Science

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

High Five!

FIVE? Last night we were reading from “Information Graphics – Space”, and my son and I were startled to learn that there are 5 dwarf planets in our solar system. FIVE???? Of course, we knew about Pluto, but 4 others? Joining Pluto: Ceres (actually an asteroid, but so large that in 2006 it was designated a “dwarf planet”), Eris, Haumea, and Makemake. We learned more about these cuties via a Wikipedia search. And we want this poster!

Required Reading: We have finished reading “Eugene Bullard, World’s First Black Fighter Pilot” by Larry Greenly, and it deserves another shout out. Really! What this man (1895 – 1961) couldn’t do well. He wasn’t just the first black fighter pilot (WWI), he was a prize-winning boxer, an excellent drummer, a night club owner, a spy for the French Underground…he spoke excellent French (once serving as an interpreter for Louis Armstrong when he toured France) and passable German. Eugene Bullard was an American with a CAN DO attitude – who started from nothing and did everything. (This book also casts a wonderfully positive light on France. Quite refreshing.) This should be required reading, or at least an alternative choice for high schoolers struggling through “All Quiet on the Western Front”. A definite HIGH FIVE in the inspirational/motivational reading catagory.

To honor those who served in THE GREAT WAR, we read “In Flanders Field” by John McCrae, twice. (and I wept) (couldn’t help it) (just think what my kids have had to put up with).

On the lighter side: Last week we started playing HANGMAN. I am always looking for “normal” interactive games, and I think we have a hit with hangman. It was fun, and my son quickly figured out the words I had chosen (rabbit, waffle, dentist, cattle); words selected because one comes upon some of their key letters rapidly, if one is simply selecting letters alphabetically (you do know how to play hangman, right?). We’re playing again tonight.

Mid-Terms: Last Night my son took a multiple choice “mid-term” quiz and scored 100%! (I had typed up questions that touched on topics we have covered since January – e.e. cummings, Punxsutawney Phil, the doldrums, Catherine the Great, rodents, the French Foreign Legion, and Cleopatra.) Best of all, he demonstrated an understanding of how to take a multiple choice test – he no longer needs prompting to select the letter that goes with the correct answer. Yay! We are making progress!

Farmer Brown story problem: Farmer Brown had to travel out of state to attend a lecture on hay, and he traveled on a plane with recently refitted coach seats. The seats were luxurious and really comfortable for everyone under 5’6” tall. A large man himself, Farmer Brown noticed that 3/5 of the passengers were well over 5’6” tall. If there are 180 seats in coach, how many people were desperate to reach their destination, de-sardine their bodies and stretch their legs? (answer under signature at end of this post)

High in the Sky: we have just finished a study on enormously tall structures, and discussed whether we would be happy finding ourselves at the top of said tall buildings. My top height is the Empire State Building. My son indicated that he would be OK going to the top of that frighteningly half-mile-high Burj Khalifa in Dubai (which also boasts the world’s fastest elevator) (NOT A PLUS in my book). Kudos to those who will go where my genetics cannot.

A High Five to the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, who recently hosted a FREE performance for kids with autism. The auditorium was filled! Music Director Jaap van Zweden conducted Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony in C Minor – what a PERFECT choice – short, grand, majestic, deep (but uncomplicated) and polished from beginning to end. What a gift. My son and I decided that we needed to listen to Beethoven’s Fifth again. For added interest, I selected a different conductor for each of the movements.

Beethoven’s Fifth – movement 1, Leonard Bernstein conducting the Vienna Philharmonic (so, in other words, awesome):

Beethoven’s Fifth – movement 2, Jose Luis Gutierrez conducting the Carlos Chavez Youth Orchestra (good job for a youth orchestra, but excellent job for such a youthful conductor, I swear he looks 18):

Beethoven’s Fifth – movement 3 and 4 (difficult to find these filmed separately because the 4th movement commences without a pause from the conclusion of movement 3), this features conductor Paavo Jarvi conducting the Deutch Kammerphilharmonie Bremen:

Welcome to the best part of my day!
– Jane BH
(Farmer Brown story problem answer: 108)

