Benny's Awesome Experiment

Benny blogged about an experiment we did today with different types of paint and different sizes of papier mache forms.

Benny's Blog.

Here are some of his findings:



This is all in preparation for the egg drop contest this Saturday at VASC.

Three Recommendations

Animated Tales of the World is a show on HBO Family. Fantastic, fantastic show. Today's episode was a combination of stop-motion animation and CGI, and told a beautiful German version of Beauty and the Beast, called "The Enchanted Lion," and also the story of Persephone and Hades, from the Roman myth. Amazing costumes, light and accessible dialogue, excellent production values -- I highly recommend.

This is a great toy. You can find it online as a "Buddha Board" or "Water Wizard" or repaintable canvas. It's like an aqua doodle, but portable, looks like a laptop, and firmer, easier to use. There's a refillable water pen with a felted tip that goes down in the little groove at the bottom of the board, and stays put, so you can fold this and put it in your diaper bag. The board feels cool to the touch, like a thin slab of stone covered with a thin film of paper. Swiping the water pen across it creates a bold, dark line which immediately starts fading. I took it to the car dealership on Wednesday and the kids played with it the whole time our oil was getting changed.

It slices, it dices, and it homeschools. We do math on it, spelling on it, letter practice on it. Doing math on it is actually fun -- if you put a two digit multiplication problem on the board, the boy has to hustle to work it on out before it starts fading off the board. This also causes a fair amount of giggling. Giggling is good, in math. It helps. I got our Buddha Board at The Nature's Child.

Joshilyn Jackson has a new book coming out. It's called The Girl Who Stopped Swimming. I think you'll quite like it, but don't take my word for it. Here's the Publisher's Weekly Review:

Jackson matches effortless Southern storytelling with a keen eye for character and heart-stopping circumstances. Laurel, a high-end quilt maker, sees the ghost of a little girl in her bedroom one night. When it leads her to the backyard and a dead girl in the swimming pool, the life Laurel had hoped to build in her gated Florida neighborhood with her video-game designer husband, David, and their tween daughter, Shelby, starts to fall apart. Though the police clear the drowning as accidental, it soon appears that Shelby and her friend Bet may have been involved. Bet, who lives in DeLop, Laurel's impoverished hometown, was staying over the night of the drowning and plays an increasingly important role as the truth behind the drowning comes to light. Meanwhile, Laurel's sister, Thalia, whose unconventional ways are anathema to Laurel's staid existence, comes to stay with the family and helps sort things out. Subplots abound: Laurel thinks David is having an affair, and Thalia reveals some ugly family secrets involving the death of their uncle. What makes this novel shine are its revelations about the dark side of Southern society and Thalia and Laurel's finely honed relationship, which shows just how much thicker blood is than water.

If you're already a fan, Joshilyn's first novel, gods in Alabama, is shortlisted for being World Book Day's "Book to Talk About" in 2008. Her book is the *only* book from North America that made it to the top ten. If you have read this book and think it is a book worth talking about, please go vote for it.

Benny and Sadie

We were driving past the hospital where Benny was born. We don't normally go down that road, so I pointed it out.

Me: Look, guys -- there's the hospital where Benny was born.
Benny: WOW! If I was Jesus, we'd be in Bethlehem!
Sadie: Yeah! And if I was God, I wouldn't be afraid of the dark!

And in my neurotic homeschooling mind, my first response was that I need to teach them to correctly use subjunctive tense.

Awesome Gravity Game

This is a cool game. A very cool game. This game will entertain you, educate you, enlighten you, and maybe even make you cake. It's one of those games that unfolds as you play it, and making levers, stacks, shapes, long drops, slopes, etc. is very interesting. Especially on lime green.

Here's the link: Gravity Game called Sketch from Xavier Enigma.

Here's a video of my daughter Sadie playing this game. She is four and she loves it. She also likes airplanes, tutus, and poodles.

Burying Blackeye: A Homeschool Park Day Moment

Last week at our Norfolk Homeschool Park Day, the kids found a dead bird. Shira and Benny immediately took charge of burying it:





After I had been coerced into filming the burial process, I let Benny have the camera for further procedural records.

He and Jillian made this grave marker:



And had a funeral:



Please note the following:

1. No child's hands touched the bird -- they handled it with sticks.
2. In the second movie, the voice you hear is Jillian's, and she is five.
3. Both Jillian and Shira wept over the bird, but Benny was fine. In fact, he even got a valentine from Jillian out of the whole experience:



Homeschoolers with soul!

Tidewater Lego League Expo

We had a blast. The expo was run beautifully and thoughtfully by Erin Trzell and we thank her and her team for hosting us!

Pictures and video:

The kids presenting to the judge:





Demonstrating to another parent:



Little sister making a Lego car:



Our team won the "Inquiring Minds" award because they are so awesome!



