Library Day: What Are We Reading?

Today is Library Day...and there are ever so many things to research as always.

Top Topics To Hunt For This Week:

• Arizona Travel Tips (We're going for a weekend in March!)
• Watercolor Projects (I'm teaching a class for Middle and High School students.)
• Lego Ideas (Everyone's obsessed)
• Crystals (Today is Science Day...we had a gorgeous snowfall....and crystal study came to us)
• Gardening (The seed catalogs have started to arrive!!!! YAY!)
• Jewelry Making (We moved on from ice crystals to rock crystals and suddenly we were looking over our rock collections and pondering pendants.)

Epsom salts crystals....so pretty!

Crystals from our collection.

The winter time is the ideal time to library our little heads off. So much wonderful cozy, indoor enthusiasm and so much dark and snug time to read. Reading is one thing I'm really going to throw myself into again this year.

I had a less prolific reading year in 2014 and I miss it a lot. I have so many books on my list and a stack of them that are waiting in the wings on my bedside table but I need to knock a few of my in-process tomes out of the way first.

I'm currently reading:

The Rosie Project
Parent Effectiveness Training
The Bible's Cutting Room Floor
Sex at Dawn
The Gifts of Imperfection
Eating on the Wild Side

No duds in the batch...although some of are the type I need a break from periodically because they require some processing.

I Got To Be A Rock Star

Dee is having his own little biological adventure. I enrolled him in a little class five minutes from our house once a week that is all about the life and micro-life in the ocean near our house. He spent a week before the class telling me everyday that he wouldn't go, didn't want to be part of it and was really put out with me for registering him. He cried real tears. He stamped his feet. He begged his daddy to get him out of it. Every day he got less panicked though and by the time of the first class day he was reluctant but willing.

I was pretty sure he needed the little push into a personal adventure but it was a little tense tipping him over the edge while he complained so vigorously. I took him alone, Lucy stayed with the other boys and my little introvert and I walked down the long sidewalk to the museum building and by the time we got to the end of the long path, as we walked up the front steps he peeked up at me and said, "Its my class, Mommy. You can't come." and winked.

And that's how he came to be having his own little adventure. I tip-toed out while after he got picked to hold the turtle for his class. He was glowing and never looked my way once for reassuring, he had launched into his own little accomplishment. He's been attending weekly now and talks at home between classes about his favorite teacher and the things he's learning about the local fauna:

 "Ru, do you know that flounders are standing up when they are babies but then they become lying down fish."

"Nib, that's a sea star. It has water inside and no blood. Cool, right?"

"We have only 16 nitrogen in our water, Mommy. It is below 20 it is okay so ours is good."

So fun to see him feeling like a rock star and expanding in his own confidence. Makes me feel like a really award winning mom!

Windowsill Frog

A frog lives in my kitchen. Things you never saw coming, right?

He belongs to Dee. One of his first purchases with his own money from the new allowance we instituted this year. His name is Albert. He comes from Africa. He'll never grow larger than he is...just a tiny inch or so in size.

He loves to "burble" which is the fabulous name for floating zen-like, with his arms and legs extended, just being in the water.

He also hates eating that stupid pellet food they tried to sell us from the pet store. Teeny tiny worms are the way.

The window sill is getting pretty chilly, especially at night so I am off to get him a tiny little heater this afternoon. (Mama spoils house-frogs) and while I am at it, a pretty little plant for him and tiny cave to hide in might make into the purchase as well.

So fun to have living things in the house, and to watch which creatures each of the boys think are most  fascinating. Ru is more of a mammalian kind of guy at the moment. Loves to hold animals and listen to them communicate and try to teach them tricks. Dee loves the detail of this tiny amphibian, loves water animals (fish, tiny shrimps, jellyfish) and is also really taken with the insect world. Love being a household of science lovers! Go biology hobby!

Store Bought Spore Prints

Spore prints are super-fun mushroom art + biological wonder. I remember making them with my sisters when we were little, lots of little cups and bowls stolen from the cupboards and upended over whatever little mushrooms we had found that day, usually a rainbow of little toadstools spread across black and white construction paper. Mama is an inveterate mushroom hunter and carefully taught all six of us how to do spore prints for both identification and beauty.

