Oooooo, Bats!

I mentioned Shane is interested in bats, right?  A few weeks ago it was squid.  He checked out every book in the entire Pierce County Library system on squid.  He knew all the different species, how fast they could swim, where they lived, etc, etc, etc.  Now its bats.

This is what I hear: Aren't wrinkle faced bats cute? I hope they don't get eaten by wooly-faced bats, also known as the false vampire bat.  Did you know a bat can fly 60mph? That's faster than an orca whale.  And three times faster than a squid! Did you know they can use their echolocation to sense something as small as a hair? I wonder how vampire bats in zoos eat.  Do they have special livestock for them? Did you know that a bat can give birth to a baby 1/4 of her body weight? And did you  know the vampire bat can drink half its body weight in blood?  If a nursing mother bat is taking care of her baby, it uses so much energy the mother bat can't fly and get her own food so other bats bring her food.  Isn't that neat?  I wonder how they do that?

It gets a little tiring, but I'm thrilled Shane enjoys learning about animals.  He has an amazing memory and can spout out facts about different animals all day long.  Yesterday he amazed me when he compared three different species in three different phyla and was able to compare their predator avoidance skills (in this case, large numbers of animals scattering to confuse the predator).

Today when Shane asked if he could set up a bat watching party, I said yes.  They roost in our eaves and eat mosquitos every night.  We even had one roosting behind our famous map of Cuba (when it used to hang in the carport).  After my Little House on the Prairie episode was over, I went out to check on them.  Two bats were actively feeding right off the porch!  I had fun trying to get pictures of them in the dark.  They came VERY close to us!  But I'm not worried about rabies.

Rainy Day Music

The ebbs and flows of a homeschooling year has become very predictable.  We are motivated, stay on topic, and get things done until about the middle of November.  Then we start to slack off, sleep in, put things off,...re-prioritize... I think it has something to do with the weather.  I don't think it even got light yesterday-at least it didn't feel like it!  According to the National Weather Service, we had over 2 inches of rain yesterday!

I also start thinking about baking sweets...there is nothing like home made sweet treats when it is pouring down rain outside and there is a roaring fire inside.  I really have to distract myself from the sweets, so I took Lula for a walk down to the pond yesterday.  She doesn't remember trees, so she leaned way, way back in my arms for a good look!

The other problem with this time of year, the rain, the slacking, is not being able to send the kids outside to play.  I guess I could.  I just asked IJ if he wanted to go out and swim in the giant puddle forming in the pasture!  And weekends can be very long with six kids trapped inside.  So they've returned to video games...blech!  The one video game they can play during school time is Piano Wizard.  It counts as music education, but it feels like a video game. I wrote about it here, but now I've received Piano Wizard Academy from the school district!  The academy level includes teaching DVDs and the sheet music for the songs on the game. 

So now that the kids are familiar with the songs and keyboard, they are ready to learn some theory.  This morning I started with note names: I drew a whole note and a half note and named them.  Then I drew a quarter note and asked if anyone could guess its name.  Then the eighth note...and because they are jokers and math enthusiasts, they asked if there was a sixteenth note....and a thirty-second note...all the way to 128th!  Following the "Active Learning" method of education, I asked, "What does it all mean?  What's the big deal with the fractions? What are they fractions of?"  Why, they are a fraction of a measurement of time-and that is how they learned about measures.  I asked how many 128th notes would be in one measure and how fast they would have to play them.  Their faces were so funny when they thought of that!  Then I asked how long a measure was, which lead into time signatures.  Weeks and weeks of theory condensed into one short lesson that they understood right away.  Music is supposed to help people learn math, but I think today that math helped my kids learn music!  I tried teaching them theory when they were younger, but we experienced information overload and had to stop.

I would not be able to have a candid discussion about music theory with my kids if it hadn't been for my years of piano music lessons and the years and years I spent in choir.  I am very thankful I had the opportunities I had (but I'm still glad I quit piano lessons when I was ten years old). Mark and I really want our kids to not only understand the mechanics of playing music (something I'm good at), but also understand and love music (the way Mark does).

***And on a funny note (pun intended), Ian and Shane looked at the cover of the sheet music book, saw a picture of a little girl playing one of the video game songs, and was able to identify the song.  "Look, she's playing Beethoven!" Ian said.  "How do you know?" I asked.  "I read the screen-it says it right here..." I quickly cover the label and ask, "Okay, which song?"  Shane took one look at the arrangement of the flying objects and proclaimed, "Fur Elise."  Can you say Rain Man?

Chess

S is really good at chess.  He beat me twice in the last two days.  There is no one left in the family who will play him.  No one but his dad.

S is good at chess because he reads about it, practices-mostly on E, and because he is very good at distracting his opponents!  Can you imagine trying to concentrate while the other player is having his pieces talk to each other about their next moves on pretend walkie-talkies, like they are in some army guy game?  Or having a pawn peek behind a bishop saying, "I'm just peekin' through the bushes!  Peekin' through the bushes!  Peekin' through the bushes!"   Or a rook and two pawns having a wrestling match in the corner of the board while he is thinking about how to take out your queen with pawn?  He just took M's queen with a pawn.  He took mine earlier.  With a pawn.  He is very good with visualizing how the horse pieces move.  I am not.  So I try to get those first!

This is how the game between M and S ended.  M won.

Once A Pawn A Time...

...I taught my boys to play chess using this cute game.  IJ, the insufferable know-it-all, got sent back to bed because he thought he knew it all (and he's going through this really sassy, disrespectful phase).  S patiently sat through the story of how all the pieces move and how to set up the board.  Then we played a game where I just barely beat him!