Ranch Report

Ranch Report – this past week I spent two remarkably interesting days at the most wonderful gigantic cattle ranch smack in the middle of Texas (thanx to LynxAC: hostess/friend extraordinaire). I brought back photos and observations to share with my son:
– first of all, the calves are so so cute.
– the responsibilities of running a ranch are endless – purchasing, transporting, weighing, feeding, watering, and branding the cattle, keeping animals healthy, keeping the calves with their moms – it just doesn’t end. Good thing the scenery is so spectacular.
– the speed limit in mid-Texas is 75 MPH. Not that any self-respecting ranch truck is going that slowly. “Thundering down the road” sort of says it.
– there are no bushes growing around ranch buildings, because shrubbery provides places for snakes to hang out. We never stepped outside before scouting for snakes.
– internet connections are not to be counted on…like there is any time for internet meandering.
– this visit gave us a new appreciation of everything Farmer Brown (of the Farmer Brown story problems) does to maintain his farm.
– YES! The stars at night are big and bright, deep in the heart of the Lone Star State.

$math shark$

When the cat’s away – when I am gone, my husband takes over the studies and stories hour. He and my son concentrate on math activities and this past week they enjoyed measured success using a “Math Shark”, which can ask questions about decimals, fractions, and percentages, as well as basic computations.

But now that I am back – topics that are keeping us captivated:
– Eugene Bullard (Larry Greenly’s book: A+)
– Cleopatra (Diane Stanley/Peter Vennema’s book: A+)
– Animal eyes and vision (“Eye to Eye” by Steve Jenkins) (too early to give it a grade, but so far, we are learning a lot!)
– book concepts: the preface and the epilogue. (vocab)
– new science concept “breaking the sound barrier”.

Story Problem Answers! Finally! Thanx to a request from attentive reader FDB, answers to story problems will be posted at the bottom of each post, underneath my signature. Starting today!

Speaking of Farmer Brown – a story problem from this past week: For an upcoming evening gathering, Farmer Brown is going to light his long driveway with lanterns. If he places a lantern on both sides of the drive every 20 feet, and his driveway is a quarter of a mile long, how many lanterns will he need? If each lantern costs $8.00 (including tax and shipping), how much will Farmer Brown be spending? (Don’t forget! The answer is at the bottom of this posting!)

March Madness follow-up (see our previous post, “The Business of March”) – my son’s final two march favorites were:
– “Colonel Bogey March”, composed in 1914 by Lieutenant F.J. Ricketts
– “The Imperial March” (Darth Vader’s theme), composed in 1980 by John Williams for “Star Wars, Episode V”
with the winning nod given to “The Imperial March”. Great footage: John Williams conducts the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra, complete with appearance by Darth Vader:

Background music for star gazing in the Lone Star State –

– “Mercury” from Gustav Holst’s suite, “The Planets”, composed in 1916. Mercury, the messenger god, flits all over the place and the music flits all over the place. This is probably one of our top twenty favorite pieces. It is just so different.

– “Clair de Lune” from Claude Debussy’s “Suite Bergamasque”, published in 1905. This clip features the great pianist Claudio Arrau, who was 88 when this was recorded!

Now here is something fun!

– “The Star Trek Theme” straight from the late ’60’s TV show. Composed by Alexander Courage, the minute-long theme was originally titled, “Where No Man has Gone Before”. Deliciously eerie.

– Then we listened to a fully orchestrated version (“Star Trek in Concert”) performed by the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra in 2013. Gorgeous! We wonder if composer Alexander Courage ever dreamed that his short quirky piece would be performed by such an esteemed orchestra. Whoa.

Welcome to the best part of my day!
– Jane BH
Story Problem answers: 132 and $1,056.00

Zootique

Animals all over the place – this week, all of our current reading seems to be focused upon les animaux.

First – the stunning “Animalium” by Katie Scott and Jenny Broom. The idea here is that the reader is walking through a natural history museum learning bits and pieces about biodiversity (vocab). Information is clearly presented, illustrations are sensational, and my son and I look forward to opening this book every night. BTW, our favorite animal phylum so far? Cephalopods (vocab). Each member of this group is so very weird.