Last year, I magpied a great teaching idea. of monthly themes for our homeschool when a friend shared that she picks one a month to guide her unschooling rabbit trail style. September's theme was "Mushrooms" which, granted sounds insane...(A whole month on mushrooms???)...but it was a solid pick folks.

• We're studying Egypt right now in history---Guess who ate mushrooms and thought they were only pharaoh level food!
• We read lots of books about mushrooms from the library including our current read-aloud, Flight To The Mushroom Planet, a silly, gentle, beginner sci-fi story from the 50's.
• We hiked our local parks and picked mushrooms as we found them, some to eat and some to just identify and poke apart on the dining room table.
• We read about how mushrooms grow and started three purchased oyster mushroom kits to grow our own in the basement. 
• We drew and painted mushrooms in art, talking about the anatomy as we went (cap, stalk, annulus...) and then we ended the month making spore prints to frame using store-bought portobello caps and I thought I'd share the process.

 First, remove the stem so you have a flat cap. Take care not to touch the gills (the part that looks like the pages of a book...as they are delicate and damaging them means a print that's less pretty.

 Lay each cap on a sheet of paper (white if you're using portobellos since they have dark spores) and then cover with bowls or cups to protect them from air currents that may disturb your design. Leave them to rest overnight.

 In the morning open up the covers and see what prints your caps have made. Portobellos have soft chocolate brown spores but mushrooms generally have all different colors and its fun to see the rainbow of results if you try it with random wild mushrooms.

Then, get out a magnifying glass and check out the micro-beauty of it all. Spores are miscroscopic and normally not visible to us, part of the minute detritus that we breath in and walk through along with the pollen and dust of the universe. Making spore prints is a chance to see them there, millions at a glance, in all their downy glory. The delicate outline of the gills is also super pretty, printed on the page like so many rays of shadow radiating around the stalk.

 

Girly Frog, Changes Clothes

 

Did you know frogs shed their skin????

Totally blown away by that, just a little fruit of my naptime research on Science Tuesday. The boys and I went out for a little hike this morning and found this beautiful she-frog. She's a "green frog" which is a real name, not just the obvious descriptor for her coloring. We found out she was a girl when we got home and did some digging. Girl green-frogs have a pale creamy belly (you can just see the edges of hers peeking out below her jaw), boys have a yellow throat. Lady green frogs also have an ear (that circle behind her eye) that is the same size as their eyes. Boy froggies have whopper ears. I wonder if they can hear better than the females. 

But yes...the skin. Frogs can breathe through their skin and drink through their skin and that's why they are slimey to the touch. They secrete a mucus to keep their delicate hides all perfectly in tune. If they can't drink or breathe because the works get clogged they'd be in major trouble...so they change outfits a lot...keeping their skin in perfect condition. When the old skin needs replacing they wiggle out of it (like a snake) and pull it over their heads with their front feet and then......

.....they eat it. 

Surreal, right? Nature. Its a trip.

Frogs In The Sunroom

It was a good day full of sunshine and warmth and scratching things off my list that I have been meaning to do for years. Like catching wild frog eggs with my sons!


Frogs are hard to see...harder if you are between 2 and 7 and prone to wiggles. BUT...I persevered with my stillness coaching and we saw frogs. Several of them, mostly males of different colors, brown and green with touches of gold and black trim and one that was a dark russet orange. I also saw one female, pregnant with a big poofy clutch of eggs. She dived before the boys could follow my pointing finger.



I thought we were out if luck looking for eggs though. None. Not one cluster. And then I started seeing them, tucked almost into the leaves, visible when your head was tilted just so, sunlight hitting to surface of the vernal pond in a certain way. Like a cluster of black pearls just below the surface.



The boys were curious and amazed and each had to feel them and ask 40 questions because 20 is for slackers. We put one cluster off glistening eggs into a plastic Superman bowl and filled a juice bottle with extra pond water for later and took them home.



And now there are teeny, little frog babies growing in a fishbowl in my sunroom! :) Happy Thursday to me!

