Non-Newtonian Fluids




We're playing with them again today. Several times a year, it seems, the boys ask me to whip some up.

If you're not familiar, check out this YouTube video.


It's a simple suspension of corn starch and water that changes back and forth from a liquid to a solid. You can pick it up like a ball, but then it goes gooey and drips like a liquid.

The Mad Tea Party

It was a roaring success (photos!)! I was half-afraid that only the children of the folks who helped plan the party would show up, but there were so many kids and parents that I hadn't met before, and I had a wonderful time getting to know them all.

Our dress-up box full of play silks, leftover pieces of material, my husband's old sport coats, and odds and ends was very popular. The kids had fun dressing up as clowns and princesses, and they mixed and matched the play clothes in charming and imaginative ways.

The food was wonderful, and everyone really came through, helping out through donations, preparing wonderful food and drink, and helping set up the table beforehand, and clean up afterward. We ended up with some leftovers, but remarkably few, considering the amount of food we had on hand.

We also had loads of activities available for the kids. We had a coloring area where the children could color "stained glass" scenes from Alice in Wonderland, a musical instrument area, a train set for the smaller children to play with, chess sets available for children, whether they already knew how to play, or wanted to learn, and Alice in Wonderland tattoos were applied by one of the adult planners. Another planner helped the kids play Pin the Tail on the Cheshire Cat. My husband also set up a projector on the stage which played the Disney version of Alice in Wonderland throughout the party, with the sound very low so that it didn't dominate the kids' attention. I think they all had a wonderful time.

It was lots of work, and I was exhausted by the time the clean-up was done, but the rewards were sweet. I'm already thinking about a fall evening party out in our yard. I must be crazy.

Rhetoric


Mom, can I have these scented markers?

Do you have money for them?

No, but I thought you could buy them for me as a supply for my art.

Jonathan, we have markers at home, sweety.

Yeah, but do any of them smell like dragon's blood?!?!!

...

Well?

OK, throw them in the cart.




Jonathan, is it a good idea to have markers up in bed when it's your time to get some reading in before bedtime?

Well, I was just translating the chorus of Jabberwocky into Dragonese.

Well. Um. OK. Carry on.

Things They Teach Me (a continuing series)

A female ballet dancer is called a ballerina, but what's a male ballet dancer called?

A danseur.

Who knew?

How I Find Jonathan Most Nights



Jonathan's always been a voracious reader, but these last few years, since he moved into his own bedroom, he's been staying up late into the wee hours, reading himself to sleep. He can do it without disturbing the rest of us (late night bursts of laughter aside) now that he has his own room. I came home from Dog Club around 11PM and was surprised to find him already asleep, his latest dragon tome by his side, of course.

Mad Tea Party

Jonathan has been reading our big Lewis Carroll book for the last year or so. Every once in a while he goes on a jag and I find him reading it every day for a week. I think he's read the whole thing several times, but he keeps coming back to it. I can't blame him; it's fascinating to me, too.

We've decided to have a Mad Tea Not-Back-To-School Party on August 25th, and we've decided to invite the schooled kids on the mountain, too, because we're inclusive like that, don't you know. We'll be having it up at the local community center, and have amassed quite a pile of crazy hats, Chinese lanterns, coloring pages, mismatched china (from Good Will, of course), bud vases, Alice in Wonderland tattoos (believe it or not), and tea sandwich recipes.

In preparation for the big day, we've read the pertinent chapter repeatedly, and the boys have gone on an Alice movie-thon. One of the things they want to do at the party is taken from the famous scene in the movie in which The Hatter tries to fix his watch by smearing it with butter and mustard and then proceeds to smash it to bits. I don't know how we're going to make that happen for them, but they've taken the first step into their own hands:

A pocket watch made from two yogurt lids and a strip of packing tape


With gears inside, naturally

Dan has suggested a rubber mallet for the smashing. Or perhaps Nerf makes something for these kinds of occasions? And I suppose we'll need smocks for the flying mustard and butter. ::sigh::

Creative Math

Jonathan's been reading The Sorcerer's Companion, a companion book to the Harry Potter books (which he has been devouring at the rate of one book per day--night, really--over the last week). For the past few days, he's been figuring out arithmancy charts for all of us, all of the pets, his Bionicle guys, etc. It entails ascribing each letter of a person's (or animal's, or toy's) name a value, adding the values in an arcane and labyrinthine way, reducing those addends, and then looking up the "meaning" in three different areas (social, heart, and character) to derive a personality sketch.