Then – “This Side of Wild”, a new book by Gary Paulson, a favorite author of ours. We have read his “Hatchet” many times, and the follow-up stories, “The River” and “Brian’s Winter”. This book is autobiographical (vocab), with Mr. Paulson writing about his relationships with several animals. Side note: due to something Mr. Paulson had written, we were provoked to view a youtube video demonstrating how to use “anti-bear” spray. Yikes. (More zigzag learning. LOVE it!) (and this video is surprisingly excellent).

Finally – we are are working our way through Ogden Nash’s book of poems, “Zoo”. Each of his funny, astute (vocab) poems seems to need an explanation, so each becomes a conversation starter. This book is delicious.

Language Arts Class is now in session –

– A few nights ago, my son and I used “Mad Libs” to work on parts of speech. I don’t think my son saw this as a tremendously hilarious activity, but it was a passable diversion.

– As for even more new vocabulary – so many concept pairings from our animal unit: Matriarch/Patriarch, Predator/Prey, Carnivore/Herbivore, Bones/Cartilage

New menus at Le Fictitious Local Diner! We worked our way through a really involved story problem last night: the diner is printing up new menus and they can’t decide whether to pay to have the menus laminated or to purchase a laminator and do the job themselves. A laminator can be purchased for $200, and a package of 100 plastic “pouches” costs $55. It takes 30 seconds to run one menu through the machine. So:

1) if the diner wants to laminate 200 menus, how long will it take?

2) if a junior employee is paid $10 an hour, how much will be spent on the labor of running the menus through the laminator?

3) how much will the diner spend at the office supply store with the purchase of the laminating machine and the pouches?

4) how much will the diner spend on supplies and labor to laminate 200 menus?

5) if the local print shop will laminate the menus for 85 cents each, is it more cost effective for the diner to pay the print shop to do the laminating?

Music! Inspired by the nocturnal (vocab) animals we’ve been reading about, we decided to find out what musical “Nocturnes” were all about. After listening to a few, we decided that a nocturne might be described as a mature version of a lullaby. Then, I gave my son a list of events that might or might not be enhanced by a nocturne as background music…on the “NOT” list: a birthday party, on the “YES” list: many Robert Frost poems, like one of our favorites, “Good Hours” (which we reread).

“Nocturne No. 2” by Frederic Chopin, composed in 1832. We learned that Chopin is considered the go-to composer for nocturnes, having completed 21 polished works. No. 2 might be the most famous of all nocturnes and is used in SO many movies.

“Nocturne No. 3”, (also known as “Liebestraum”) (Love Dream) was composed by Franz Liszt in 1850. This nocturne is neck and neck with Chopin’s No. 2 for nocturne popularity.

Yes, yes, yes, both quite reflective and beautiful, but then we played “Harlem Nocturne” and WELL, we were overwhelmed! WOW. Had to listen to it two more times in a row.

“Harlem Nocturne”, composed by Earle Hagen in 1939. Lush and SULTRY (vocab). This is the music used for Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer (hard-boiled detective) TV series. (I deemed it unnecessarily confusing to explain “hard-boiled detective”). We listened to this recording by the Duke Ellington Orchestra and it is PERFECTION. My, oh my.

Welcome to the best part of my day!

– Jane BH

Answers for Everything

Are we having fun yet? Signs point to yes. My son received a Magic 8-Ball for his birthday and he seems fascinated by the idea of receiving answers (to goofy questions) from the black ball. Well, CHEERS! I am always looking for opportunities to expand my son’s game/toy experiences. The first hurdle (and it is a HUGE hurdle) is to find a toy that intrigues him. Did we hit the jackpot with the Magic 8-Ball? You may rely on it! GREAT GIFT!

Non-Fiction – we are continuing to learn from the books “Maps” (yay), “Human Body”(yay), and “Genghis Kahn” (battle/skirmish/double-cross/repeat) (will this book never end?).

Fiction – we are enjoying “Rules of the Road” (winner of the L.A. Times Book Prize) by Joan Bauer. This appealing book skillfully balances difficult concepts (alcoholism, Alzheimer’s) with the inherent hilarity of the shoe business and a new drivers license. I knew we were going to like this book, because years ago I read and loved “Hope was Here” (HKH are you reading this????), also by Joan Bauer.