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Wee Sculpters

Had to share these cool paper-mache sculptures the boys have been making. We've been studying birds in science and Ru had the bright idea to make models of some of the birds we've been reading about. They carefully sculpted and painted them themselves, using our big family bird book as reference. Mostly the littler boys are playing along while Ru and I read about birds together. Jolly times though, learning about how the blue jay's favorite food in the world is acorns and how long a cardinal lives vs a blue jay! Next up he has a plan to make a life sized model of a blue jay nest, complete with stones picked from the beach painted to look like songbird eggs. We may present at our local monthly homeschool sharing night!

How to Identify Trees

View up the trunk of a Tulip Tree.

Do you think trees are beautiful but feel clueless about how to tell them all apart? Maybe you didn't grow up in a "naturey" family or maybe you learned a few by osmosis in childhood (maple, oak, birch...etc.) but feel unimpressive at that level and stumped about going further. Maybe you're a homeschooling mama like me who wants to teach her kids the names of the trees she doesn't even know. Don't despair! You can do it!

American Beech meets the ground.

I am always teaching my little boys about how to identify trees. I think A gets a little annoyed sometimes by my, "Hold on! Look boys...what's this?" bunny trails when we're hiking or walking the neighborhood or on our way from the house to the car. The man deserves credit though....he keeps his mouth shut and lets me keep on with my perpetual, nature pop quiz.

Underside of a fallen White Oak leaf.

I love trees. Who doesn't really?!?  They feel important and warmly beautiful and they demand our attention.  Learning their names is a good way to feel like you're genuine friends. I often have people watch me identify a tree and then sigh and shake their heads, "That's amazing." they say... "I could never do that."

Truth is, they could. And so can you. Here are five steps. 

1. The best way to start is to pick one specific tree to learn. Choose a tree you have on your property or in your neighborhood, something you see all the time will jog your memory, give you more practice and help your new knowledge stick. I think the best way to learn a new tree when you're starting from scratch is to ask someone you know who knows about nature. Either have them pick one tree and show it to you or show them a tree you've selected. Its not cheating to have someone tell you the answer....its learning. That's how you start when you don't know anything yet! Use your network with no shame.

American beech leaves, all bronze after the frost.

2. Once you have the name of the tree...google like crazy! I use the internet all the time now for plant i.d. There is all kinds of information out there now and its all just waiting for you to use it! Type the name of the tree you found into Google and read about your tree. Type: "tips for identifying ___________" and fill in the blank with your tree's name. Read about the special things unique to that tree. Write down the list if you wanna be really comprehensive, if you're feeling fast and loose, try to remember one or two of the things you read. Some of the sciencey words used to describe the tree parts might be off-putting and unfamiliar...don't be cowed...google those too!

Nib sniffing leaves he found on a hike.

3. The next time you see "your tree" again stop for a minute and look at it for the special characteristics that you read about. Notice anything else you missed before. Look at the tree like its a person. Pretend you're a kid...generally fool around: notice how it feels and how it smells and what its shape is like. Smush up a leaf and notice the sap and the scent of the smashed greenery. Snap off a twig and put it in your pocket to look at later. Kick around under the tree and see if you can find any seed pods from it to bring home. If you think of it, take pictures.

Fallen, autumn Ginko biloba leaves.

4. Teach someone else about your tree. This is where kids are fabulously helpful. If you don't have kids...teach your grandchildren or a neighbor boy or a kid at the bus stop. Teaching other people passes on the knowledge that we have (very few people know how to identify a tree...most people will be impressed and will want to know what you tell them) and it is also the very best way to cement your own knowledge in your mind.

Tulip Tree seed pod.

5. Do it again! The more times you learn a new tree and go read about it the more technical, descriptive words for tree parts you will absorb and eventually you will be able to find a tree in the woods, type the characteristics into Google (deciduous, opposite leaves, glaucus buds, palmate leaf shape) and you'll have figured out the answer to a puzzle on your own! Its a tremendous feeling. Until then, remember:

• Practice makes perfect.
• There's no shame in making mistakes....its how we learn.
• Celebrate every victory! 

 Go be a nature genius! You've got it in you.