He's adding up these looooong strings of numbers and doing all of this math that's much more involved than anything we've done in our "lessons" and beyond that, he's enjoying it, doing it for hours on end, and, obviously, not complaining about it one bit.

So then I bought him this book, and he's in love with it.

I think I'm on to something, here.

Bionicles

Jonathan likes entering his Bionicle creations into contests on the Bionicle forum he visits, and also on the official LEGO website. He takes photos of them and submits them online. One of the latest tableaus:

I love the focus on the little guy, front center.

He also likes photographing the patterns that he makes with his math manipulatives:

He had to alter the bottom because he ran into the edge of the table

He works on these for sometimes hours at a time, arranging and rearranging them, trying to use up every block, experimenting with different kinds of symmetry. I love looking at them; they're so intricate.

Summer Time

And the living's easy.

Yesterday was summer solstice and now the days are getting shorter. The big brothers have had their yearly reviews turned into the school board and are enjoying these long summer days outdoors. It's unseasonably cool and we haven't had many scorchers as yet, so I head outside as often as I can, myself.

We have no plans for the summer except to enjoy each other and our occasional visitors. My mother arrives next week and is staying until late July. My sister and her husband will be here before the 4th of July and will be staying a week or two. The three of them will watch over the boys and the dogs and the cats and the hamster and my plants while Dan and I enjoy a week in Hawaii. Our 10th anniversary is coming up this fall, and by strange coincidence, his company offered to fly us both to Hawaii this summer, all on their dime. I can't seem to get excited about the trip, and that may have to do with never having been away from the boys before. I've only slept away from them one night, and that was after surgery. It will be strange to just be with Dan for a week, and in a new place. I think I may get more excited as the trip draws nearer.

I'm very happy with how far we've come in the last year. Benjamen is a bona fide reader, now, and seems to understand what he's reading, even when the sounding out gets labored. He loves science and history, but is good natured about learning in general. He's excited to be a reader and has been spelling things out in conversation instead of using the words. Nicholas has taken to mocking him, but makes up his own spellings, so we have to guess at what he means. Jonathan is devouring literature at his normal break-neck pace, and is always excited about a trip to the library, as are all of the boys. Benjamen actually listed the library on his birthday list of places he wanted to go that day. We spent a wonderful morning quietly reading and stacking up towering piles of books to take home with us. Nicholas, too, has shown more interest in letters and spelling, constantly asking me how to spell things, arranging and rearranging the magnetic letters on the refrigerator, and sitting down to draw and write for a little while almost every day. He'll be five next week, and I just don't know where the years have gone.

End of January

Tomorrow is the first day of February and I'm feeling the need to take stock for some reason--maybe because I haven't been keeping a very detailed record here of what we've been up to. To make it easy on myself, I'll go through the "subjects" and try to explain where we are.

Math

Jonathan is more than half-way through his chosen course of study (Saxon), and with three lessons per week (down from five) he's on track to be finished by the first of June. He doesn't love math, but when I suggest we can it, he's horrified by the idea. We're working on multiplication, which he picks up well (he's got a great memory for facts), temperature (F and C) standard and nonstandard measurement, geometry, written problems, graphing, and money, among other things. He does love the supplemental math books (Anno books and others that I pull from the library) and pours over them for pleasure. He's also getting alot of mileage out of those Cyberchase programs on PBS and the Jumpstart (and other computer) programs.

Benjamen, too, is more than half-way through his Saxon math, and with three lessons per week will be done in early May, I think. He seems to enjoy math more than his brother does, and is proud of his progress. He is doing single-digit addition and subtraction, calendar work, graphing, measuring, money, simple geometry, and math sentences, among other things. He loves the videos and videogames, as well.

Reading

Jonathan continues to devour literature. I haven't been keeping a list of his reading this year, but I would say that he's reading with the same interest and at the same pace as in the past. He's currently reading Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories, and enjoying them thoroughly. Last year he was reading Encyclopedia Brown, so that primed him for the Holmes series, I think. He also reads his supplementary history and science books with pleasure, enjoying the stories and myths moreso than what he calls "fact books". He loves the Eyewitness books, though, so go figure. He does enjoy an interesting and well-written biography, but so few of them are well written.