Le Fictitious Local Diner’s story problem! The diner is sponsoring a community “pie bake” and has set aside one afternoon in November for anyone (meaning high school students who need more volunteer hours for their graduation requirement) to come assemble pumpkin, apple, and pecan pies. The diner will bake the pies and deliver them to the senior citizen center for their Thanksgiving dinner. The diner’s plan is to make 20 pies of each type. Here are the cost breakdowns:

pie tins: $0.50 each, pie crusts: $0.25 each, apple filling: $3.00 each, pumpkin filling: $3.00 each, pecan filling: $6.00 each. The diner’s tax lady needs the total costs for the 60 pies.

Last night’s music program took its inspiration from a poster on my son’s wall: Frederic Remington’s gorgeous, touching, lonely, “The Fall of the Cowboy”, painted in 1895. This painting is on display at the Amon Carter Museum in Fort Worth, so we are lucky to have seen it “in person” several times.

First, to set the mood, we listened to George Winston’s gorgeous, touching, lonely piano solo, “Thanksgiving”, from his “December” album, released in 1982.

My son and I decided that after a long, cold day, the cowboys would want to head off to the local barn dance. We like this video of two fiddle players expertly playing Aaron Copland’s “Hoe-Down” from his ballet, Rodeo (which premiered in 1942).

And finally, a little comfort music for the weary cowboys: John Denver’s “Back Home Again”, released in 1974.

Welcome to the best part of my day!

– Jane BH

Lights! Camera! Edison!

Creativity AND Business Skills – We just completed a unit on Thomas Edison and his brainy brilliance that brought the world incandescent light bulbs, phonographs, movie cameras, etc. The DK Readers book we read is entitled, “Thomas Edison: The Great Inventor”, but the underlying message is “Inventor? Yes, but this man ALSO possessed extraordinary business skills that were more than a match for his relentless inventing”. Wow. My son and I had as many conversations about Edison’s unerring business sense as we did about his creations.

Good books about bad people – so far we have learned about Napoleon, King George III, Rasputin, and Alexander the Great via the outstanding Scholastic “A Wicked History” series. The books are well researched and written to our level of comprehension, meaning NOT juvenile, but not mind-numbingly erudite. The only negative: the photos are always so small, in grey tones/very hard to decipher. We are currently learning about a really awful person (from a really awful family chock full of bullies, thugs and thieves), Sir Francis Drake. I had NO idea he was so reprehensible. AWFUL.

“Greetings from Nowhere” – our new novel, by Barbara O’Connor is an original, entertaining book, just the type we look for (young adult themes my son can understand without the awkward “coming of age” element), with lots of concepts for us to discuss: motel, kitchenette, adoption, and for heavens sakes, last night we had to Google Image CHARM BRACELETS.

Art at the Vatican – to prepare ourselves for a Vatican art survey, we are reading “Michelangelo” by Diane Stanley. Excellent resource.

Art at Le Fictitious Local Diner – this story problem revolves around the diner gussying up the place with selected pieces of what some might call art. Of course, they are installing the classic “A Friend in Need” (the rest of us know it as “Dogs Playing Poker”) by Cassius Marcellus Coolidge, purchased for $45. A portrait of Elvis on black velvet has also been purchased for $90. Posters of Batman, Superman, and Marilyn Monroe round out the collection, the lot acquired at a garage sale for $10. How much has the diner spent on “artwork”? (Heh, heh, the answer is not “zero”.) Money to purchase the exciting wall decor came from the diner’s tabletop jukeboxes. At 25 cents per song, how many songs had to be played before the art could be purchased?

Inventions for Inventions: our classical music theme last night – we celebrated the inventions of Thomas Edison by listening to a few inventions by Johann Sebastian Bach. First, we needed to understand what a Bach invention is. For this, we viewed a superb 7-minute video starring killer pianist Simone Dinnerstein. This video is a jewel! Just watch her flying fingers!

Bach’s 15 inventions were composed as keyboard exercises in 1723. We listened to:

“Invention No. 8 in F major”, played by Simone Dinnerstein. Seriously, we love her! We want to know where to get our SD Fan Club badges.

