Month: May 2016

Bee Plus!

Let’s pretend that you need to brush up on your knowledge of bees. May we suggest, “The Life and Times of the Honeybee” by Charles Micucci? This sort of looks like a little kids book, but every single page intrigues with surprising information – my son and I were amazed to learn that a colony of 10,000 to 60,000 bees includes only 100 male bees (the drones)…Those worker bees flitting about in gardens? The bees that sting you? The bees that make the honey? ALL female. So my son and I worked the ratios – if there are 100 males and 10,000 in the colony, the ratio of male to female is 1:100. If there are 100 males and 60,000 in the colony, the ratio is 1:600. (This ratio reminded me of the Jan and Dean hit of 1963, “Surf City” – which starts out “Two Girls for Every Boy” – so I forced my son to view a video of Jan and Dean on The Steve Allen Show. I don’t think I can get him to watch this again.)

But back to “The Life and Times of the Honeybee” – we give this bee book an A!

Blood, blood, and more blood (gross overstatement) – Just last night we were reading through “The Usborne Complete Book of the Microscope”, learning the difference between optical (vocab) and electron (vocab) microscopes. Well! This morning at a doctor’s appointment, we saw a sample of my son’s blood through the mechanism of an electron microscope! Perfect timing! The computer screen view was fascinating – from a pinprick of of blood on the glass slide, the jillions of red blood cells were so easy to see. Fabulous technology.

The Hand Thump of Appreciation – Sometimes when I read to my son and I think he is dozing off, I consider stopping for the night – and then the HAND THUMP OF APPRECIATION happens. Just as I am about to shut the book, my son’s hand comes crashing down on the page of the book, inferring VEHEMENTLY, “this is cool. KEEP READING”. This happened last night – we were reading the multi-award winning “Escape from Mr. Lemoncello’s Library” by Chris Grabenstein (a group of 12 lucky kids win the opportunity to spend the night in eccentric Mr. Lemoncello’s brand new city library). Apparently my son is really enjoying the book! YES. Happy day.

Story Problem Alert! Farmer Brown raises bees! Of course he does. This past week Farmer Brown purchased new beekeeper outfits for two of his ranch hands. A complete suit costs $109. One of the ranch workers needs the 4XL size, which runs and additional $25. Farmer Brown decided to buy an additional veiled helmet for just in case. The helmet costs $24 and the veil $20. How much will Farmer Brown spend on the new protective wear? (We are not adding in tax or shipping.) (Answer A at bottom of post). If Farmer Brown sells a pint of honey for $5, how many pint jars will he need to sell to pay for the new beekeeper outfits? (Answer B at bottom of post)

A soundtrack for worker bees – Our picks:

“Moto Perpetuo” composed by violin virtuoso, Niccolo Paganini, in 1835. This is an exhausting piece to play and reminds us of the field bee’s exhausting day – about 10 journeys a day to collect nectar and pollen, with each trip lasting about an hour.

“The Pizzicato”, from Leo Delibes’ ballet “Sylvia” (1876). We learned that the bee’s most important contribution is not the honey, but the service of pollination. We can easily envision a bee delicately darting from flower to flower, pollinating away to the rhythm of this piece.

And of course, Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Flight of the Bumblebee”, written for his opera “Tsar Saltan” in 1899. Well, this is perhaps too obvious a choice, but it is a tiny jewel of a masterpiece, and it belongs here. We like this performance by the London Cello Orchestra, boasting the largest number of cellos that we have ever seen together.

Welcome to the best part of my day!
– Jane BH
A. $287
B. 58 jars

Riveting!

Our current history unit is riveting – or more precisely, it’s about rivets. We are reading about the blue jeans empire of Levi Strauss & Company, (“Images of America – Levi Strauss & Co.” by historian Lynn Downey). We’ve learned that Levi Strauss, of San Francisco, teamed with tailor, Jacob Davis, in 1873 to manufacture an extra-hard-wearing work pant – the key to their immense success was their patented rivets-on-the-corners-of-the-pockets design. But this unit is giving us an opportunity to learn more than just about the jeans: we’ve talked about why Levi Strauss was said to have haled from Bavaria (not Germany) (actually we learned about this from our previous study on Otto von Bismarck), we’ve learned about the devastating San Francisco earthquake of 1906, we’ve learned what “dry goods” are, we’ve looked at print advertising of the early 1900’s AND we’ve learned about rivets. Another great study unit!

