Author Fiesta: Patricia Polacco

Cay Gibson has started a new blog called Author Fiesta. Each month, she will lead a study highlighting a children's author and/or artist. She will have pages to print and books to read.

For May, the author is Patricia Polacco. I'm so excited to be doing this study with Alexandra, because I haven't really been reading Polacco's books. Tonight, we read three of them and I found myself "tearing up" during two of them! They are beautiful stories about real people and events from her childhood. It makes me want to record some of my own stories!

I'll keep you posted and please let me know if you decide to join us on this author study!

Also, I think we'll try making some pysanky Ukranian eggs after reading "Chicken Sunday." I read someone's blog back at Easter time and they had made some beautiful eggs. If that was you, could you contact me? I need to order a kit. :-)

Green Hour Challenge #10: Picnic

I drove 3 girls (including Alexandra) to the crime science field trip on Thursday. Afterwards, we had a picnic back "at school." I decided to use this for challenge #10.

Here's Alexandra being silly on the picnic blanket.

This was a very tiny, almost transparent light-green insect. I wish I could have photographed him better.

At one point, it looked like it was snowing! I searched around and found that this tree was shedding these little white petals. I'm not sure what it is.

We'd noticed these blackberry vines before and I found ONE ripe blackberry!

Very neat, tiny spider. This one looks really neat enlarged. And, I think he might be holding something, but I'm not sure. I love his hairy legs!

Alexandra actually found this leaf-footed bug about a week ago, but thought I'd go ahead and post it. She watched him for about 10 minutes and was surprised when he flew! He was about 1.75 inches long!

And, on Saturday I found this HUGE moth (about 4 inches wide) on a bush near my driveway. I looked him up on What's That Bug? and found he is an Imperial Moth. The females have more yellow, so I believe this is a male. They also go through 5 instars, like the luna moth, so I'm curious if this is typical of moths. I read on this site that the caterpillar can grow as big as a hot dog. Wow!!! I've also enjoyed looking at this site of moth photographers. Near the bottom of the page, it shows that both Luna Moths (which I posted about here) and the Imperial Moth are giant silkmoths, which are some of the largest resident moths of North America.

Crime Lab Field Trip

One of Alexandra's enrichment classes this year was about crime science. On Thursday, the kids took a field trip to a real crime lab and I got to go along! The lady police officer was wonderful as she gave us the tour.

This computer helps match up a bullet to the right gun. You have your photo on the left, and when you find one on the right that you think is a good match, you can move it around and see if the pieces will fit together.
The officer also used her own blood to show the kids how the investigators determine if something is blood or not.

She also showed us how they lift fingerprints for identification. She was using small, magnetic pieces to stick to the fingerprints. She told us that every fingerprint is unique because they form in your mother's womb according to what you touch. I wasn't sure about this and looked it up online. It seems that the formation of fingerprints is uncertain.

On our last stop, she showed us where they actually look for fingerprint matches. She talked about the fact that they can only access criminal fingerprints. The prints you give when you get your driver's license or join the military are not usually searchable by police.

May Nature Day - Mercer Arboretum

We went on our monthly Nature Day outing with our local homeschool nature group yesterday. What a great day! Though hot!!! In Houston, we had our first official 90 degree day of the year on Thursday, and Friday was even hotter!


Before we even got officially started, the kids were busy finding turtles in some water in a ditch. Aren't they cute??? They were "baby" red-eared sliders.

We had our largest group ever... I think we had 19 families. We have really grown this year!!!


Our main topic was moths and the man in the red plaid shirt was our guest speaker, Mr. Don. Mr. Don raises moth caterpillars and brought plent for the families to take home. (The caterpillars or "cats" are on the picnic table on sweetgum cuttings - he had both luna moth cats and regalis cats.) Unfortunately, we're going to be out of town soon and couldn't take any home.

But, we did get to take home one of these cocoons! These are the luna pupa in cocoons. It's pretty neat that they "rattle" to scare you away if you pick them up or disturb them. So, we'll have a lot of fun waiting and watching to see our luna moth emerge! Here's a website that shows the luna moth life cycle.

Here's a photo of a luna cat that was spinning its cocoon. Their false legs kind of go back inside of their bodies.And, here's the photo of the pupa (brown) in its cocoon. They often wrap themselves in a leaf, too - that's how ours is.

Close up of one of the luna moth caterpillars.