Now IJ is out of his room and the boys are playing against each other.  I hear them changing the rules, forgetting how pieces move, and "I got his king!" without hearing a "check" first.  The funniest thing I've heard is "Eegl-leegl-moo!" which is S-ish for illegal move.  And did you know that rooks screech as they go sliding across the board?  I have to go referee.  Things are getting crazy!

The Planets Align

Because I knew I would spend most of today attempting to reassemble my nest, I canceled school.  At the time where my little workers started to burn low on energy, I put on a movie to keep them from unraveling our hard work. 

"My Very Energetic Mother Just..."

We are watching The Universe on DVD from the library.  This show is targeted for an adult audience, but my little scientists are getting a lot of information for their little sponge brains.

"...Served Us..."

See what I mean about S and unschooling?

"Nine Pizzas!"

S built this solar system out of balls.  He likes to include Pluto even though it has been demoted to dwarf planet.  Let's take a closer look at Saturn:

Saturn with its Ring

I love the creativity.  Especially the use of the rifle.  Now I'm going to have to find a TV series on DNA and cloning for IJ.

My Savant & Eighteen Years & Baby Signs

"I can spell some words that end with Y. Say...may...nonentity...circuitry..." said S the other day. He looks like he is watching a blank television, but he is really listening to Mozart.
We celebrated M's eighteenth year of sobriety last Friday!

F started signing over the weekend!
She will sign "milk" when she wants to nurse...but she uses two hands instead of one so she really looks like she is milking a cow! This is her sign for "I want up."

Passing the Peas and Passing Out

Where have I been, you ask? Wednesday morning I awoke to a tender breast which turned quickly into mastitis, leaving me feeling like I had a carpet pulled out from under my feet. I went from shivering so violently that I couldn't feel my fingers from the nerve damage to a temperature of 103.5! Thank God I have a good friend that came to take care of me and our six kids (collectively). She brought me medicine and water and made sure I went to the doctor instead of just sticking it out and I am now feeling much better. Of course when the mom is sick, the whole home falls apart. So I have been busy trying to catch up while remembering to take my meds... oops, missed one.

Baby F got her first taste of peas last night! No nasty Gerber peas for this little ogre! Frozen peas, pureed, are much much tastier and you can see by the look on her face that she really enjoyed them! So pass the peas, please! And early, early, this morning, like around 4:30, sweet E woke me up, woke the baby up, and decided she needed to sleep in my bed. I couldn't argue with her. My body still ached from the mastitis, I stayed up too late last night from sleeping so much on Wednesday and Thursday, so I just scooted over for her. Before I could get back to sleep, another voice echoed through my room... "I had a bad dream!" wailed S. "Oh, you poor thing," says M, "Here, get in bed with us. A, could you scoot over? You have plenty of room over there!" Keep in mind Baby F is in between us. And M had no idea E was on my other side. We were squished like sardines and no one went back to sleep...until now: And a big congratulations to M, who took his second level test for his second degree black belt last night. This was a huge test, especially since this is his busy time of year for surveys. He did a three kick combination for board breaking without putting his foot down once! His side kick (which was the second in the series) was so fast his foot got caught in the broken board as he pulled it back!

Latest Savant News.... Anyone remember S's special gift for knowing the ordinal position of every letter in the alphabet? The other day he said to me, "J plus J equals T." I say, "Huh?" and think for a second before I start counting letters on my fingers. (Start counting, I won't tell you the answer.) This morning, as we were watching Thomas the Train at 5:30, M turns to S and asks, "What's Thomas plus Percy?" We could see a smile start to creep over his face as he realized what game his dad was playing. He also knew Percy minus James equals Thomas. Can you figure out the game?

Oh, What a Crunchy Morning!

When Child #4 was two years old, he surprised me with his first savant talent. He was barely talking, yet he was able to identify every letter of the alphabet right side up as well as upside down. Yesterday we learned he has talent with racing video games. Today he presented me with a new savant ability. He was (once again) writing his alphabet on his Doodlepro, one letter at a time. He narrated, "And here is R." Erase board. Draw S. "Look at my S Mom, doesn't it look nice?" Hey, his S is facing the right way! Erase board. "And now T. The twentieth letter of the alphabet." The 20th letter? Is that right? I count on my fingers. Yes. "Which letter is the thirteenth?" No pause for counting. "M." "And the fifth?" "E." We continued in this fashion until I was convinced that he knew the position of every single letter of the alphabet! He stumbled on twenty-second because it doesn't sound like twenty-two, but he knew the letter! He loved this game so much he kept asking to play it again.

Child #3 woke up feeling even better today. His temp is down to 100.something. He knows he can watch lots of movies when he is sick and he is totally taking advantage of it. To the point where I won't let him watch another movie unless he eats something or takes a nap first. He still has dark circles under his eyes and looks very skinny, but he has turned the corner!

I woke up very early, thanks to my little girls (who were sleeping again by 6:00 am). I spent the morning indulging in crunchy living... washing cloth diapers and hanging them in the sun to dry, washing my hair with baking soda instead of shampoo, and eating eggs over organic homemade black beans and salsa instead of potatos O'Brien. The baking soda thing is my latest green living experiment. You should try it! My hair is soft and stays clean longer than it does with shampoo. Two days after my first baking soda wash, I showed Child #2 how clean my hair still was and she decided to try it out too. All you have to do is mix one tablespoon of baking soda in one cup of water, pour over your head, and rinse! Don't get it in your eyes; it stings! I hear people who use baking soda only have to wash their hair once a week and just use water on the other days. Sounds unbelivable to me, but I'll try it out. I'm not going anywhere anyway, right?