TRAVEL BARGAIN! 13,000 extra miles for $4.00! I often purchase our books via the “used book associate sellers” on Amazon. (It is amazing how many books I have purchased for 1 penny, plus shipping.) I usually look to see where the seller is located so I can gauge how long it might take to receive the book. Last week I ordered a series of “Tom Gates” books from what I thought was a seller in Indiana. What a surprise to find out that I ordered the series from a seller in INDIA!!! Crazily, the shipping cost for 7 books was a mere $4.00 and I received the order within a week. A+ on all levels! Before we cracked open the first book, we got out the globe, located both Indiana and India, had a small laugh over the 13,000 mile distance, then we traced the route the books may have taken from India to reach us in Texas.

A mintylicious story problem from Le Fictitious Local Diner – the diner has plans to serve up after-dinner mints with the check at the end of every meal. The question is, which mints? The busboys are voting for “Andes Mints” (primarily because one of the busboys is named “Andy”, and wouldn’t that be a riot?). The waitresses think “After Eight” mints are much classier. The diner’s accountant told the staff that it is the thought that counts and strongly suggested they purchase the most cost efficient (cheapest) (vocab) mint. So:
After Eight Mints – each box contains 25 mints. A package of 6 boxes sells for $22.
Andes Mints – 5 pounds of Andes Mints can be purchased for $34. There are 70 mints in each pound.

A. How much does a single mint of each type cost (we learned about “rounding up”)?
B. The diner is going with the least expensive mint. If 700 hundred dinners are served per week, and each will conclude with a mint, how much will the diner be spending on mints per month? (we are not including tax or shipping costs)(answers at bottom of post)

“The Lute Player” by Caravaggio, with sheet music by Jacques Arcadelt. Whoa.

Three Hymns from One – As I have mentioned previously, my son and I listen to music of an ecclesiastical nature on Sunday nights. This past Sunday night we followed the path of a hymn written in the mid-1500s by Jacques Arcadelt.

First, Arcadelt’s “Ave Maria“. We are not sure who is singing here, but the acoustics of the Joy Burns Plaza are insanely effective. A LOT of sound from 4 vocalists:

Next, the finale to Camille Saint-Saens’ “Symphony No. 3 in C minor” (the “Organ Symphony”), composed in 1886. Of this symphony, Saint-Saens wrote “I gave everything to it I was able to give. What I have here accomplished, I will never achieve again.” Doesn’t this make you desperate to have a listen? Of course, we sort of always like to hear any piece played on a gigantic pipe organ. We clearly hear Arcadelt’s hymn in this piece:

Finally, we listened to Jean Sibelius’ “Finlandia Hymn”, a small part of his 9-minute “Finlandia” composition. Again, we hear the influence of Arcadelt’s “Ave Maria”. “Finlandia” was written in 1899, and words to the hymn portion in 1941. My son and I are suckers for flashmobs – a train station in Finland is the setting for this wonderful event:

We also wanted to hear the entire “Finlandia” composition. This recording came from the opening performance of the new music hall in Helsinki, 2011. The hymn starts about 5 minutes 30 seconds into the piece (alert: the piece is rather menacing in the beginning – the message is clearly “Don’t Mess with Finland”). Stirring:

Welcome to the best part of my day.
– Jane BH
Story problem answers:
A. each Andes mint costs approximately 10 cents, each After Eight mint costs approximately 15 cents
B. $272

Tick, Tick, Tick

There has been a rather large time gap since my last post – I was doing the single-parenting thing last week (subsequently couldn’t summon up energy to write) while my husband visited his sweet mom in CA. But he is back, so I am back. Here is what my son and I have been learning about –

Bison! Our primary take-away from this mini-mini-study was acknowledging that what we have in the United States are bison NOT buffalo (such a bummer for the “Home on the Range” song). We would like to know more about bison – regrettably, our book, though chock full of excellent photographs, was not chock full of information. I will be on the lookout for a more fact filled resource.

