Magic and Mayhem

I came across this list of the supposed best novels of the last century at Modernlibrary.com:

On July 21, 1998, the Radcliffe Publishing Course compiled and released its own list of the century’s top 100 novels, at the request of the Modern Library editorial board.

Here’s the first 25:

1. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
2. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
3. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
4. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
5. The Color Purple by Alice Walker
6. Ulysses by James Joyce
7. Beloved by Toni Morrison
8. The Lord of the Flies by William Golding
9. 1984 by George Orwell
10. The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
11. Lolita by Vladmir Nabokov
12. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
13. Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White
14. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
15. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
16. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
17. Animal Farm by George Orwell
18. The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
19. As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
20. A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
21. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
22. Winnie-the-Pooh by A.A. Milne
23. Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
24. Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
25. Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison

Victoria has read at least 5 of the top 25 this year as part of her 9th grade reading plan and on her own (1984, The Catcher in the Rye, Animal Farm, Lord of the Flies, To Kill a Mockingbird).  I’m not sure how many she’s read of the next 75.

My own tally for how many I’ve read is shockingly low… about ten that I remember.  Several were on my reading lists in college and I managed to completely BS my way through all of the discussions, tests and essays without ever reading them.  College was a terrible time for me to actually try to learn anything, since I was so overwhelmed with life during that time.  I started college at 16, was married by 18, worked full time and then some, and navigated a rather brutal few years of tragedies (my aunt’s murder, my mother’s prolonged terminal illness, my own miscarriages, finding my long-lost father after he’d already died, and so on).  Heart of Darkness just wasn’t a priority, even if it was supposed to be.

Perhaps I ought to make up for it now and finally get to some of those novels. 

What about you?  How many have you read?  Which ones would you add?

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Kids can help name the Forelius pruinosus ant

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A few years ago I blogged here about some of the ant experiments we’d done lately and I wrote up a bunch of them as part of an Examiner article, with a link to an ant running Victoria’s chalk ant maze.

Examiner changed formats since then and the old format ate the video, so I rewrote it today and put the video back up.  If you’d like to see an 11 year-old Victoria showing how to make an ant maze (and hear a silly me in the background), I put it up here today:

Ant science: Fun ways to use ants for nature studies

There’s also directions for a cool ant trail experiment, taste tests (no, you don’t taste the ants), fun ant books for little ones, natural repellents to try, and so on.

At some point, I also want to retry our butter experiment, which you might remember was derailed by our cats.

I’m still not entirely sure why we should base our butter/margarine choices on what is preferred by ants, though.  We did the experiment after seeing lots of posts on Facebook and such about how ants won’t eat margarine.  Is the idea that ants will instinctively pick a healthier choice?  Why?  The cats sure didn’t.  I’ve seen what dogs eat, and I wouldn’t choose my foods based on which ones they’d pick either.  I’m pretty sure ants would choose a Pixie stick full of sugar and red dye over raw veggies any day.  So why do we really care about their dairy spread preferences?  Just a thought.

Anyway, if you have an assortment of the little critters around your driveway these days, there’s a few ways to put them to work. 

I used Grammarly to grammar check this post because ants and contextual spelling errors don’t mix. And because a very nice man offered me an incentive to do so.  Full disclosure, chickadees.  By the way, Grammarly says this is rife with errors and “weak.”  I apparently made 3 punctuation errors, 5 grammar errors, 3 contextual spelling errors, 12 style and word choice errors, and plagiarized once (!).  I managed to have 24 critical writing issues in six or so paragraphs. Wow.  And that doesn’t even include the many errors in this paragraph (like starting sentences with and, for one)….

This is how we study the Civil War.

Anna and I went and picked out dresses to borrow from the Wilder Pageant for our upcoming reenactment roles at Wasioja’s Civil War Days.  The dress I like best is apparently far too scandalous for the times since too much skin shows, so I may wear it for the ball (ladies were allowed to show more skin at night) or improvise something with a shawl and long gloves.  Or I might wear the more respectable dress.  We’ll see!

