Classifying Living and Non-Living

In the months since we've begun to do school formally, I've been working through various methods of review. For history, for instance, since we're currently using Story of the World as a spine, we review the previous chapters' quiz questions, map work, and timeline cards on the same days in which we work through the current ones.

For Latin, we review previous vocabulary words on the same day that I "test" the current ones.

For math, I occasionally put review concepts into the math journal that Willow does once or twice a week for extra math enrichment, and occasionally have either girl drill a previously learned concept on Worksheet Thursday (the most hated math day of the week!).

I also consider every former area of interest still open for further study, and at the library, whenever I come across a living book that explores an old topic, I add it to our stack.

Science is a little trickier to review, for me, because it's so expansive, but since the girls and I are on the cusp of beginning a comprehensive unit on human biology, it seemed reasonable to spend a little time reviewing the order of classification that we first explored at the beginning of our briefer unit on the biology of mollusks.

Therefore, for science a few weeks ago, all we did was review the concept of living vs. non-living.

Willow and I read the requirements for life in the Encyclopedia Britannica, and I wrote them down for her to memorize. Sydney did a simple little living vs. non-living sort that she'd helped me prepare earlier in the day, and as she worked I asked her to verbalize her reasoning, and I put her words in the language of the requirements that Willow was memorizing:
I might have Syd start to memorize them next time.

Successful sort!

Living vs. non-living seems a really simple concept, because you can just look at something and sort it into one of the two, but it actually has a lot of depth, and to understand all of the criteria that makes something living--well, that's some sophisticated scientific reasoning there!

One of the benefits of science review that I'm just starting to discover is this depth that you can get into each time you revisit an old topic. For instance, I'd never want to spend weeks and weeks on the concept of living vs. non-living--I'd go mad!--but each time we briefly revisit the topic we can do another fun explorative activity, perhaps:

• science journal entry, using a checklist to categorize something as living or non-living
• Sesame Street video on classifying living vs. non-living--Will LOVES to make her own video tutorials!
• outdoor square-foot catalogue of living and non-living things
• living vs. non-living DIY book
• living vs. non-living cut-and-paste sort

Next, we're going to head down the order of classification, spending some time at each level until we get to us humans, where I think we're going to stop and stay a while.

Winter at the Indianapolis Zoo

It's been years since I've been able to easily budget both a membership to the Indianapolis Zoo AND the Indianapolis Children's Museum, so I took an acquaintance's advice and started staggering our memberships--last year we had a membership to the Children's Museum, and when that expired, we instead bought a membership to the zoo. By the time our zoo membership expires, the Children's Museum will seem brand-new all over again to the girls, and in the meantime, we've been taking regular advantage of our zoo membership!

In December, the Indianapolis Zoo offers special night-time activities, along with lots of Christmas lights, carolers, and Santa Claus, so the girls and I did some shopping in Indianapolis, then headed to the zoo for the afternoon and evening.

The zoo is an entirely different experience in winter, I was fascinated to discover. The animals that enjoy the cold weather were much livelier and happy-looking:

I really like the expression on Willow's face, reflected on the glass wall of the enclosure

Until the late afternoon, we had the entire zoo pretty much to ourselves, which seemed to make the zoo animals more likely to engage in direct interaction with us. I have never before gone to the zoo and experienced the monkeys just as interested in staring at us as we were at them, and this encounter with a lioness raised my heart rate, quite frankly:

I was all, "Look, Sydney! The lioness wants to eat your face off!"

It's one of my hobbies to plan strategies for emergencies; my strategy in case the lioness managed to jump the fence was to yell for the girls to run while distracting it with my body. Hopefully, the lioness would be happy to settle down and just eat MY face off so that the girls could make it back to the safety of the indoor cafeteria.

