Rocket Boy

It is kind of the off-season for garage sales down here.  It is the off season for everything except mosquitoes and rain, really!  But there are still some garage sales around.  Caleb never seems to go to one without finding a fantastic bargain.  Well today he got a bargain to rival my Playmobil nativity.  He spotted a boxed Estes Hydrogen Fuel Rocket.  I peeked in the box and it seemed full.  I figured the guy would ask about $5, but he only wanted $2.  So I approved of the purchase and we moved on.  Once we got home, he and Rob got it up and running and shot it off several times in the field (there is a big field in our housing area - it has a sort of long mound in the middle of it and in the center of the mount is a small patch of concrete - perfect for launching rockets).  Rob would have to tell you how it works.  Somehow it makes hydrogen and ignites it and shoots off the rocket.  We decided after 5 or so successful launches that the sellers had not known how to fly it.  The retail price online was $90-$125.

We also have an Estes model rocket that takes an engine...and each engine has one use.  With this one the hydrogen solution is reusable, so they got to launch many more times.

I love that reaction face!

Natalie gets to "drive".

And I think you will find Rob's video very entertaining :)

Math Stuff

We just finished week 11 of kinda-sorta 1st grade.  I should be week 14, but we have had to miss 3 weeks since we started, still Caleb is nearing the halfway point in the math book.  I say kinda-sorta because I can't say for sure we are 1st grade level in reading.  My friend Tina, whose kids are much older than mine, says it doesn't matter because I am only comparing himself against himself and compared to his reading self last summer, wow, he's come a long way!

With enrichment out for the summer, I've lost my sounding board, so I am going to have to have it out here.  We are using Singapore Math for the 2nd year in a row.  I like it, but that's not to say it's easy for me to teach him.  It's not exactly like math as I learned it or how I taught it when I was at RCA.  The addition and subtraction moves forward rapidly and I'm not sure how much he is expected to really grasp by the end of a lesson.  And since we don't have to move on, I don't want to until I'm sure he's got it.

For addition and subtraction it started out with manipulatives (in our house we call these beans, crayons, peanuts, Legos, etc.) and then taught what it calls "number bonds".  It's just math facts, but set up a little differently (ex.  2 and 3 "bond" to make 5).  Then it moved to "counting on".  Caleb snapped up all three.  (Of course a lot of that was in the Kindergarten book too.)  It seemed to come really quickly into adding and subtracting with numbers up to 20.  A 2 digit number + or - a 1 digit number.  And it teaches 2 methods - counting on (or back) and a method I am having a hard time explaining.  Here it goes:

ex.  17 - 8 =

method:  17 is really 10 and 7.  You can't take 8 from 7, so take it from the 10.  Then you have 2 and 7, so the answer is 9.

And so long as there are pictures or manipulatives, he has no problem with this.  He has no trouble finding the number bond for 17 or adding the two 1 digit numbers.  Personally, I think that's just fine on paper and I can see the reasoning in doing it this way, but I have a hard time thinking of it like that in my head!

So what I'm asking is - all you math people (Dana I know, but maybe some other reader of mine is a math whiz too and I just never knew it) - is there some trick to explaining this that I am missing?   If we just keep at it will it click?  In the Abeka math, the kids are supposed to memorize all the math facts, do you think that's necessary or will he just memorize them as he goes along?

Otherwise around here...we have let go most of the frogs.  I let the kids keep the promised 2 plus the deformed tadpole and suddenly it grew legs and climbed out on the rock!  It is the tiniest frog I have ever seen!  I don't have a picture yet, maybe this weekend.  I don't know if we will be able to keep them long term.  Feeding them is not simple, plus it seems kind of a shame to have such effective mosquito controllers locked up in a box.

On Wednesday, we all went with Rob to Ft. Myers.  It was a last minute trip, but I remembered to toss the swimsuits in "just in case" and we got to spend a couple of hours on the beach while he tweaked a transmitter.  Wednesday was the first sunny day since Debby on that side and the shells were really abundant.  What a blessing - plus kids meals were free at Chic-fil-a and Caleb did all his school work for the day in the van and in the lobby of a church in Naples where the station has an office.

Aaaand, I am going to be a professional enricher this fall.  I've been asked to teach a 12 week class at enrichment called My America.  It won't be big bucks, but it should more than cover the cost for enrolling my kids.  They provided some material and I have to do some lessons about elections, but I have a lot of flexibility otherwise in what to teach, so I am all ears if you know of any great books or materials.

Natalie Turns Two!

Look out world - we have a 2 year old in the house again!

Ever since Grandpa's 66 Mickeys cake, Natalie has declared she wanted a Mickey Mouse cake.  She likes Mickey Mouse - I think it's the ears (she likes the Truly Nolen cars too).   I wanted to make what she wanted, but black icing!  ick!  She liked the pictures of flower cakes, butterfly cakes, and princess cakes we looked at online, but when the question came, the words from her mouth were "Mickey Mouse Cake".  So  I thought a little and this is what I did (it's york peppermint patties):

And after all that, she looked at it and said, "It's a puppy!"

I don't usually think N & A look alike, but I think they have similar smiles in this picture.  They are getting to be buddies.  Last night when Rob called Natalie for her bath, she ran to Annalise and said, "Annalise!  Take a bath with me!"

Who needs a fork?

Sugar High!

Presents!  Yea! 

We didn't have a party, but we did have some neighbors over for cake and ice cream (I made strawberry rhubarb ice cream - it was yummy).  This is the best thing the housing recession has done for us - no one can afford to sell their house, so we're all just staying and getting to know each other!

Annalise on Spelling

Annalise came to me and held up a paper with the word:

EVOL

Written on it, she said, “This is what I do to Daddy.  I know how to write love.  You write L-O-E and then write a V in between the O and the E.”

