Life On The Planet

Autism

Recovery possible.  I'm a believer.

Z-O-O (In Memphis)

Random shots around the Memphis Zoo.

*(Note to homeschoolers - Check to see if public schools are on spring break before arriving at overcrowded zoo. You'll thank me.)

Obelisk. That's how you know you're in Memphis.

Sea Lions. Their 11:30 a.m. show was delightful.

The other lions were lounging in rather unbecoming poses. I won't subject you to that!

Meerkats. I wonder if he knows he's blurry.

 I was blurry this morning, and I'm here to tell you it didn't feel good!

Pandas. This one is about a year old.

Oh, sure, he's cute and fluffy now, but pretty soon he'll be out all night partying and end up in a Bamboo treatment program.

Teen stars. It seldom ends well.

Bald Eagles. Our national symbol. He wouldn't look at me.

You can be that way when your face is on the currency.

And finally...

Hooliganus Familius. By the pond in the China Exhibit.

Out of their cages!

Security!!!!!!!!

(Thanks for the zoo membership, Aunt Sandy. We love it!)

Cells Alive, Very Homeschooly!

I haven't written of homeschooly stuff recently. Rest assured, Mother, that we have been doing homeschooly stuff. Lots and lots of homeschooly stuff.

(Homeschooly - My goal is use it so much that it catches on and it becomes an actual word.)

I wanted to share a cool website with you, just in case you feel like doing homeschooly stuff at your house! It's Cells Alive. Ooo! We love it. Particularly the Interactive portion of the site.

(Tiger can't get enough of the computerized voice saying,"En-do-plas-mic Re-tic-u-lum." He giggles. I giggle at him giggling. The cat giggles at me giggling at Tiger's giggling...)

It's fun and, don't tell the kids, it's educational! Very, very homeschooly.

Or is it homeschoolish? I'll have to think about that one.

Germs!

Slowly, slowly the Planeteers are coming back to life. It wasn't pretty, but I think we're on the mend. Under the slogan Every Cloud Has a Silver Lining,  we sure learned a lot about germs this week.  We put special emphasis on learning how to avoid them in the future!

Here are some links we found:

http://kidshealth.org/kid/talk/qa/germs.html

http://www.sciam.com/blog/60-second-science/post.cfm?id=how-bleach-kills-germs-2008-11-13

http://library.thinkquest.org/J002353/how_ts.htm

If you need to know more about germs, head to your search engine.

Now, go wash your hands! And Lysol the kids!

Mostly joking about Lysoling the kids.

Soap and water should do the trick.

 

Homeschooling: Planet Friendly

When I read Barbara Frank's post headline, Homeschool = Green, I thought, huh? Yeah, okay, we recycle and all, but how does that make us greener than public schools? Then I followed the link to Susan's Pendulum (great name BTW) and realized we are greener!

So the kiddos and I started compiling a list of all the ways homeschooling is more environmentally friendly. Here are our top five:

1. No commute. Less gas used.

2. No lighting, air conditioning or heating a second building all day long. Less energy used.

3. No plastic utensils, milk boxes, Lunchables, brown paper bags, Ziplocs, etc. used at lunch. (Read stats on Susan's blog.)

4. Kids don't need to keep up with latest trends. Fewer changes of clothes needed. (Salamander informs me that pajamas all day would be okay with him."It's for the planet, Mom!")

5. Fewer cleaning products needed to CLEAN a second building. I wonder how much Lysol an average kindergarten goes through in a year.

I'm sure you could come up with quite a few more.

 Isn't it a great thing to be able to educate your child and save the planet at the same time? I feel so noble, like a super hero or something. I need a cape. Make it a green one!

Fireflies

We were driving home this evening and saw the first fireflies of the season. Fireflies are a science question begging to be answered, aren't they? So, if like Tiger, you're wondering why and how a firefly lights up, howstuffworks.com has the answer. Or you can visit this interesting site to learn all you ever wanted to know and more about the little bugs.

Why every simple question has to become a unit study, I'm not sure. However, if you are interested in Firefly poems go here. If you want to learn how fireflies are helping cancer researchers, go here.

If you are looking for some neat and informative firefly sites for kids, go here, here, and here.

Hope you found this illuminating. Gotta glow!

This Slug's for You

The other day my sister, Aunt the Major, called from Korea. (Yes, South Korea.) She told me that my pistol-of-a-nephew, Minor B, thought my story of how my children created a slug themed Mother's day a couple of years ago because I, his beloved aunt and their beloved mother, had skated across the kitchen floor on a slug was hi-larious. He would.

Anyway, night before last, I decided that I would see if I could drum up any slug photos for my pistol-of-a-nephew, Minor B, so I went on a slug hunt. I took this extremely blurry shot of an icky slug - hey, that sucker was moving- on the front porch! Uck.

This was the best of a really bad lot of photos, so I decided to see if I could improve upon it with photo shop. I fiddled a little with the contrast.

Not much better, is it? How disappointing. At this point, I should left well enough alone, but I was tired, and when I get tired, I tend to get a little loopy. So I decided to see how the icky slug would look desaturated.

Bor-ing! I think he needs a little color.

Freaky. "Hey, Sluggo, are you feeling blue?"

This reminds me of those early animated movies - the ones where they would play with all of those psychedelic colors. Am I right?

I don't know about you, but to me, nothing says "I love my nephew" like a green and orange slug shot.

One more? You want one more? Well, what the heck, why not?

Is it just me, or is it getting bigger?

Sorry, but the slug-fest is over. That's all I can handle for now.

I hope Minor B enjoyed the show 'cause I'll be dreaming about that pink and orange slug for weeks. Ick.

Tornadoes for Kids

Twenty minutes until the storm hits. Time enough to study tornadoes. (Call me coastal, but give me a good, old hurricane, any day!)

FEMA for Kids

Weather Wiz Kids

Tornado Brain Teasers

Weather.Gov

Lightening is starting! Gotta go! Hey! Toto! Where'd you go, buddy? Toto?? Aunty Em??

They've all got colds.

According to Science News for Kids, if they were happy children, this wouldn't happen.

What does that say about their mother?

Strawberry School

The C.F.O. was off of work yesterday, so we ditched the textbooks and lit out for the strawberry patch.

The strawberry patch is a great place to learn science related terms, like irrigation, drought, freeze, photosynthesis and fertilizer. We also had to figure out how much twenty pounds of strawberries at $1.75 a pound would cost.

Strawberry Patch Elementary: No desks allowed.

It was a tough job, picking those berries. Some of us worked really hard.

And some of us...

just ate strawberries under the cover of our extremely large hats!

When we got home, it was back to chemistry.

When a science lesson results in eleven pints of strawberry jam, everybody's happy!