The tiger also kind of wanted to eat the kids:

In an action that is the opposite of the responsible, careful parenting evidenced by my willingness to be eaten by a lioness to save my children, I also took advantage of the de-population of the zoo to permit the girls to reach their arms into this flamingo enclosure--

--and collect pink feathers for themselves:

Although the weather wasn't too chilly (at least until the sun set!), the indoor exhibits remained good places to warm up fingers and toes, and we ended up spending a lot of time, in particular, in the Oceans exhibit:

I still remember when this exhibit opened, and visitors were packed in six deep in front of the reef aquarium, so it always gives me an extra sense of peace and happiness to watch my girls able to just chill out and pass the time here.

Ah, I LOVE mid-afternoons on a public school day!

It was especially pleasant to have the shark touch tank to ourselves, since it can be tricky to get a shark to permit you to pet it when the room is full of other visitors talking loudly, splashing the water, and making scary shadows on the surface of the tank. However, with just us in sight, many sharks seemed happy to come over and engage us:

Willow, especially, was the shark whisperer here--several times I witnessed a shark make an obvious beeline to be stroked by her, and sometimes they'd turn around right after they'd been stroked going one way so that she could stroke them swimming the other way! Sydney was PISSED by this because, even though she'd stroked many sharks, and probably as many as Willow had, she nevertheless...

Actually, I have no idea what pissed Sydney off about her sister petting the sharks. Ah, sisters.

We watched the penguins, who were pretty thrilled about being fed--

--and the seahorses, who got fed and didn't care:

The piece of food near the bottom of the photo actually bonked that seahorse on the head as it floated down. The seahorse shook it off and was all, "Get off me, Food! I hate you!"

When we go out for the day, I usually require the girls to pack themselves a lunch, and when we go out for the day and the evening, I usually require them to pack themselves a lunch AND a dinner. My metabolism and hunger cues are so screwed up that I'm pretty much fine not eating until later that night, and in my opinion, if the kids are just as happy eating packed food, and it saves time to have them do so, AND it's a ton cheaper, then it's a no-brainer. 

Besides, that leaves room in the budget for the occasional pressed penny, of which I am highly fond--

--and the zoo's evening special of one $8 mug, in which one could obtain unlimited refills of hot chocolate with a big scoop of marshmallows on top:

NOM. We refilled that mug a lot.

The zoo has lots of pretties set out for the holidays--

--but by far the coolest thing about being there was getting to see the animals at night. The meerkats snoozed in their eensy clear-walled meerkat den, but the bats that are always deeply asleep whenever we stop by to visit them during the day?

Holy cow, THAT'S what nocturnal means!

I feel like we have been out traveling SO much lately--trips to one coast, trips to the other coast, weekend trips down south, day trip after day trip to special Christmas events, and another trip down south FOR Christmas coming up in just a couple of days (although we might go on a day trip to Louisville first, sigh). I want to be weary of it and just stay home, skip the next holiday party, cut short the visit to my family, but I'm trying to instead stay excited, stay eager, stay adventurous.

Because sure, November is wild, and December is wild, but after that comes January. Nothing happens in January. And then we've got February. Not much happens in February. There will be a lot of home time then, a lot of school AT home, a lot of days when there's no way I'm going to dig out the car or risk the weather forecast to take the girls away for the day.

And when those months come--and they're coming soon!--I'm going to rely on this travel-weariness that I'm really feeling right now to keep me content for just a couple more weeks before I succumb to cabin fever.

And then will come March. I think the girls and I might drive up to Connecticut to visit a dear friend in March.

My Latest over at Crafting a Green World: Ornaments and Ornaments (and Newspapers)!

a tutorial for making large-format newspaper structures

a recipe for cinnamon dough ornaments

and a tutorial for the Wish List ornaments, made using upcycled CDs, that I offered at this year's homeschool ornament party

Wednesdays are our mid-week day off of school, so yes, there has been more ornament making today, as well as gift wrapping, creche painting, the downloading of brand-new computer games, Christmas present purchasing and wrapping, cookie baking, cleaning, a haircut for Willow...

...and it is my dearest hope to leave the house at some point today!

