Germany

April, at last

welcome mat

March was really a long month, full of planned and abrupt schedule changes.  A beloved grandmother, “The Peach” passed on (so many tears) – a cousin got married (adorable) – an iPad got lost in the TSA security screening at LAX (oh no, oh no, oh no) – and there was the daylight-savings time switch (ugh).  Not a dream month for an autism family, but STUDIES AND STORIES times were a constant, and that helped.

happy faceTSAhappy face

The “Lost and Found” department – this was a new concept for my son. (What? Hotels, schools, grocery stores, gas stations and the like are equipped to deal with people losing things?????  This is so handy!)  And happy, happy day!  The lost iPad turned up within 24 hours in the TSA “Lost and Found” office, and with a minimum of paperwork, was in a box on its way to our home in Texas.  Cheers cheers cheers TSA!  Their lost and found system really works!  Excellent!

geography books.jpg

Reporting from “The Cities Book” (a Lonely Planet publication) – reading about two cities per night, we are one third of the way through this book – the locations are presented in alphabetical order and we are just about through the “K’s”.  We scamper all over our globe finding each night’s destinations (this is actually kind of fun).  We are also interested in each city’s:

Primary Exports – some of the better conversation starters:
– Asmara, Eritrea – salt
– Baku, Azerbaijan – pomegranate juice
– Hamburg, Germany – Steinway pianos
– all cities on the equator – coffee

Observed Weaknesses – again, some of the better conversation starters:
– Ashgabat, Turkmenistan – bugged hotel rooms (yikes)
– Dhaka, Bangladesh – polluted waterways (yikes)
– Christchurch, New Zealand – situated on a major tectonic fault line (yikes)
– Florence, Italy – pigeons everywhere (yikes)

More geography – “The Philippines, Islands of Enchantment”, by Yuson and Tapan.  Side story:  It would be impossible to find a kinder heart, a more dedicated worker, a more mechanically adept young man than the super fantastic Ogie M, who cared for “The Peach” (grandmother supreme) for the final 10 years of her life.  Upon her recent passing, Ogie returned to his family in the Philippines.  So this has propelled my son and I to begin a Philippines unit with a book filled with beautiful photographs and decided opinions (this is not a “let’s pretend everything is perfect” book).  We are getting our first glimpse of this tropical paradise of 80 dialects (vocab) and 7,000 islands.

violin book

We thought we knew about violins.  We knew NOTHING.  This is changing:  we are reading “The Violin Maker”, by John Marchese.  Every night we get smarter and smarter, learning about:

– Cremona, Italy, home to Stradivari and Guarneri, rival luthiers (vocab) of the early 1700’s who produced stringed instruments of astounding quality that remain highly sought after and extremely valuable to this day.
– Sam Zygmuntowicz, recognized expert violin maker and stringed instrument historian extraordinaire.
– The Emerson String Quartet (or “ The Emerson”), and specifically, quartet member Eugene Drucker for whom Sam Z has been commissioned to create a violin.
– Bach’s compositions for the violin – and most emphatically stressed, the final movement of the Partita No. 2 in D minor, “the Chaconne” (composed around 1720).  This piece is the gold standard for the crushing relentlessness of loss, despair, and grief – I think my son and I are a bit too immature for this, but we did give it a try (and we listened to the best):    

 

Classical Music Time – well, duh, we had to listen to more music that showcased the violin:

From The Emerson String Quartet –  we always like listening to The Emerson’s (we are so in-the-know now) recording of Alexander Borodin’s “String Quartet No. 2 in D”, composed in 1881 (perhaps better known as music used in the 1953 American musical, “Kismet”, for which Borodin won a Tony, posthumously (vocab)):

The perfection of a performance by Itzhak Perlman – when we are tired, Max Bruch’s “Scottish Fantasy” (1880), movement 1, soothes us:

Thank you good friend Amy S for suggesting that my son and I would love “Song to the Moon” from Dvorak’s “Rusalka” (1900).  The performance by Joshua Bell clutches our hearts:

Welcome to the best part of my day!
– Jane BH

Tick, Tick, Tick

stopwatch

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 –

tick tick books

  • 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 2     water buffalo

– 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?).

TOMS

  • “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 – 

Tom Gates books

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 – 

rio logo new

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)