The Care and Feeding of Young Frogs

We are starting the 2nd week in a row of VBS, so life has been anything but normal.  But the tadpoles have kept right on growing.  And now, most of them are not tadpoles at all.

Late last week - you can see the tail is still there, but tucked in.  Most of them at this point weren't swimming as much.

This weekend.  On their backs they have two golden stripes.  All their bellies have that funny line down them.  There are still 2 that have not completely changed.  One has not changed at all.  It also seems to have only one eye.  I don't know what to expect of it.

Our habitat - You can see all the little frogs on the back wall :)  (Annalise would have said "You can notice...")

And so feeding these little froggies suddenly became an issue.  I told Caleb we can keep 2 long term (i.e. until we make a serious mistake with them and they do not survive our care and feeding), but the rest will have to be relocated.  It became clear that they were not interested in fish food any longer.  So we have started catching mosquitoes to feed them - they like them live.  "Fortunately" catching mosquitoes is like shooting fish in a barrel.  The hard part is getting them into the tank without letting them go again.  It turns out that you can stick your newly caught mosquito in the freezer for about 1 minute and then you can move it just about anywhere.  They wake up pretty quickly though.  If you leave them too long...well they don't wake up at all!  To move them, we put all of the sleeping ones in a yogurt cup and quickly stick in on the water surface like a little boat.  We're doing this only once a day b/c if there are lives ones inside, they fly out.  All that said - that black speck on the mesh, is a mosquito

 

 

.

And of course a perfect habitat for raising baby frogs is also a perfect habitat for raising baby mosquitoes.  It looks like we won't have to catch mosquitoes in a few days!  These are in the larval stage.

Wordless Wednesday

Family Portraits Craft

Since we finished the Shing Lee book, I've been kind of aimless when it come to crafting. I liked those books not only because they had great projects, but also because they taught some art concepts along the way. We have another art book called Look What You Can Make with Dozens of Household Items! Now that's a title! It has some good crafts, but not much of it can be put on the wall, which is what I like to do (instead of moving it six times on the counter before hiding it under a coffee filter and a banana peel in the trash can). This craft came from that book, and you can actually hang it on the wall. We liked it very much

This craft required a lot of adult help, but the result looks kid designed.  So it was fun to do together.  Because of that working together, I didn't get any action pictures!  It's easy though - take two plates and have the kid draw on plate 1 enough shapes to make picture holes for everyone in their family.  The adult can use an exacto knife to cut out the shapes.  The kids picked which pictures to put where and I taped them in place - mostly to make sure they didn't shift.  Glue the 2nd plate on the back, pop two holes in the top and run a string through it.  Annalise wanted to write names on hers.

Caleb didn't want to write names, but he did want to make Natalie's shape into a chicken (!) and he likes to draw stars (a lot), so that gave his something extra.  That mark on Natalie's forehead is a smiley face.

What a Difference a Day Makes!

Sunday - and it looks like the end of his tail has broken off doesn't it?  I always thought the tail shrunk, but maybe I've been wrong.  I also think it looks like he has little elbows.

Monday - quadruped!

 And in far away Arkansas...

Tadpole Update

I know you're out there, waiting with baited breath, just wondering what is going on with our tadpoles! Admit it!!

Well they are growing legs - already - fueling my hopes that they are cute little tree frogs and not disgusting behemoth bufo toads.

Thursday - do you see the leg?  No?

Friday - see it now?

Does this help?

Saturday - yes, now that's obviously a leg!

Showin' some leg.

Halfway Through the Eighth Grade

I did something I never do last night - I stayed up past midnight to finish a book.  My latest "assignment" in the Classical Conversations reading list was The Hiding Place by Corrie Ten Boom - her account of her family's experiences living in Holland during World War II.  I can't believe I've never read it before.  It's the only book on the list that I've had to wait for - and for that I say, good!  This is a book that deserves to have a backlog of library requests.  Most books I don't care about owning, read it and return it, don't have to dust it.  But I want to own this one.

There are so many things I'd like to say about it.  For one, this will sound self-righteous at first - but I really identified with Corrie Ten Boom.  Obviously not in experiences!  But she did not immediately notice the needs of those around her at first, even sometimes later on.  She struggled with being more concerned with her own needs and desires than with pleasing God and serving others.  She contrasted herself with her sister Betsie, who constantly cared for others more than herself, who was thankful to be sent to a concentration camp so that she could comfort others.

In short, what a convicting, inspiring story.  I feel different about my life just by reading it.  How much I take for granted.  And I look forward to sharing it with the kids when they are older.

The other books on the 8th grade list that I've read so far:

Little Britches:  Father and I were Ranchers  by Ralph Moody - loved it, loved it, loved it
Where the Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls - cried, love it anyway
The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster - liked it, it's amusing, yet kind of preachy, but I was ok with that by the end
And The Horse and His Boy by C.S. Lewis - a re-read and a favorite, maybe my favorite of the Narnia books, but I like Dawn Treader a lot too.  Technically I was supposed to read The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, but since I'd read them all, I thought I'd choose an alternate.  The kids wanted me to read it aloud to them, but the language in The Horse and His Boy was hard for them to follow, so I read them Prince Caspian instead.

So in short, all these book were very good, but go read The Hiding Place.

Bird Eggs from OUTER SPACE!

Ok, they're not really from outer space, but sometimes I feel like Miami is on a different planet! This nest was built in my mom's fern...in Arkansas. And since she doesn't blog, twitter or facebook, I am providing her a platform on the internet :) We are looking foward to seeing (pictures of) the babies when they hatch.   And Caleb would very much like for Grandma to keep one as a pet.  They are wrens.  The eggs were all laid a day apart.