And a very small regalis caterpillar. They go through 5 sheddings producing 5 different looking caterpillars - called instars. Bug guide has neat "egg to caterpillar" photos. (The regalis is also known as the Hickory Horned Devil. This is an instar 1 caterpillar.

After Mr. Don talked about moths and how to raise the caterpillars, we ate lunch and then went on a hike. I watched this insect flying and followed it to where it landed and happened to get a quick, decent photo before he took off again. It's a net winged beetle - I actually thought it might be some kind of moth.
We ran into lots of poison ivy, and I'm hoping no one got a rash! Mr. Don showed us how to recognize it by the 3 leaves - the middle one is often bigger than the other 2. It wasn't only growing on the tree, but on the ground, too. A good reason to stay on the paths!

Mr. Don showed us a gall and explained how the leaf protects itself from the wasp larva living inside of it. If you've been reading my blog for awhile, you know I really think galls are neat! You can search my blog for "gall" - I think I have 5 or 6 posts. Here's one of my favorites.
Another of my finds. Mr. Don said this was a cicada exoskeleton, but it's about 1/3rd the size of the cicado exoskeletons we usually find. And, I loved its stripped abdomen! Cool!

I saw one of the kids studying this leaf and went to take a look. Something has been eating it - what neat holes it has left!
As we finished our hike and went back to pick up our pupa, we were amazed to see one of the moths had emerged!!! So, here is what our luna will look like. :-) We weren't expecting them to emerge until June, but now we're not sure when ours will emerge. This little guys wings still haven't expanded.

Our Busy Day (Tuesday)

We had a busy day yesterday. After doing school at home, I took Alexandra to her Tuesday classes. One of the moms called me over and I saw the kids all gathered around looking at something...

And what were they looking at?

This tortoise. I love how these kids get "into" nature!

And, I was really surprised at how fast he could move!

This was the last day of class, and Alexandra and her classmates put on a puppet show and dance as a conclusion to their rainforest adventures. Alexandra is the monkey puppet - 4th from the left. The kids did a great job.

One of the moms shared her amazing talent (she's never had a lesson!!!) and made this great cake!!! Each child got the decoration to match their puppet, so Alexandra got the cute brown monkey. The cake was delicious, too! And, the mom has promised me a lesson this summer. :-)

We ended the day with Alexandra's first piano recital! I can't believe how far she's come in one year. She started the year playing songs that only used one key and one finger. Now, she's playing with both hands and 2-note chords! She did a GREAT job and we are so proud of her.

Having Fun Drawing

This weekend, I was reading a "new" (to me) blog, The Homefront Lines, and the family had went on a field trip to see Bruce Hale, author of the Chet Gecko books. The mom had posted a video of Mr. Hale showing how to draw Bart Simpson and then his charcter, Chet Gecko. Well, I thought Alexandra would enjoy learning how to draw these, so we gave it a try today and it turned out well.



Here's Alexandra's drawings of Bart and Chet Gecko. I'd actually never heard of Chet Gecko, but we picked up a book at the library today to give it a try.

My Bart.

My Chet Gecko.

Then, we also decided to give Barb's Sketch Tuesday challenge a try. (Yes, it's the same Barb that brings us the wonderful Green Hour Challenges!) This week's challenge was to sketch a view from your window. Alexandra chose to sketch the pool - with a bird's eye view.

We had lots of fun sketching/drawing today and plan on doing more. Maybe we can do more drawing in our nature journals...

Saving Time - Google Reader

I had looked at Google Reader several months ago and somehow didn't figure it out. Well, I got my account working today and this is going to save me so much time! Google Reader lets you enter a list of all the blogs you read and then it tells you when someone has updated their blog! I've been doing it the old, time-consuming way for so long. I have to open every blog I read and see if it's been updated. Well, now I can go to one place and check it all!

WP & Thoughts on Next Year

This week, I've been thinking alot about next year's curriculum. We'll be stopping for summer in about a month, and I am just wanting to plan what we'll be doing next year. So, here are some of my thoughts:
HISTORY - We actually started Winter Promise (WP) on Monday. So far, we are really enjoying it. I went ahead and bought the whole package, which is pretty expensive. But, it saves me a lot of time in traveling back & forth to the library and making sure I have the books when I need them.

