Magic and Mayhem

We’re in a bit of a sheepish mood here lately, with all this Shaun the Sheep business.  I posted a link to a fun Shaun site the other day and Daryl has found even more.  I’ve been putting Shaun stuff up over at the Magical Childhood blog too, and now Daryl sent me this fun site where you test your reaction time by shooting tranquilizer darts at fleeing sheep!    Poor sheep!  But it’s awfully fun!

I also happened upon a rather ghastly photo of a sheep born (stillborn) with a human face.  Shudder.  That’s not at all in keeping with the type of sheep school I’m in the mood for!

Risa also recommended “Sheep in a Jeep” and I’d forgotten that book.  I also want to order “Russell the Sheep” from interlibrary loan.

Any other sheep-related recommendations?

Here’s a bit of what’s been occupying my computer time lately….

This “homeschool” graduate is running for school board in Texas and wants to change legislation so there’s less chance for “educational neglect” in homeschool families.  What do you think?

This snowflake website is so full of neat stuff that I’ve had it open in my browser for days.  We’re having a snow themed homeschool day at the Petroglyphs Tuesday (which will ironically enough probably be postponed due to snow!) and I’ve been gathering library books and finding tons of fun stuff to use there.  The photos at this site are so amazing!  Snowflakes are so underappreciated. 

I finished my lapbooking series (maybe!) today with this article about Lapbooking Do’s and Don’ts.  I also heavily researched the right way to use apostrophes in that phrase.  People bicker a lot when it comes to grammar.

I also posted this article about the Newspapers in Education site for educators.  The link is to the Minnesota version, but they’re all over the U.S. in some very tiny newspapers (I could not find a single place online to find out how to find your local version, though I tried and tried).  This resource is really pretty cool, I’ve gotta say.  I have had several NIE windows open the past few days as a result!

I love the unit study approach this first grade school did in North Carolina about health.  I dare say they approached this subject like homeschoolers.  

I ended up researching PKU today because of a bill that’s proposed to make insurance companies pay for required foods such as PKU formula.  I was looking to find out if breastmilk could be covered under the bill (since some babies get prescriptions for livesaving breastmilk but it is costly) and also was looking to find out if standard baby formulas (like soy formula for cow-milk allergic babies) would be covered, and ended up finding out that many mothers of PKU babies have successfully breastfed.  I knew almost nothing about the condition and ended up writing an article about it.  I love the learning that comes as a result of both being a homeschooler and having to write regular columns.  Is that nerdy?  Ah well!

There was news released about a link in low serotonin levels and SIDS this week and several people complained that nothing was published about the link between AP practices and serotonin levels, so I wrote this piece about that link.  I also wrote about the government storing your baby’s DNA and why, if you care about such things.  There’s more too, but I’ve been told I’m overwhelming. 

Finally, Daryl sends you this bit of just plain fun.

Now, a certain toddler has gotten into my stash of Spanish foods (and opened all the jars!) that I had stored for a family unit study, so I have to do some last minute research on Spain.  Or wing it and take a bath instead….

A good mother would already have dinner on the table and would  not even consider taking a bubble bath instead of preparing a Spanish feast.  Oh well!  I’m a good mother in other ways! 

I saw this map at Traveling Jews and thought it would be fun to do one showing where our family has visited.  This is just for the kids, since my own map would be mostly red (I’ve been everywhere in the US except Texas, Hawaii and Alaska).  We’re 24% of our way through the country!  It will be fun to try to click through more states. 

visited 12 states (24%)
Create your own visited map of The United States

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

1.  Making deviled egg sailboats.

2. Continuing to read our Revolutionary War diary.

3.  Having guitar lessons with Daddy (for Victoria and Anna).

4.  Doing art.

by Victoria:

by Jack:

5.  Creating games and busywork.

6.  Running businesses.

I love how Jack creates his own spelling and handwriting practice in his bead selling shop. 

Victoria has started a nail painting business.  She works for free and does awesome designs.

7.  Learning French.  Victoria has been playing Kirby’s Adventure, a Nintendo game in French.  She says she’s picking up French vocabulary from it.

8.  Learning square roots for fun.  Anna has been memorizing square roots.

9.  Went to the YMCA for exercise.  We played basketball games, had races and generally goofed around.

10.  Lastly, I don’t think I ever posted pictures from Anna’s belated birthday party.  Here’s a bit of what we did there!

We went to Grandma and Grandpa’s house twice this week, once to help celebrate Grandpa’s 80th birthday and then again to bring him our sweet garage cat for a birthday present.