Benjamen is a full-fledged reader, now. We're almost done (lesson 86, I think?) with 100 Easy Lessons (which we have been doing whenever we feel the urge), and I question whether we really need to finish, but he enjoys the stories and is very proud of himself after each lesson. We read something history- or science-related every day, in addition to other stories and a story or two before bed. We're working our way through the Little House books at night and are reading On the Banks of Plum Creek, at the moment. Their Papa reads them other books of their choice before bed, too.

Writing

Jonathan's only writing practice is in other lessons throughout the day. His knowledge of grammar and the mechanics of writing exceed my own in some ways, and I don't see any need for creating assignments for him when he grasps so much intuitively. He writes books and stories, writes dialogue for his comics, and writes in his blog. We practice cursive when he shows interest, and he can copy all of his letters beautifully, though he doesn't show very much interest in mastering them or using them, at the moment.

Benjamen has writing practice attached to his reading lessons, grammar lessons, spelling, and even his math. We don't do anything extra, other than the writing that comes up in our daily life (writing letters to Gramma, labeling drawings, writing notes to his brothers and parents, etc.). I think his handwriting is beautiful, and he's very proud of it, himself.

Grammar

Jonathan doesn't really need lessons in grammar. I think he could teach a grammar course at the high school level. He's finished grammar lessons many grades ahead of his age and reads my college grammar texts (The Deluxe Transitive Vampire is a favorite) for fun. Still, we do pointed lessons whenever he asks, and those are a favorite; I think because they are so easy for him, and he always says at the end of the lesson, "I'm really good at grammar." He seems to have intuited most of the rules from his daily reading, and amazes me with the depth and breadth of his knowledge. I'm trying to explain to him that correcting the grammar of our acquaintances is considered rude, but he doesn't quite get it. He thinks he's being helpful. The whole time my mother was here, he kept asking her why she referred to herself in the third person and why she used double negatives, etc. She took it well, but not many people do.

Benjamen and I do fun grammar most days. He picks up much of it, but some of it goes over his head. He's only just started reading in the last year or so, and much of what escapes him will come with more exposure to reading, I think. In some ways, I think the lessons are somewhat pointless, but he enjoys them and so we continue. The mostly consist of talking, reading stories together, discussing different concepts contained in the reading, writing out some sentences he makes up which illustrate the lesson or him copying a sentence I write, that kind of thing.

Spelling

Jonathan is several grades ahead of his age in spelling lessons and rarely has any trouble spelling the weekly list of words before he's studied them. If he spells them without problem on the first day (Monday) he does lessons or doesn't do them, as he wishes, throughout the week. If he has a problem spelling words on the first day before having looked them over, he works through an activity each day and is spelling them easily by week's end. I think this is the last spelling book I'll buy for him as they seem to be a waste of time and money. I much prefer keeping a running list of words he misspells in his daily writings and working from there.

Benjamen has taken his first stabs at spelling this year and while he, naturally, didn't know how to spell much of anything beyond cat and dog in August, he's really caught on quickly and can spell many of the spelling words on the first day without having looked them over. I'm impressed with how far he's come and how quickly. He seems to have an affiinity for spelling, like his brother.

Latin

We're getting into serious Latin territory with conjugations and declensions and translating sentences. Jonathan is doing well with it, and his interest comes and goes with the level of difficulty he's facing. He generally shrinks from a challenge only to come back to it in his own time. He knows so much, though, and his recall is amazing. I'm honored to help him in the little ways that I can.

Benjamen shows a little bit of interest in what we're doing, and I include him as he shows interest. I don't really know how much he has absorbed, but he seems to be maintaining the same low-level interest for the last many months. Mostly I think he likes the way it sounds to hear us going through our paradigms.

History

We're moving through late Renaissance/early Modern era history, at the moment. We're currently investigating the attack by the Ottoman Turks on Vienna (a battle which started on September 11th, by the way). We generally set aside time for history on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday afternoons. On Mondays we read the story and find the regions on the world map. We talk about what we've read and color illustrations relating to the chapter. On Wednesdays we read supplementary books from the library and discuss them. On Fridays we do more reading and do activities relating to the reading. This week we made Turkish Delight, for example, and in researching it, found that it's one of the oldest confections in the world. We also researched the origin of the name and found that Turkish Delight is a pretty faithful translation of the its Turkish name, lokum, from rahat-al hulkum, which means a piece of contentment.