We’ve been to Pipestone’s Civil War days but this event is a new one for us.  Daryl will be playing old time music and the boys will be teaching children’s games like rolling hoops and the game of graces.  The girls and I are mostly “atmosphere girls” — our job is to make the scenes look that much more authentic.

That’s sort of what we did at Pipestone’s Civil War Days last summer.

(Speaking of which, I must go off on a tangent and rant for a moment!  See the fabulous hotel rooms we were in while we were in Pipestone?  That’s the historic Calumet Inn, which we fell in love with.  It’s got vintage furniture, sweeping staircases, period wallpaper, stories of hauntings and a blood red carpet throughout that just gives it so much character.  We found out today that the Calumet Inn is being featured on Gordon Ramsey’s hotels from hell show!  They’re filming this week and I will be horrified if they modernize that fantastic old place too much.  I’m very curious to see what the show looks like, since we absolutely love that place and the food is divine, which is quite rare in this part of Minnesota.  It’s possible that some of the other rooms were pretty dreadful.  We were in two rooms and one was certainly a lot more charming than the other.  Still, I hope they don’t change too much! Time will tell!)

Anyway….

We have two weeks to finish getting everything in order and get all the research we want done.  I’m going to find some good reading materials on the time to add to it, too.

It should be fun!

We’re back from a fabulous four days in the Badlands of South Dakota.

This was the first time the kids and I had ever been there, though Daryl was there years ago.

It was absolutely magical!  Not only is the landscape breathtaking, but it’s rife with educational opportunities and it’s all sorts of fun to climb and explore.

It will definitely be a regular vacation stop for us.

We all agreed that May seemed to be the perfect month to visit, too.  The weather was warm but not hot, the landscape was green and filled with the start of wildflowers, there weren’t many people yet, and hotel rates were cheaper since it was before Memorial Day.

Thank goodness we homeschool and can go on adventures all year, instead of waiting until school is out and the rates are highest. 

There were so many magical experiences…. watching thousands of prairie dogs running around and chirping at us, seeing our first burrowing owls (read “Hoot” to fall in love with these darling birds), having bighorn sheep crossing in front of us on the road, driving past grazing buffalo (no fences!) in the park, seeing spectacular views, climbing landscapes that felt like the surface of Mars…

And there were so many educational aspects too…. touring the Minuteman Missile museum (SD was once filled with missiles during the Cold War and you can still tour one site!), earning ranger badges at the parks, getting up close to animals we’d only seen in zoos like pronghorn antelopes that just lay in the grass as we drove by, learning how the Badlands were formed, seeing fossils preserved under glass at the site from animals that lived there millions of years ago, learning the Native American history of the area, stopping at educational sites along the way and so much more.

Here’s 50 fun subjects we learned about on our quick trip!

1. burrowing owls
2. prairie dogs
3. bighorn sheep
4. bull snakes
5. The Cold War
6. Minuteman missiles
7. The Great Inland Sea
8. black-footed ferrets
9. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
10. short, medium and tall grass prairies
11. Wall Drug
12. molting
13. animal sounds (miss Fiona learned many!)
14. new words (Fiona again — including vulture, buffalo and goat)
15. Dr. Seuss and how his books were written to help children deal with fears of the Cold War and to diffuse politics
16. Lewis and Clark
17. long boats
18. The Corn Palace
19. pronghorn antelopes
20. two-layered animal coats
21. erosion
22. soils, sand and dirt (components, how they’re made, etc.)
23. fossils
24. Native American names and how they’re given
25. the meaning of Badlands
26. outlaw history
27. wagon trains
28. The Wall Wildlife Museum
29. baby prairie animals (Fiona)
30. baby forest animals (Fiona)
31. ghost towns (we explored one, Okaton)
32. mesas
33. buttes
34. Pine Ridge Reservation
35. vulture courtship
36. Greek myths (on tape for the drive)
37. baseball cards
38. Lovecraft/Cthulhu (Victoria’s reading for the trip)
39. Mt. Rushmore (we didn’t visit but we learned about it)
40. vocabulary through Bananagrams at the hotel 
41. river bluffs and landscapes
42. glaciers
43. prehistoric animals
44. magpies
45. coyotes
46. South Dakota geography and news
47. distance (we drove across the Missouri River and found out it was exactly a mile even though it seemed small)
48. paleontologists
49. change, time and impermanence (Jack had a bit of an existential crisis at ten about how “someday this will all be gone” and we talked about how much it had changed and the vast amount of time it had all been there.)
50. “Prairie Dogs Have Plague!”