We are doing AS1 (American Story 1) and actually started at week 14 as we'd already studied the earlier chapters this year. This week is about the pre-Revolutionary War time. We are really enjoying The Fighting Ground and adding to our Book of Time. There are also a lot of paper crafts like "A Town Meeting in Boston." There are a lot of hands-on native American crafts, but I think we're skipping the Native American focus, at least for now.

MATH: This is always the hardest subject. Alexandra catches on so quickly and I have to keep hopping to keep ahead of her. We will probably be doing a combination of ALEKS and Teaching Textbooks, though I continue to search for things that will let her go at her pace.

LANGUAGE ARTS: I'll continue to do more & more CM style - narration, dictation, and copywork. I think I'll start the year with Learning Language Arts Through Literature which seems to go very fast. Then, possibly use some Rod & Staff for the 2nd semester. I might go back to Sequential Spelling for some spelling - we haven't been using anything since November. And, she might be taking a LA class at her enrichment school - we're still deciding.

SCIENCE: I'm looking at both NOEO and Real Science 4 Kids. If I did RS4K, I'd do Level 1 Chemistry (Alexandra did pre-level 1 this year at her enrichment school). They have just come out with some KOG books that go with this curriculum and they look GREAT!!! (See sample chapters here.)

LANGUAGES: I'm torn between Spanish (possibly Rosetta Stone or finding a local class) and/or Latin. If I did Latin, I'd probably use LOGOS Latin Primer I with the DVD. I'd like to do both, but I think it might be too much.

OTHER: Alexandra will probably continue gymnastics and piano. And, she wants to start another instrument and cheerleading. We'll see! And, she is planning on taking 4 or 5 classes at her enrichment school again. She'll probably take a whole day off for classes, but we're still in the planning stage. And, we'll probably join the book club at the library and start learning chess at home and then playing it weekly at the library. But, I'm still very unsure!

Please let me know if you've used any of the curriculum choices I'm considering. It's so hard to plan! But, fun, too!

Day 6: Last Day in St. Louis

Our last day in St. Louis started with the earthquake. After getting packing the car, we stopped at the World Bird Sanctuary since the museum Alexandra wanted to go to didn't open until noon.

We enjoyed looking at raptors, but it started raining so we decided to go eat lunch while we waited for the museum to open.

We showed up at The Magic House just after noon. This is a neat children's museum with lots of hands on activities. We had a lot of fun playing with the above nail wall. We were making prints of our hands, faces, etc. I love how the above photo shows Alexandra's ponytail!

In the adds for the museum, they show a boy touching this electricity ball and Alexandra was anxious to give it a try. I didn't think her hair would work since it is so long, but it looks neat! I even paid a few dollars for them to take a photo and make a magnet for the fridge.

Alexandra's 2 favorite rooms were the library (where she played librarian) and the bank (where you could open a safe and use an ATM). I loved how they library talked about the Dewey Decimal system and had little mouse models about the various numbers. This one shows that the 400's are for "language."

Our last planned stop for the day was Meramec Caverns, and then we planned on heading to Oklahoma to spend a few days with family. The walking tour was a little over an hour and was a beautiful place I remember going to as a child.

Then, our unscheduled stop a few hours later... the ER... and then my new home for the next week, a hospital room. This was definitely a vacation week... I mean 2 weeks... we'll always remember. And, we're so glad to be home. :-)

Day 5: Paddle Boats

We ended up day 5 of our St. Louis vacation at the Boathouse which is near the zoo. There is a restaurant there, but there was a 2 hour wait. So, we elected just to take a paddle boat out for an hour. It was a beautiful evening and we had a lot of fun.

Of course, I enjoyed getting close to the ducks. We saw some more wood ducks! They're so beautiful.

There was a larger area to boat in - we chose to go around a decent-sized island. On the island, we saw more ducks and red-winged blackbirds. As we headed back to shore, we were shocked at how strongly the winds were blowing against us and it was HARD work to get back to shore.

Alexandra started out in back, but then she gladly took a turn paddling. It's nice that she's tall enough to help!

That night, we went out to eat in the restaurant that is connected to our hotel. Afterwards, I just stepped outside and took some photos of the arch lit up. From our hotel room, you could see about 1/3rd of the arch and Alexandra enjoyed sitting in the window just looking at the arch.

I just forgot to post this photo the other day. We went to several neat restaurants, but this was our favorite. In about 6-8 tables, there were board games set into the table. We let Alexandra choose and she picked the Clue table. We ate, then played a full game, and then had dessert. It was a great 2 hours of food & fun.