Medals for My Pappa

My Pappa joined the Army before World War II began, because it was a steady job that let him send money home to the family. In the time in which he was growing up--the Great Depression--and place where he grew up--the Ozark Mountains in Arkansas--that was a pretty big deal.

Pappa was stationed in California when Pearl Harbor was bombed. He was out on leave at the time, and by the time he'd meandered his way back to base (having purposefully ignored the radio announcements that all soldiers return to their bases, because seriously, who wants to cut short what is clearly going to be their last vacation for a while?), his entire contingent had left, and he and his buddies were just in time to follow the last supply truck to their new base, where they prepped for being shipped overseas.

As a driver of heavy vehicles in the 39th Engineering Combat Group, Pappa was part of Darby's Rangers for several of their notable campaigns, including the Battle for Gela, storming the beach at Anzio, and liberating Rome. During that time, he also received a promotion that he didn't want, shot down an enemy plane, and helped build a lot of things and blow a lot of other things up.

Pappa was sent home in July 1945. After he was discharged, he could have stayed on base for a couple of weeks, getting his physical and receiving his medals and enjoying some down-time, or he could leave right that second from St. Louis and head back home.

Would YOU stay for a second longer than you had to?

And that's how Pappa never came to receive those last medals and campaign pins that he earned.

Until last weekend:

My aunt contacted an Arkansas state senator, who found out what awards Pappa had never received and arranged for him to be given them. Pappa's friends and family gathered in the parish hall of my aunt's church, where a military official first gave the bloodiest, most interesting history of America's involvement in wars since World War I (I sent the girls outside to play after he put his hand on Willow's shoulder while he told all present about how children "just like this little girl were euthanized and exterminated," but I paid rapt attention to the entire lecture, myself), and then presented Pappa with his awards.

And, of course, on any family occasion when we're all as nice and cleaned up as we're going to get, it's family picture time!!!

Does Willow not have the NAUGHTIEST smile on her face?

She has always been a brat in front of the camera, and it's gotten much worse since she read the complete collection of Calvin and Hobbes comic strips several months ago, so whenever I have to take a photo of her, I put my camera on its rapid-shot mode and just keep taking pictures--if I'm lucky, I'll later come across one in which she's between naughty poses in a way that looks smile-ish, and in which everyone else's patient smiles haven't withered too much during the process. Fortunately, Pappa was so amused by my millions of photos plus Matt's patter of threats/encouragements to get Willow to smile, that he's wearing one of my favorite smiles of his, too.

To be able to come to this ceremony, Matt and I drove a 20-hour round trip, with about 20 hours spent in Ft. Smith. We've been keeping the road hot this fall, but I wouldn't have missed the ceremony for the world. It's even better, I think, that instead of receiving those medals with the remnants of his company in the final days of his enlistment, weary of the entire experience, Pappa got to receive them 67 years later, his military efforts understood and put into the larger context, surrounded by friends, his three surviving children, three grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren.

Most of those attending Pappa's ceremony weren't even alive during World War II; we've never seen Pappa in his uniform, nor witnessed him being praised for his military accomplishments. I explained to my girls over and over that what they were watching was a very special event, and reminded them over and over (as I often do) to make a memory of it. Because one day, when my girls are all grown up, there will no longer be any World War II veterans alive to be acknowledged, and this memory that they'll have of watching their great-grandfather receive his World War II medals will be a very special, and very rare memory for them to have.

As it is for me.

Polishing with Lemon Juice and Salt

You can take the girl out of Montessori, but...

Actually, I don't remember if Will learned how to polish with lemon juice and salt from Montessori or from me, but either way it's such a Montessori-style activity that whenever she sets it out for herself, it reminds me of her preschool afternoons spent at our local Montessori school, rolling out work rugs and carrying activities on trays and sitting on the ellipse to sing the friendship song.

Tangentially, if you're ever looking for a preschool, but have the long-term goal (or even just the possibility) of homeschooling, then I can't recommend a Montessori preschool highly enough. Montessori children are encouraged to be so independent, and so focused in their work for long periods, that they're practically tailor-made for homeschooling.