Stay tuned for pictures of the ghost town we explored and more.

What a terrible blogger I’ve become!

I swear, there’s something about having five kids that is somehow ten times as busy-making as having four kids.    I love it, but my does it interfere with my productivity!

We’ve been busy bees around here…

• The boys and I went to the Science and Nature Conference.
• The whole lot of us went to a homeschool day at the petroglyphs, where we taught kids how to make their own atlatls and hunt the buffalo (the wind meant they had a rough go at it!).
• We all went to a PBS screening of a show they produced about parks in our area, at a nearby historic theater.  It was fun seeing “our” parks featured and seeing them interviewing our friends from the park.
• I’ve been busy planting my garden for the year.  In so far:  red and orange carrots, lots of lettuces, spinach, lots of kinds of peas, potatoes (which got overly wet and rotted so I have to replant), chard, turnips, dill, cilantro, nasturtiums, beets, lots of tomatoes (started indoors early), eggplants (ditto), basil, sunflowers, borage, and probably a few things I’ve forgotten!  And I’m not even a third of the way done….
• We’re planning a trip to the Badlands next week.
• Anna spent 5 days with family friends in Northern Minnesota.
• Daryl and the girls have been doing a lot of birding.
• Anna and Victoria have been doing lots of biking.
• Victoria has been doing a lot of photography.
• Daryl and the kids are in the Wilder Pageant again.  Toria is sitting out this year and Fiona will still be home with me, but the rest of them will be busy with rehearsals soon.
• We’ve been enjoying the warm weather (at last!) with lots of time outside — playing in the sandbox, heading to the beach, climbing trees, riding Big Wheels, playing ball, going to the park, walking the dog, working in the yard, making mud pies, you name it.

I have a list of 100 things I want to learn/teach in our homeschool by the end of the summer.  We’re having fun working on it.  The kids helped make the list and I have no idea how many we’ll get done but it’s a fun goal.

We’ll be doing some Civil War reenacting next month and there’s all sorts of homeschool projects I want to get to and books I want to read with the kids.  My to-do list is several thousand items long, I think. 

This year is so much better than last year at this time!  Some experiences really do keep you focusing on the big picture and counting your blessings.  I am so grateful to have last year that far behind us and Toria healthy and tentatively cancer-free.

I’m hoping it will be a pretty awesome summer.  I’ll do what I can to help make it happen!

We made it through another birthday week here.

Jack turned 10, Victoria turned 15, and Alex turned 6.

I made a lot of cakes and cupcakes. 

Here’s a quick round-up of ten fun ways we played and learned during birthday week….

