Just a quick update here. It's a little after midnight and by all rights, I really should head to bed pretty soon. I needed to get Lauren's bedclothes out of the washer, though, and over to the dryer. She apparently wet the bed last night and um...failed to mention it. Actually, she outright lied about it, but we're not going to go there. She is a CHRONIC liar, a trait which I don't care for one bit. I suppose it's a CYA sort of thing, but still, my tolerance for that is really quite low.
It's cooling down now, a nice 60-something outside and a bit of a breeze. Actually, I should head out and get some milk for the morning; maybe some eggs, too. With any luck, that will cost something LESS than $20. Anybody else noticing a slight uptick in groceries? Ok, anybody noticing the outright gouging and robbery at the grocery store? Milk is $5? Eggs are hovering close to $5, too? Doug reports, however, and Ben & Jerry's ice cream is way down. "I guess with the cost of real food going way up," he says, "They have to lower the price just to move product." Yeah, Family Fun magazine called me to renew our subscription the other day. I told them that I was sorry, but I was already canceling Family Handyman magazine, too, and the exterminating service we've contracted with since David was a couple of months old. (I wasn't happy with the cats attempting to catch and eat wolf spiders with a new baby around...call me paranoid. Yuck.) Told 'em good luck, but to call me when the economy got better. They weren't happy, but what are you going to do?
We went to the Science Center this weekend to see their "Monster" exhibit. It was mildly OK; mostly about the art and science of making movie monsters. They had a the huge crocodile used in the Peter Pan movie (2003) and you could move his tail; and they had several dinosaurs there that did particular things which you pressed certain buttons. The kids had fun with that; there was one baby T-rex as well that was moved only with cables instead of electronics. And there was a huge triceratops painted onto the back wall so you would size yourself up next to the dinosaur. Someone was obviously thrilled with that. As long as we were there, we re-upped with a membership, which expired two months ago. And we got $10 off, which works nicely. They even graced us with a nifty little backpack, so I can send that with David for his Science homeschool courses.
Speaking of which, today went quite well. We moved into a new unit of math, much to David's delight. The last unit was on time and calendars, and it's been a struggle. There's a real disconnect with him when it comes to relating the idea of "ten-thirty" being the same as "half past ten." Viewing the clock as whole and partial units isn't working well for him, we had to spend quite awhile on that one. So eventually he passes the series of tests on the whole thing and today we moved on to open and closed figured and Venn Diagrams. "Finally! Numbers!" he says with relief. We made figures out of pipe cleaners and did Venn Diagrams with colored counters. He was already familiar with the concept through the Cyberchase program. I'll probably end up using some of their
website games with it, too.
We read a poem about a sick little kid who plays with toys in bed to keep entertained. One of the questions to ask the kid is if THEY have ever made a small city or scene during play, maybe on a rug or in the bathtub, etc. I thought David would think this was boring, but instead his eyes lit up and he just reveled in the realization that, yes, he had done just that exact thing! I guess there's not much connection between what an author may write about and your own personal experience. Hmmm.
We finished
Dinosaurs Before Dark. a new series I stumbled onto at Barnes and Noble. These were written by a former first grade teacher, and I have David read them out loud. He still has trouble reading; if he sees "saw" he inevitably says "was," and "very" is always "every." The world "felt" is always "left," too. So sometimes a chapter can be quite difficult to get through.
Science was the typical Scientific Method recap, and an experiment on melting ice cubes. And of course, the box turtle.
The box turtle showed up when David busted into the house with "MOM! THERE'S A TURTLE IN OUR BACK YARD!"
Indeed. There seemed to be. A Box Turtle, in fact. We had a lovely time examining him, though I'm not so sure he was so happy about the examinations. Unable to control myself, of course, this became an impromptu fact-finding mission regarding Box Turtles.
We learned where they live and especially what they eat. (Flowers, roots, worms, snails, slugs, some types of rodents, birds, fish, snakes and other insects.) Young Box Turtles (actually a type of tortoise) eat more protein. The older they get, the more plant matter they eat, but they don't like green leaves, apparently.
Thinking of all this good information, we decided to try and feed the turtle. What to feed him? Some lettuce from the crisper? Yellow clover flowers? No, apparently, Box Turtles like cold sausage from the fridge:
Oh my, yes, they do.