We all do history together, and I make adjustments for the little boys, reading stories to them, while Jonathan reads on his own, printing out coloring pages for them to do after we look at maps together, and putting more focus on the fun activities than the historic details.

Science

Jonathan has been plowing through his chemistry experiments. We've started our 2nd book of chemistry experiments, which include an experiment that demonstrates a concept, vocabulary words and their definitions, and an explanation of the principles at work. The experiments use everyday household items, are usually quick and easy, and they demonstrate pretty nifty concepts. He's enjoying it immensely and has been using supplemental experiment books to explore on his own. Yesterday I found him stacking sugar cubes on top of a puddle of food coloring in a little platter in the kitchen, watching the dye travel up the cubes as the bottom cube dissintegrated and the whole tower toppled.

Benjamen and I did a bit of zoology throughout this past year, and I got to watch his love of animals grow. We started with worms and moved all the way through to higher mammals. We would start with a science text, watch movies about the different critters, read supplemental books, and talk all about them. We're "supposed" to be doing anatomy since Christmas, but we've extended our zoological studies and will move on when his enthusiasm for all things mammalian wanes. I think our investigations may have been behind his determination to obtain another cat around Christmastime. He enlisted his brothers' help in saving up and combining their allowances until they had enough to purchase a kitten, and they also scooped the litter boxes for our own two cats every day for months to prove that they would care for a new cat properly. Her name is O'Reilly:




Music

Jonathan continues to study composers fromt he periods/countries that we investigate historically. He dabbles with our musical instruments but hasn't show enthusiasm for any instrument in particular.

Benajmen, on the other hand, loves every instrument he picks up and asked for a guitar for his last birthday. We've also started working through an Usborne piano course book together, and he looks forward to it more than anything else, I think.

Art

The boys direct their own artistic pursuits every day and I try to manage the paper consumption and storage as best I can. We have watercolors and colored pencils and markers and crayons, all out for their consumption and they move through them regularly. We also do some more formal lessons when they ask for them, and Jonathan is reading through biographies of major artists. We also rent movies from the library on the artists' lives and the boys enjoy them.

Social Studies

The only formal way that I approach social studies is to borrow books from the library a few weeks before every holiday and make a point of including them in reading time. We talk about holidays and other social customs in the course of living our lives, discuss the different people we meet, cover geography and other societies in the course of our history, and generally cover most of the aspects of social studies informally.

How We Learn To Count Backward By Even and Odd Numbers

I was having gall bladder attacks prior to the holidays (since Halloween) and then had surgery on the solstice, which accounts for some of my slacking here.

Today Benjamen and I are counting backward by even and odd numbers. We mostly do it because it's fun, and it's fun because of a song I found years and years ago. Jonathan picked up counting backwards by evens and odds effortlessly and Benjamen looks to be picking it up likewise.

The song is a recording of Michael Stipe and Natalie Merchant singing "The Counting Song"a capella at a club in 1987. Here are the words:

The Counting Song

On yonder hill there lives a lassy
And her name I do not know.
One fine day I'm going to find her
Whether she be rich or poor.

Round and round on the wheel of fortune
Round and round, turn the wheel in me.
Young women's hearts are so uncertain
Sad experience teaches me.

19, 17, 15, 13,
11, 9, 7, and a 5, 3, 1
20, 18, 16, 14,
12, 10, 8, 6, 4, 2, none.

Lassy, I've got gold and silver;
Lassy, I've got gooses and land.
Lassy, I've got ships on the ocean,
All to sail at your command.

Round and round on the wheels of fortune
Round and round, turn the wheel for me.
Young women's hearts are so uncertain
Sad experience teaches me.

19, 17, 15, 13,
11, 9, 7, and a 5, 3, 1
20, 18, 16, 14,
12, 10, 8, 6, 4, 2, none.

Round and round on the wheels of fortune
Round and round, turn the wheel in me.
Young women's hearts are so uncertain
Sad experience teaches me.

I don't want your gold your silver,
I don't want your gooses your land.
I don't want your ships on the ocean,
All I want is a good young man.

19, 17, 15, 13,
11, 9, 7, and a 5, 3, 1
20, 18, 16, 14,
12, 10, 8, 6, 4, 2, none.

Round and round on the wheels of fortune
Round and round, turn the wheel in me.
Young women's hearts are so uncertain
Sad experience teaches me.

It's lovely, and I have it saved as an MP3, if anyone would like to hear it.