1. Victoria chose books for birthday presents, and picked out an awesome assortment at Barnes and Noble (see pic above).  She also bought herself the Les Miserables soundtrack and we’ve been listening to a lot of French Revolutionary songs in the car.
2. We’ve been doing a lot of bird watching. Daryl and the kids have spotted a white-faced ibis, an osprey, blue jays, red-winged blackbirds, lots of song birds, vultures, many kinds of migrating ducks, returning pelicans and a fantastic battle between two hawks in the road this morning, along with a very determined crow dive-bombing a red-tailed hawk on a pole this afternoon.
3. Victoria taught her younger siblings about Nihilism. Of course. 
4. Anna has been writing poems and doing song rewrites. She has one about Corn and Snow (living in Minnesota) based on Carrie Underwood’s tornado song (I can’t remember the name now) and “I Knew You Were Homeschooled” instead of “I Knew You Were Trouble” by Taylor Swift.
5. Jack graduated archery class and did an awesome job. We bought a family membership for the rest of the year so we can use the facility and the gear any time.
6. Alex has been working on sight words. He knows about 30 now.  We have a goal of 50 by the end of the summer and I keep track in my journal.
7. Anna has headed up to Bemidji for the week with family friends. She stays with Guy and Val once or twice a year.  They love getting to play parents and she loves getting to be an only child.  They also teach her about legal stuff (Val is a lawyer), computers and all of the many subjects they are so knowledgeable about.
8. Victoria and Daryl went to a writers/actors/artists workshop. They learned about everything from collage to Taiko drumming to writing to charcoal and paint.  It was at a nearby college and Victoria made some cool new connections and they both had a great time.
9. We have seedlings on all the windowsills and have started many gardens. We got a ton of snow on top of my freshly planted seeds, but they’re cold tolerant so hopefully they’ll fare okay.  Inside, I have heirloom tomatoes everywhere, along with some exotic eggplants and interesting cabbage.  I can’t wait for it to warm up enough to really get serious in the garden.
10. Daryl, Anna and Jack auditioned for the Wilder Pageant. Victoria is sitting out this year (she has been in it every summer since she was 6), but Alex may join in as one of Daryl’s kids.  Daryl will probably be Reverend Alden and Elias Bedal (Walnut Grove’s first mayor) again.  We haven’t received official word about roles yet, but the cast photos are on Saturday so we’ll know this week.

We’ve also talked about… European travel, youth hostels, abortion, the Gosnell trial, townships, voting registration and more.  The kids have also been doing… finger knitting, Big Wheel riding, ball playing, tree climbing, drawing, Lego building, Wii playing, video chatting, hiking, bike riding, sticky ball tossing, solitaire playing, Free Rice earning, dog walking, cooking, chores, talking on the phone with friends, reading, reading, reading and a whole lot of playing.

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And now, I have one final cake to bake (Victoria would like a gluten-free Red Velvet Cake) so I’d better get to it.

My goodness, I’ve been gone a lot lately!  We’ve been so busy for being recluses. 

Here’s a bit of what we’ve been up to….

Daryl had his recheck for his hip replacement surgery at the Mayo.  All looks great and he has the go-ahead for physical therapy.

While we were there, I surprised the kids with $10 each to spend at Rochester’s giant thrift store, Saver’s.

My boys pooled their money for light sabers, nerf guns, tech toys and mini figurines.

Anna used her cash for yarn, an awesome high-tech watch, a wizardry book that goes along with Harry Potter crafts, and a 39 Clues card collection case.

Victoria spent it on nothing but books (The Outsiders, Slaughterhouse Five, Farenheit 451…).  And then talked me into buying an enormous stack of extra textbooks for her (organic chemistry, psychology, biology, surgical nursing, algebra one if I got her the others…).  That girl sure makes me smile sometimes.  

Jack and I have been playing this game like crazy to help him learn his multiplication facts (and also because it’s just plain fun).

Here’s a bit of what I posted about it on Facebook:

It’s called Roll n Multiply and you play it similarly to tic tac toe but it’s far more fun. Jack and I love it. You roll two dice and multiply the numbers (they are 10 sided), then put the game piece with that number on it anywhere on the board flipped to your color. The object is to get 4 in a row. BUT, if you roll a number that is already on the board you can take it and use it elsewhere (whether it was yours or your opponent’s, you just flip it to your color and put it where you want it), so you can move things and unblock lines that were blocked before. So if I had 3 in a row and Jack blocked me with his orange 24, and then I rolled 6×4, I could flip over his 24 to purple and win. It’s part luck, part strategy, part math. We play it a ton of and both of us like it. There’s a cheat sheet you can use if you don’t know your facts too, and I think Alex will be able to play it fine even though he’s only 5 and doesn’t know most of his facts yet. You really don’t need to know them but they end up learning them accidentally very quickly. I highly recommend it and I promised Jack I’d buy us a set of our own. You can check it out at the MSU library as soon as I return it and see if you guys like it. It’s nice and sturdy too, which I like. Here’s the link on Amazon (different cover now but the inside looks identical).