“Invention No. 13 in A minor”, played by little mighty mite, Annie Zhou, an 8 year old, competing in the Canadian Music Competition a few years back. Watch her attack this piece.

“Invention No. 6 in E major” played by a banjo and double bass. We watched this for comic relief, but were so pleasantly surprised by the high quality of the performance! Kudos!

Welcome to the best part of my day!

– Jane BH

Two Different Worlds

Two Different Worlds – we are reading about the extraordinarily weird Grigory Rasputin and the extraordinarily brilliant Albert Einstein. The two were born only 10 years apart (Rasputin 1869, Einstein 1879), but WHOA, what different worlds they lived in. After each night’s reading, my son and I have much to discuss – first the family background, the education, and the character of each man (we haven’t gotten to their contributions yet) and then the comparison between cultures. Grossest tidbit from last night’s reading – Rasputin’s teeth were brown. Yeecks. BTW, both sources of information are well researched, well written, and captivating.

Thinking about Letters – last night I brought out the old family dictionary, so my son could see that there is a non-electronic means of finding the definition of a word. Then, I asked my son to guess which letter of the alphabet is at the beginning of the greatest number of words (he guessed “E”), and which letter is the beginning of the fewest number of words (he guessed “Z”). Thus begins a 13 day miniature side-study. We are counting the number of pages for each letter; two letters per evening. So, in 13 days we will know!

Focus on Pluto – we are keeping abreast of the New Horizons spacecraft that was launched nine and a half years ago with the task of flying by Pluto, sending back images and information. So exciting! After traveling some three BILLION miles, the FASTEST spacecraft ever is due to pass Pluto NEXT WEEK. It is already sending images. We marvel once again at the brainpower that can successfully manage these far-reaching projects with such precision.

Story problem from Le Fictitious Local Diner – The diner is gearing up to make some big bucks at the county fair – their plan is to sell 3,000 Rice Krispies Treats at their booth during the weekend-long fair. The diner chefs are working from the recipe on the back of the Rice Krispies box, which uses 6 cups of the rice cereal to make 12 large square cookies. How many cups will the diner use to produce their goal of 3,000? If a regular sized box of Rice Krispies can make two batches of the treats, how many regular sized boxes will be needed? Delving into the arena of common sense: is it likely that any grocery store would have this many boxes of Rice Krispies?

Our music theme a few nights ago – “The Sad Song Scale”. We listened to, and ranked these tear-jerker compositions on a sadness scale of one (“bummer”) to ten (“unrecoverable heart-crushing despair”):

“Symphony No. 3 in F major” (third movement), composed by Brahms in 1883. We ranked this a most worthy 10 on our sadness scale. SO much desolation. This piece has been well positioned in several movies.

“What’ll I Do”, by Irving Berlin, composed in 1923. Earns an impressive 6 on our scale. Sad AND clever. That is sort of hard to pull off. Kudos Mr. Berlin!

“Serenade”, by Franz Schubert. A solid 9 on the scale. Written in 1828, during the final year of his life, despondent because he knew he was dying of Syphilis. Blog followers know that my son and I are enthusiastic Itzhak Perlman admirers and this performance is another reason why. Perfection.

Welcome to the best part of my day!

– Jane BH

Messenger Service

Best Messenger Ever – Oh! The brainpower that sent space probe Messenger on its successful-beyond-all-measures mission to planet Mercury! My son and I learned that Messenger was launched from earth in 2004 and started orbiting Mercury in 2011. The plan: Messenger was to orbit for a year and send back 2,500 images. But the space probe was so well built, that it circled the tiny planet for 4 years and sent back 270,000 images! WHOA. On April 30, dear Messenger ran out of propellant, was pulled out of orbit by Mercury’s gravity, and sent one final photo before it crashed into the planet.

Messenger’s final image of Mercury

We paid homage to the team that constructed Messenger by listening to Gustav Holst’s “Mercury” from his orchestral work, “The Planets”.