– Bison to the left, Buffalo to the right –

Otto von Bismarck: very strong personality, probably responsible for unifying Germany during the latter half of 19th century (so that is good), but still, he was a diabolical strategist with a very difficult personality. Our von Bismarck book was from the “Wicked History” series, and it did not disappoint. Well researched, well written, well edited. Excellent reading.
Shoe Business! We are reading our first business book, “Start Something that Matters” by Blake Mycoskie, of the inspiring TOMS (“tomorrow’s shoes”) win-win movement. We think Mr. Mycoskie has it so right! To enhance this learning unit, I brought my TOMS shoes to the “Stories and Studies Center” (my son’s large bed) (who wouldn’t want a stack of well worn shoes on their bed?).

“The History of Music in Fifty Instruments“, by Philip Wilkinson: a good conversation starter book. We are picking and choosing what we are reading (some stuff is just too mind numbingly technical), but this book is well worth wading through because we have learned about THE UGLIEST MUSICAL INSTRUMENT EVER – the serpent. OH, IT IS SO CREEPY. Take a look and take a listen:

(note to daughter, HKH: I am just so hoping that we won’t be booking this type of music for your wedding reception.)

New topic –

Here’s what’s fun: the Tom Gates books, written by Liz Pichon; we are in the middle of book 2 (“Tom Gates – Excellent Excuses”). The series is sort of a British take on Jeff Kinney’s “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” (which we also really like) and has got us matching British words with their American counterpart: mate=friend, biscuit=cookie, crisps=potato chips, dodgy=not good, rubbish=the worst. Tom doodles all over the place, despises his sister, calls his grandparents “the Fossils”, and worships the rock band, “Dude3” (every time I read the band name I laugh). We like opening this book every night.

Beginning to think about the upcoming summer Olympics –

Story problem from Le Fictitious Local Diner – the local junior high school is seeking to bolster funds for their foreign language department so the diner has been coerced (vocab) into sponsoring a raffle (vocab), with the first prize being two first-class round-trip (concept) plane tickets to the summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro! If each plane ticket costs $1,500, and if the diner is hoping to contribute $2,000 to the foreign language department, how many $5 raffle tickets will need to be sold? (answer “A” at bottom of post).

– Oh my gosh, there’s more to this story problem: what if the airline can be persuaded to reduce the cost of the plane tickets by 20%, and what if the diner decides to try to up their contribution to $5,000. How many tickets need to be sold now? (answer”B” at bottom of post)

Classical music selections from last night – thinking about Brazil – we decided to cap off a discussion of the upcoming Olympics by listening to “The Little Train of Caipira”, written in 1930 by premiere Brazilian composer, Heitor Villa-Lobos. My son and I have listened to this delicious 5 minute gem about 75 times. Yeah, we like this piece.

First we listened to the recording we have on our iPod, from the Heidi Grant Murphy/Aureole “Sueño De Amor” (dreams of love) album. Soothing, flavorful, filled with yearning:

Then, an OUTSTANDING visual and auditory collage – music students in Brazil putting together “The Little Train of Caipira”. Did I say OUTSTANDING? I think I meant DOUBLE OUTSTANDING. Such a tribute to Villa-Lobos:

Then, what fun – from the fabulous Los Angeles Guitar Quartet , their version of “I Wanna Be Like You” (from “The Jungle Book”), orchestrated in the manner of Heitor Villa-Lobos:

Welcome to the best part of my day!
– Jane BH
(Story Problem A: 1,000)
(Story Problem B: 1,480)

Jane’s Cool School

My adult son has autism. He is non-verbal. This blog is about our learning-at-home program.

Month: May 2016

Bee Plus!

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Riveting!

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Tick, Tick, Tick

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