We stayed at a hotel for a couple of days while we were there for the recheck and had fun swimming at the pool, putting together fun gourmet (gluten free, vegetarian, etc.) hotel room meals and splurging a bit one time.

We finished off our visit by stopping by a fabulous HS family’s dairy farm to meet up in real life for the first time after us moms had known each other online for years.  It was a really special day and so much fun.  None of us could stop smiling afterwards and we can’t wait to visit again. 

I was too busy having fun to take any pictures but I think Toria and Anna got a few.  I snagged this from my friend’s FB feed of one of their new babies.  I love the fact that every single one of the 90+ cows has a name (Vanessa, Molly, Avery….) and that they are treated so lovingly (Avery steals peanut butter cups).  We learned so much, too!  And we just plain adored their family. 

In other news, someone made these beautiful flint-knapped driftglass arrowheads for our family.  Daryl struck up a conversation with the artist a few years ago as Daryl was looking for sharks’ teeth at a small local lake and this man was looking for arrowheads.  They’ve networked a bit since then (the “primitive tech” community is a small and friendly one!), and my sweetie offered him some big chunks of good flintknapping rock that we had sitting unused in our garage.  In thanks, he made these for all of us.  Aren’t they beautiful?!

We’re also working on our seeds, readying the garden and so much more.  Poor Fiona has been in and out of doctor’s offices and ERs the past week (she’s okay) and so much else is going on, but that’s a good bit for the first catch-up!

Oh yes, and we’re in the middle of some crazy winter storm that’s got people all around us without power and everything is covered with ice.  Trees and power lines are broken left and right, and there’s some pretty dire situations all around.

Hopefully all of that will pass quickly.  Minnesota winters are a bit like movie bad guys.  Every time you think they’re finally dead, they grab your ankle and come after you one more time.    I’m just pretending it’s green out there and going on with my garden planning.

Hopefully it will be less than a month till the next check in!

Curious what level your kids are up to in math? K12 has all of its math placement tests online here.  You can print them out for free without registering or jumping through any hoops.

The tests go from kindergarten through 5th grade in two semesters per year, and then four semesters of pre-algebra, which is roughly middle school age.

Note that it automatically prints the answers too, which doubles the pages printed.  For instance, the kindergarten semester test is 4 pages but it prints 8 pages because it prints the test and then the test with the right answer circled.  If you want to save paper and ink, just print the first half of the pages and check the answers online (if you don’t know them yourself).

You know we don’t follow a structured curriculum, and this was a nice way for me to see what subjects to introduce next to Jack and Anna.  Alex just plain had fun with it, too. 

I love this free printable from Layers of Learning. She writes:

Using a copy of the Constitution go through the “Three Branches by the Constitution” worksheet. Each of the powers granted to the Federal Government are written in the boxes on the worksheet. Color code each box to show which entity of the government has the specific power mentioned. You’ll have to consult the Constitution for the answers.

The Legislative branch should have two colors in the same color family to designate it, like orange and yellow, and the President and vice president should also have two colors in the same color family to represent them, like dark blue and light blue. The Supreme Court justices can all be in the same color, like green. Many of the legislative functions are shared by the House and Senate, these can be colored with both orange and yellow.

If you like, you can obtain and print portraits of each of the people currently in office to paste into the boxes. Images should be about 80×100 pixels and can be re-sized with photo editing software or using Paint.

Head on over to print your B&W copies!

Here’s a nice freebie from Homeschool Helper Online. The 9-page file includes some foldables, mini books and questions to test kids’ knowledge (plus answers on a separate page).  I’m hoping to do this with Jack later in the week and add some fun stuff of our own to it.

See my lapbooking tab on the top of this page for more lapbooking resources.