More academics from last week –

Napoleon – as we learn more about Napoleon we are struck by how his brilliant ideas were dwarfed by his all-around awfulness. This man belonged permanently in time-out, and of course, that is exactly where he ended up (we found the little island of St. Helena, where Napoleon was exiled for the final six years of his life, on the globe). Vocab from our Napoleon unit: artillery, boycott, emperor, strategy, and trench. BTW, our book, “A Wicked History – Napoleon, Emperor and Conqueror”, by Kimberley Heuston, is EXCELLENT.
Shakespeare – we finished “Romeo and Juliet”, and we have started “Twelfth Night”. Love it! We do prefer the mixed-up craziness of Shakespeare’s comedies to his gruesome tragedies.
Exponents – we gave the Mathtoon’s “Exponents and Radicals” iPad app another try. Much more fun this time. This app is splendid! Cool, in-your-face, badboy graphics. And the app is free!

Last week’s best Farmer Brown story problem – Farmer Brown has a muster (or ostentation, if you will) of peafowl on his property. Vocab time: we had to learn the difference between peafowl, peacocks, peahens, and peachicks. Seriously, what is cuter than the word, “peachick”?

OK, the story problem: Farmer Brown has a large muster of peafowl on his property. He collects the peacock’s discarded long tail feathers to sell to a local interior designer, for $3.50 each. If the designer paid Farmer Brown $140 last month, how many feathers were handed over? If the designer sells each feather for $15, and all feathers are sold, what is the profit, once Farmer Brown has been paid?

Ugh.

Last night’s music theme: “Music for a Dental Procedure” – my son and I take meticulous (vast overstatement) care of his teeth (so far no cavities, so that is something), but we thought soothing music could bring such relief if Novocain loomed. Here is what we selected:

Beethoven’s 6^th Symphony “The Pastoral” (1808), movement 1. Any of the movements would work, and may we suggest the entire 5-movement symphony (about 45 minutes) for lengthy oral surgery. Such life affirming music.

Jacques Offenbach’s “Barcarolle”, from his “Tales of Hoffman” (1881). All you have to do is lie back and imagine yourself floating in a gondola around the Venetian waterways. Soothing to the extreme.

“The Moldau” by Bedrich Smetana, (1875) from his larger orchestral work, “Ma Vlast”. Relax and let the dentist do the work as you follow the Moldau (a river in Smetana’s native Bohemia, now the Czech Republic) from its source past woods, meadows, a farmer’s wedding, and ending as the Moldau flows into the Elbe River. Piece lasts about 12 minutes. Fantastic ending. This is a superb video, filmed in Smetana Hall in Prague.

Welcome to the best part of my day!

– Jane BH

Things that go bump in the night

Our Easter Evening Event: As our family gathered to reflect upon a lovely Easter day, tranquility was interrupted by sudden bumps and scraping sounds coming from the attic. A quick look revealed a mama raccoon tending sweet, sweet “kits” amid the attic insulation. This propelled my son and me to begin a mini-study on raccoons. We found out that they are native to North America, they are “omnivores”, and they are “nocturnal” (that is why we didn’t hear them moving around during the day). A happy ending to the day: new vocab words for my son, and mama and babies are now enjoying their new home in a safe wooded area of the local golf course.

We thought the phrase, “things that go bump in the night” perfectly described our Easter Evening Event. We learned that the words come from an old Scottish prayer –

“From ghoulies and ghosties

And long-legged beasties

And things that go bump in the night,

Good Lord, deliver us!”

Zigzag Learning (where we let one topic lead us to another at lightning speed): Julia Rothman’s excellent book, “Nature Anatomy” started the learning chain this time. We were looking at her illustrations of butterflies, and we took particular notice of a “swallowtail” butterfly. My son needed to know why swallowtail butterflies were called swallowtail butterflies.

So first, we looked at several photos of swallows. We saw how the birds’ pointy, forked feather tails could easily have inspired the animal naming committee to call butterflies with the tiny drip on the hindwings, “swallowtails”.
Then, we decided to read about the swallows of the San Juan Capistrano Mission (with a short-side trip to learn a bit about the California mission system). We found out that the swallows spend the winter in Argentina and the summer in southern California.
So now, we had to locate Argentina on the globe, and think about the iron-strong muscles in the birds’ wings, that allow them to fly the 6,000 miles.
Finally, we had to see how the swallows have had their way in fashion: we looked at men’s clothing from the Victorian era – the formal tailcoat, with “cutaway”, “swallowtail” or “morning coat” options.