Here's the "High Five Ceremony" where they got their ribbons:



Another great day for the Legodiles. My favorite team. :)

The Destruction of Sennacherib

We're studying Mesopotamia right now, so for our poetry memory work, we're going to tackle this poem by Lord Byron:



The Destruction of Sennacherib
by George Gordon, Lord Byron

The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold,
And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold;
And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea,
When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee.
Like the leaves of the forest when Summer is green,
That host with their banners at sunset were seen:
Like the leaves of the forest when Autumn hath blown,
That host on the morrow lay withered and strown.

For the Angel of Death spread his wings on the blast,
And breathed in the face of the foe as he pass'd,
And the eyes of the sleepers wax'd deadly and chill,
And their hearts but once heaved, and for ever grew still!
And there lay the steed with his nostril all wide,
But through it there roll'd not the breath of his pride;
And the foam of his gasping lay white on the turf,
And cold as the spray of the rock-beating surf.

And there lay the rider distorted and pale,
With the dew on his brow, and the rust on his mail:
And the tents were all silent, the banners alone,
The lances unlifted, the trumpets unblown.
And the widows of Ashur are loud in their wail,
And the idols are broke in the temple of Baal;
And the might of the Gentile, unsmote by the sword,
Hath melted like snow in the glance of the Lord!

Here's the down low on Sennacherib, Lord Byron, and the Assyrians.

Boxing the Compass: A Printable Compass Worksheet

Welcome to the Little Blue School. In our pirate class (by which I mean our very serious literature class about Treasure Island, which happily was populated exclusively by small boys and therefore turned almost immediately into pirate class) we learned about compasses and how they work.

Did you know a compass has 32 points? Well, it does. We learned sixteen of them, and did this worksheet page to help us remember where the points fall in relation to each other.

Compass Exercise: jpg or pdf

Want more compass fun? Try playing a game like Simon Says, except call it Captain Says. In our round room, we're going to "Captain Says" to the points of the compass. As in... "Captain says tiptoe West!" "Captain says crawl East!" "Captain says march north!" Now see if you can resist blowing their minds by saying "Captain says fly South by Southwest!" Hehehe.

We had lots of fun in our pirate class based on Treasure Island. Want to visit all my other Treasure Island resources? How about the Little Blue School Idea Box which has lots of other lesson plans and fun homeschooling ideas? I'm so glad you found this site. I hope you stick around and poke some links. You are welcome here!

Bookmark this on Delicious

Obama in Virginia Beach

Last night Dan and I took the kids to see Barack Obama at the Virginia Beach Convention Center. It was advertised that the doors would open at 5:30 and the program would begin at 7:30. At 5:15 we were sitting on the freeway, in a solid line of cars waiting to exit for the Convention Center.



About 30 minutes later, after figuring out that there were no more parking spaces in any of the lots, we parked in front of a hair salon, and began to hike toward the back of the line. Past the front of the building, the line snaked around and doubled back on itself. Past the parking lot, it stretched on out to the end of a row of trees. We got in line. I could not comprehend what I was seeing. Ahno kept saying, "See? See? He's going to be president." I started thinking maybe she was right.

Here's a blurry, dark, windy video of the line:



People (and we too) stood in that line outside for two hours while it crept along, with people being let into the building after being checked by security. At one point, Obama went past in an SUV with darkened windows and a police escort. Everyone in the line went mad, as if it was a Beatles concert, with all of them resurrected from the dead and promising to end pocket lint or something. I saw a lot of people I know, and I met some new people. Everyone was nice. Nervous though. It was cold.



Finally at 7:30, they just gave up on the security, threw open all the doors, and the stampede began. We had to fight to stay connected to each other. Ahno got run over twice by people abandoning any sense of order or place in line and rushing for the entrance. The children were excited.



Inside, it was just as crazy but in a different, brighter way. A sea of people. We fought our way as close as we could do the front and stood there for another hour waiting. We listened to Tim Kaine, our blue governor. We listened to U2 songs. I hoisted children onto my shoulders, onto my head, while staring at the shoulder blades of a forest of tall people in front of me. People were eager, anxious, desperate. It was like a rock concert. They wanted to see him, touch him, catch a glimpse of him.



Finally Obama arrived and cranked up the oratory. It was a familiar speech. At about the halfway point, I had had enough of the crushing crowd, and my unforgiving spine was ready to crack. We went back to the back, where we could see more easily if from a greater distance. The ethos of the place was familiar from some churches I have visited. Call and response. Rhythmic murmuring. A collective excitement. A feeling of humble petition to the man on stage. Toward the end of his speech, we jetted out, to try and avoid the thousands pushing through the doors to leave.

The paper said there were 18000 people there. I can't believe we actually went and took both kids. Being part of a crowd that big is just something I would normally crawl over glass to avoid. I'm glad I did, though, because I think it was important for the children to see this piece of history. They enjoyed it -- I'm not sure what part of it was interesting for them but I'm sure the experience will be memorable.

As for me, I'm still a Hillary supporter. I'll vote for her tomorrow. Apparently, so is Benny:

We Miss our Friends

Phillip and Sadie jumping on the trampoline.