Anyway, sometimes of a morning Willow will decide that my teapot is looking especially grungy (In my opinion, it's ALWAYS looking especially grungy, but I also never polish it, myself, so I don't have much room to criticize). When that happens, she'll take it to the table, then set out for herself a little dish of salt that she gets from the cabinet and a little dish of lemon juice that she gets from the refrigerator, and a dish towel.

She wraps a couple of fingers in the dish towel, then dunks them first in the lemon juice, and then in the salt.

And then she rubs away the grime!

You can see EXACTLY where she's polished, on account of my teapot is otherwise so grimy.

Polishing with lemon juice and salt takes surprisingly little brute force, although you do build up your muscles through that repetitive motion. I'm especially happy when Will chooses to polish something, because she's still such a reluctant writer that I know that any extra bit of muscle-building in her hands and arms can only help.

And no, she never polishes the entire teapot! Whenever she's done, I remind her to wipe down the teapot with a wet dish cloth to rinse it, and then she puts away her supplies and runs off to do something else.

And then I'll just put the teapot back on the stove top with the clean spot facing out.

Such an improvement!

Her First Language Lessons

I still don't know if I like it or not, but thanks to the public library, I HAVE been using it!

First Language Lessons for the Well-Trained Mind goes really slowly, and it's really repetitive, which drives me nuts, and would have driven Willow nuts, too, but six-year-old Sydney loves stuff like that. She REALLY likes right answers, so she thrives on the repetition that allows her to give the right answers every day. And while the script that First Language Lessons asks the instructor to follow also makes me crazy (Seriously, why on earth would Wise insist on using the word "persons" instead of "people?" WHY?!?!?!?!?"), Sydney loves the one-on-one time, I have to admit.

So while I haven't yet decided if it's a resource that I'll want to use for the long-term, it is working well for us right now. Willow works best independently, so since I prefer that the girls do the same number of subjects daily, it lets me slot an additional math enrichment activity, extra reading, a science project, or a more in-depth assignment related to one of our unit studies into her schedule each day. It's our homemade gifted program!

And how cute is Syd's first recitation?

Excuse the chaos--one of the benefits of homeschooling is the ability to do grammar with one kid while the other kid is in her ice skating lesson.

It cracks me up, by the way, that Syd's reciting a Christina Rossetti poem; I know that Rossetti wrote religious poetry, too, but my favorite of hers is "Goblin Market," which has some SERIOUS sexual connotations. Woo-hoo!

Here's the exact text that we're using:

First 5K

Guess who ran her first 5K?

No, not me.

HER!!!

Our local YMCA has a children's running group, and Willow joined them for a session as they trained for and ran the YMCA's autumn 5K. My quirky, introverted girl did amazing, not just in the six weeks or so of regular training, but she also paired up without protest with an adult buddy whom she didn't know, and made her way without freaking out through a crowd of unprecedented proportions--

--and thoroughly, THOROUGHLY enjoyed the post-race buffet of delicious snacks:

Although Will was hugely proud of herself afterwards (as she ought to be!), she decided not to enroll in the running club's next session: her tender, growing feet hurt in those Nikes that I don't approve of but bought anyway because I thought they'd be good for running, and my little homebody grew weary of the twice weekly practices on top of her weekly ice skating lesson, volunteer gig at the local food pantry, and park day with our homeschool group--for a kid who's happiest reading at home for as many hours as there are in a day, that's a LOT of scheduled extracurriculars!

But that's not to say that she won't be running, because guess who's trying (AGAIN!) one of those Couch to 5K workout programs that everyone keeps raving about on my Facebook feed?

Yes, ME!

I am so out of shape that I won't even estimate how long it will be before I have enough stamina to run with my kid, but 60 seconds of running alternated with 90 seconds of walking for a total of 20 minutes is more running than I was doing last week, so there you go.

And if anyone has a better suggestion, ideally non-sweatshop originated (I can't BELIEVE I bought those Nikes, and they weren't even any good!), for a children's running shoe, I am seriously all ears.