Learning How to Wiggle Our Ears

The giant maple tree in our side yard is fruiting out giant, slightly yellowed oyster mushrooms in a ruffled column high up on the trunk. We're finally getting a bunch of them after all summer without any luck, although unfortunately the tiny, rounded beetles that love oysters as well as I do did not go on vacation to Hawaii and so they are having themselves a buffet without so much as a by-your-leave. I wish I'd gotten a few of them too while they were still fresh and tender but I don't begrudge them their fair share of toughened, shoe-leather stage fungi. Nature is a beautiful thing, a little something for everyone.

The boys and I are watching a little How It's Made today. A fun rainy day indulgence. There are certain things I feel sludgy about my boys wading into for mindless entertainment (video games....argh!!!!) but I don't feel so terribly bad about this show. For one thing I also enjoy it so its more of a group activity and we stop it all the time to clarify points, quickly google rabbit trail questions (unschooling!) and add our comments which keeps it from getting too mind numbing. Today's clever piece of knowledge from the most recent episode:

Mainstream peanut butter contains trans-fats...they're added to make it a nice creamy consistency and be sure no oil rises to the top of the jar. "Natural peanut butter" is just peanut butter without trans-fats dumped in....and sometimes without sugar or salt.

I had no idea!

In other news...Ru has learned how to wiggle his ears! We're still working on tying his own shoes, reading smoothly, blowing bubbles from bubble gum and whistling but really, why get humdrum about life skills?!? He can learn those things later....when all the other chumps who never did learn how to wiggle their ears properly are trying to make up time. He's slightly magical really. I've asked him to give me ear wiggling lessons but apparently its a very subtle and mysterious art. He has yet to figure out how to explain what in the world he does to make them flap. Truth is, apparently..... he's not really sure. He says, "I just move my ear bones!" Duh.

Little Pom is grabbing things these days which is such a pleasing stage, so self-satisfied. He gloms onto handfuls of my hair, wads of clothing, things I'm trying to eat, ear bud cords, receipts and whatever else comes between his two grabbers. I think he loves the new power. Nothing like the ability to start controlling your own destiny...even if it starts in small territories like The Things One Chews On.

Seeds and Other Lessons

We are homeschooling apace! All kinds of fun things happening. We have been watching our mushroom kit bloom (Thank you Aunt Sheila!!!), talking about living on a planet, testing out reading maps, chanting the Spanish vowels, and revving up for learning about the ancient Mesopotamian culture. Life is busy and I am not sure I have entirely enough arms but I am slowly learning little tricks and beginning to visualize a Pom nap schedule emerging which is a really helpful thought. Love watching the boys learn and wonder and puzzle things out. Vicarious enjoyment is a really good invention.

Our big science project this week was a seed collection excursion and then the assembly of a collage of the goods. Artist mama got a little enthusiastic about the whole collage part and made it mixed media when she pulled out the pens and watercolors. Anybody know the name of the weed that grew that beautiful pointy round seed-head in the middle.

Hydrangea Sex

 

 The bee hive is taller than it used to be....a couple new levels on it since the nectar flow really kicked in hard. Now its almost over and all that's really left is the hot and heavy going on in our tree hydrangeas. Last year I talked here about how incredibly stunning these big, fluffy glamor queens are this time of year.

 

I noticed that the flowers faded faster this year and that our bigger, healthier hive was very busy swarming in and out and jetting to the fluffy blossom masses. Turns out there's a connection. The flowers fade and "turn" once they've been all pollinated. Its very possible that with our more mature population this summer the bees polished off the nectar flow and pollen distribution faster than last year.

 Kind of fun to think about our little hive making a noticeable difference in the local pollination.

I also noticed this year for the first time the anatomy of the hydrangeas. The "blooms" we notice and ply with ph to alter and sell at a fortune to fill out bridal bouquets everywhere aren't blooms at all. They're just bracts...fakey flowers with no real sexy flower body parts. They're all for show...just billboards to attract the insects. You have to look deeper to see the real goods beyond the advertising.

 

See those little star shaped flowers starting their lives as white pearls that are hiding in the inner core of the cluster? That's where its really at. Cool eh? Botany rocks my socks.