Mama Cat moved herself and her kittens into our garage last summer.  She was so wild she’d flash to the end of the block if we even stepped out of the house.  The kids brought her food and earned her trust, and she became a loyal, loving family member.  One of her kittens disappeared last fall but the other two became new pets.  Mama Cat probably would have moved into the house too, except for the fact that she and our male cat, Pepper, tried to kill each other every time they got within 50 feet of each other.  Pepper has never attacked anyone else and Mama Cat is as meek as a mouse, but they became a bloody, snarling mass of angry cat if they got a chance to attack each other.  So Mama Cat was a basement cat and we all had to be super careful we never left a door open an inch for fear of one of them searching out the other and going at it again.

So Grandpa gets a new cat.  Mama Cat will have to be an outside cat, but Grandpa has always loved cats and spoils them as best as he can in the big garage.  He brings them inside and holds them on his lap to pet them and loves them up.  She’ll be spayed and taken care of.

The kids have accepted it but are very sad.  Mama Cat rode on my lap and Victoria’s for the 2 hour drive and never made a single sound.  She just looked terrified.  When we got there, Daryl carried her towards the garage and she leapt out of his arms and into the garage and would not appear for us again.  In the morning, a bit of food was gone and we knew she couldn’t have escaped, but the kids will have to wait until next time to try to see her again.

Despite that sadness, we had a good trip.  The kids played in the attic, we got to hit a thrift store and we went to homeschool swimming.  We’ll go back soon to visit Mama Cat (and Grandma and Grandpa).

Here’s a few pics….

Rotten groundhog.    If you want to celebrate today with the kids, I put up links to lesson plans, crafts, coloring pages and even a groundhog hat here today.

(And yes, he announced 6 more weeks of winter.  Which isn’t really a surprise since it’s only early February!)

Here’s what’s keeping all of my tabs open on Firefox today.  Some of these are so interesting, fun, fascinating, you name it!

1.  NASA announces plans for personal flying suit

2.  Amazing photographs that demonstrate laws of physics (this site is begging for more research, such as who the photographer is and what each photo represents!)

3.  Wanna be followed by a film crew?  This NYC homeschooling mom is making a documentary about HSers and wants to film some HS families in action (from any state).

4.  Here’s some tasty, silly fun.  Make deviled egg boats!

Check out the slideshow for pics of our four kids with their creations, including Alex dressed as a bug. 

5.  For more wacky food fun, check out these adorable Dr. Seuss muffin tin ideas over at Mind Games.

And even more!

6.  Some of my own articles lately…. A recipe for wet or dry watercolor paints, pros and cons of premade lapbooks and where to find them, how to design your own lapbooks and tips to avoid hair washing and hair brushing battles with kiddos.

7.  Lastly, Risa’s hubby played math with one of their kiddos to demonstrate probability with dice and Cuisenaire rods over at Educating Risa.  Fun!

Something about this series of science experiments tickles me.  From New Scientist….

Crows not only can recognize individual human faces, but they can hold a grudge against you for years, a new study shows. Field biologists have long noticed that wild crows seem to remember them from past experiences of being captured for ID tagging – swooping, attacking and “scolding” any offending biologist who returns for more – but they don’t bother biologists they’ve never met, and it’s never been clear how exactly they tell the difference. To find out, researchers from the University of Washington wore a rubber caveman mask while capturing and tagging wild American crows, then sent various other people to approach the crows wearing the same mask. The crows attacked anyone wearing the caveman mask, and when the researchers upped the ante by making plaster casts of real people’s faces, the crows continued accosting anyone wearing the mask of someone who’d captured them in the past. “We may think they are just bystanders minding their own business, but we are their business,” an evolutionary ecologist tells New Scientist…

We finally had Anna’s birthday bash today, at the YMCA.  Only a few friends could join us but we had a blast and it was nice to catch up with neat mama (and papa!) friends while the kids played.  And to see really rosy, fat baby cheeks.  Mmmmm, fat baby cheeks make every day better!

Anyway, I was preoccupied with swimming and cake and decorating and yapping all day and didn’t get a chance to write my next lapbook article or my next AP article or blog or pack for our trip to the in-laws’ tomorrow, so I have no time to post a billion pictures and tell stories.

I’ll do that soon.

And I’ll share a cool game idea the kids came up with and all sorts of other cool stuff I keep wanting to yap about.

This is why I like winter, because usually there’s time to just write articles and sleep odd hours and read to the kiddos and dream up crafts and do science experiments and play and read and blog and pretend to be a hermit.

Wow.  I just said I liked winter!  Now there’s a first.  Huh.

Anyway, I’ll be back soon!

All I can say is wow.  Check out this Rube Goldberg contraption that spans multiple levels of a house.  Careful — who knows what the kids will dream up after seeing it.