That’s a lot of learning from one little butterfly.

Our music theme for last night – “Cuckoo for Music”. We considered the two-note cuckoo motif and then listened to three neat compositions:

“Organ Concerto No. 13 (The Cuckoo and the Nightingale)”, movement 2, by Handel (1740). About one minute twenty seconds into the movement you can definitely make out the cuckoo motif. This piece really moves right along. Classic Handel. Fabulous pipe organ in this video!

“Symphony 6 (The Pastoral)”, movement 2, by Beethoven (1808). This is a long movement (around 13 minutes of happy, relaxing gorgeousness) (and this video clip has Leonard Bernstein conducting and one should NEVER miss an opportunity to watch Bernstein conduct). The bird sounds aren’t evident until the final minute, but so worth the wait (or one could be the type of person that fast-forwards to the final minute) (your secret is safe with us, because maybe we have felt compelled to fast-forward upon occasion).

“The Birds”, movement 5 (The Cuckoo), by Respighi (1928). Here is what we like to do: count the number of times we hear the cuckoo motif. Try somewhere around 70 times, in the short span of 4 minutes. This is an absolute jewel of a piece.

Welcome to the best part of my day!

– Jane BH

A Test of Faith

…possibly my worst photo ever. Sorry! The subject matter wouldn’t cooperate.

A test of faith – This past week we completed our “Religions of the World” unit, using an Usborne book as a reference. It was time to test and see what my son had retained. I set up the iPad for a multiple choice quiz, and presented him with 30 questions regarding Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, and Sikhism. Chalk up another A+. Yay!

Incidental learning: Thermometers – While we were driving around the other day and the car thermometer read 37 degrees, I wondered if my son knew about temperatures. So that night, we began a small study of temperatures and thermometers. We found a neat website: www.metric-conversions.org, offering loads of interesting facts with brief, understandable explanations. We learned the difference between Celsius and Fahrenheit and how to convert from one to the other. We learned that only the Bahamas, Belize, the Cayman Islands, Palau (Palau? We had to find this on the globe), the USA and its territories use the Fahrenheit system. Consider us informed on the matter.

New academic unit – I am sorry to write that the chemistry unit we began crashed and burned by night number three. Darn book. When I don’t know what the author is talking about on page one, I start to think that this is not a book for us. After shunning the chemistry book, we tried out a book on “Oceans of the World” and found conflicting sentences in the first paragraph, so we bypassed that resource, too. This does not mean we are through with these units, it just means we are seeking the right books. (So many, many sub-standard learning materials out there. How do they even get published? Sigh.)

Not to be discouraged, we read through a few pages of “A Young Reader’s Shakespeare: A Midsummer Night’s Dream” by Adam McKeown. Excellent! We are loving this book. We are going slowly so we can keep all the characters straight.

Novels – Two worthy Newberry award recipients: “Hatchet” and “Flora and Ulysses”

Continuing on with “Hatchet”, by Gary Paulsen. There is nothing original I can say about this important book. There is a reason it is on so many reading lists.
“Flora and Ulysses”, by Kate DiCamillo (everything she writes is so great). Things we’ve had to investigate while reading this book: CPR, near-death experiences (seeing the “white light”), the words “malfeasance” and “cynic”. I love books that push us into further learning.

Our music theme last night focused upon the work of French composers – I provided my son a list of compositions by the French composers that we are familiar with: Bizet, Debussy, Delibes, Gounod, Offenbach, and Saint-Saens. He selected:

“The Infernal Galop”, (the “Can Can”) by Jacques Offenbach, what’s not to like?
“Clair de Lune”, by Claude Debussy, the soothing music we needed.
“March of the Toreadors”, (from “Carmen”) by Georges Bizet…a rather unusual rendition with bottles and a guy on skates. Why not?

Welcome to the best part of my day!

– Jane BH

Jane’s Cool School

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

Science

Bee Plus!

High Five!

Ranch Report

Zootique

Answers for Everything

Lights! Camera! Edison!

Two Different Worlds

Messenger Service

Things that go bump in the night

A Test of Faith

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