book. He wasn't stumped at all! I should have known this would be the case when he sat at the yarn circles on the floor and told me they needed to overlap a bit more.

Poster Project

The Engineer is having a ball looking through the grocery store circulars for pictures of foods. After he has a large assortment we will divide them into food groups and glue them onto an appropriately labeled poster.
To start the lesson I took him down to the basement where I still have the posted his sister made years ago hanging on my office wall. He delighted in naming all the foods she had chosen. Well, he sounded happy, at least, until he saw the box of doughnuts in the Sugary Junk Food section.

Then I heard, "Oh man! Doughnuts are junk food."

Yes, dear, they are. I explained this does not mean you can't ever eat doughnuts. It does mean we should not eat too many.

As I look through the pile of food photos he has cut out, I can see we will be having this discussion again tomorrow. Tomorrow we will separate the food into categories and maybe begin gluing too.

Convection Experiment

Science experiments have always been a favorite of the Artist's. Late in the summer I gave the kids a little box of light-related experiments and it provided them several hours of fun and cooperation in the last couple of weeks before school started. I think that whetted the Engineer's taste for experiments too.

This year in science both kids will be studying earth science and astronomy. The Artist's book included a convection experiment demonstrating how convection currents move in air, in water, or in magma.

First, we put cooking oil into a clear (as clear as I had) pot. Then we added food coloring drops. The book encouraged trying different colors to see if they behave differently. We added some blue and some green.

Then the pot was propped up above candle (two in this case, because I know these pots can take a looooong time to heat up). Then the watching and waiting begins.
The first thing they noticed was a little condensation on the outside of the pot. The oil was cold from being stored in the refrigerator. Then we could see heat waves wafting through the oil, but the water-based food coloring was not affected yet.
The suddenly, rapidly and with loud pops reminding us of volcanic explosions, the green food coloring blob released small bubbles of itself into the oil. The floated up and out to the sides staying close to the edge of the pot. Then they cooled and fell just as suddenly to the bottom.

Leftover Carrots

Months ago I bought a big value pack of carrots. We ate about half of them, and we all grew tired of carrots. The remainder sat around for a while.

I noticed they had begun to grow roots and scraggly yellowish leaves on top. It was time to do something. One carrot was bad, but the rest were in good shape. I cleaned them up and sliced them and steamed them.

As it gets cooler outdoors and as I need to become more resourceful and creative with the food budget I've had a lot of soups on my mind. A few years ago I was served cream of carrot soup at a friend's house, so I gave it a try.

After the carrots were steamed soft I put them in the blender with a cup of milk. Meanwhile I sauteed a small onion in some butter. I had no chicken stock in the freezer so I added some bullion instead. (The water would come later). Then I combined the onions, whipped carrots, and added a little more milk in the pot. Last I began to boil some brown rice in the water used to steam the carrots.

In hindsight, I should have used white rice. It would look nicer. The rice and water were added into the soup after the brown rice began to soften. At the end I tossed in a handful of white rice to add a little more bulk to the soup.

The color is fantastic! The carrots and bullion make a tasty mix of saltiness and sweetness. I think the kids will like it, I know I will.

September Walking

September has a low total for miles logged on my treadmill, only 14.

Each day I walked I did make one mile, but I took a week off. The weekend that brought us the remnants of Ike brought some strange pressure changes and I think they adversely affected my knees. It was very strange. My knees took turns aching! They only hurt simultaneously for a short time. Then they would switch off, prolonging my time off the treadmill and completely perplexing me.

Rater than risk further irritation, I took the time off.

Spring and Autumn

Spring and Autumn
by The Artist

Spring is the time for budding trees.
Autumn's the time for falling leaves.

In spring, you can pick sprouting flowers.
In fall, trees become tall, bare towers.

In spring, your gardens primp and preen.
Autumn's the time for Halloween.

Spring. It has a single name.
Fall's second one gives it it's fame.

Very different they appear,
But both are beautiful and clear.