Family weekend

We had a weekend full of rare and exciting family visits. A cousin coming from Europe, visiting in the Ann Arbor area with a new baby, and a cousin from the west coast, visiting my favorite northern lower Michigan location. Opposite sides of my family, and a state's drive apart, and every minute of travel and planning worth the memories recalled and created in the moments spent together.

Gathering the children of the next generation to see them gab, and roll, and romp, and play was a joyous experience on Saturday night. I believe I remember some of the same antics from our own youthful past.

Up north we gathered in the kitchen for the preparations of traditional food, and then around the table to eat it, of course. This trip also means hunting for alien slugs (green pinecones) in the yard, driving to Mackinaw City for fried perch at the Key Hole Bar, playing miniature golf (with a duck), communing with the wildlife, and making a tree suspicious.

And now in Calvin's words...

What have we been up to?

It's been a while since I really posted about homeschooling. Between illness and travel I've had a hard time keeping up here. First Tulip Time, then two weeks of a nasty cold, then one week before we left for Chicago, and now this weekend we're off again, headed north to visit family. Actually the whole summer promises to be as scattered (and joyous).

Of course, this doesn't mean that we haven't been reading, and researching, and trying, and doing, and learning everywhere and all the time. Some of it has been researching and playing in the library, in life, or even on the computer, and some of it has been more curriculum oriented, with a worksheet here and there.

This week we are finishing up our initial tour of the ancient Indus Valley with a few fun links, in particular this site from the BBC. Using the Story of the World as a guide we'll be back in the area in a couple of weeks, but as with our first stop in ancient Egypt I am supplementing with a more thorough sally into the area with a little help from Intellego and my friend the library. We read a couple of books, most notably Savitri: A Tale of Ancient India, and in reading it Calvin learned that the tale was from The Mahabharata and asked to read the whole thing, so we have a copy of that on order, too.

Speaking of reading, with all the driving we've been doing Calvin has been gobbling up books. He's on book seven of the Oz series, The Patchwork Girl, has reread some of the Magic Tree House books, and has started in on a new series as well, the Paleo Joe Detective Series.

He's more than half way through the multiplication tables, using Math-U-See lessons, but mostly via dice games.

In keeping with the classical education, or at least partially so, he memorized a poem and we did some picture narration, writing a story about a Mary Cassatt painting, Children Playing on the Beach. Calvin remembered, after this suggested activity, that he'd read about the artist before, and he was right—we have  a copy of her biography from the Getting to Know the World's Greatest Artists series, so he read that as well.

And we baked: shortcakes to go with strawberries and cream on Tuesday, and banana bread today.

He devoured science this week, even more so than history, which is his usual favorite. We did lessons C-1 and D-1, energy and gravity, in BFSU, and he checked about five different books out from the library on the subjects before making his own.

We also spent a lot of time touring the gardens, walking the dogs, and playing at the park.

Monarch caterpillars

Having seen the first monarch in our butterfly garden a while ago, we went out in search of caterpillars this afternoon. We were well rewarded.

After careful searching we found eight cats and brought them in. Why did we bring them all inside? Of course one or two would do for Calvin to observe, but monarchs cats are prone to a high fatality rate in the wild. Wasps, spiders, and flies are predators or parasites, and they are susceptible to a variety of fungal and other infections. Most of these are natural killers (although many pesticides are culprits as well) and as with all wild animals, this is a natural form of population control. But the flip side of the coin is that monarchs are also threatened in other, not so natural ways, in their adult form, and the more cats we can bring to butterfly stage the better. So we brought them in to see if can help them get there safely.

Number 8 is the tiniest, and number 1 we're already calling fatso. Unfortunately, even though we now have them safely away from natural predators, they may still be infected by bacterial or fungal infections and we may not see them all reach the pupal stage. I've read many horror stories and I'm already concerned about one of our little guys, but all we can do is our best.

On the recommendation of a helpful friend, we are keeping them in Glad reusable containers (BPA free!) right now. I line the bottom with moist paper towel to help keep the leaves fresh. At least once daily we prepare a second set of containers and use a soft paint brush to transfer them to the clean home, then disinfect the used container with bleach wipes and wash it to prepare it for the next change. The moist towels keep the leaves fresh longer (keeping the lid on, punched with tack holes, helps with this also), and the bleach is the only thing that will kill some of the threats.

Wish us luck! We'll keep you posted.

The garden is in

We shopped and planted today to get our veggie garden up and running: eight tomato plants (because I didn't get as much of a crop as I wanted last year, which means this year we'll be overrun); two broccolis and two cauliflowers; one zucchini, one summer squash, and one spaghetti squash, because this is the first time in four years that we've been able to plant squash after having had a squash bug infestation; two brussels sprouts. I think that's right. We still have to find chard and beans, but otherwise we're in business.

Calvin helped with the shopping, with the dirt mixing, and with the planting. It's fun to watch the improvement each year. The first year we planted he played in the dirt, the second hear he patted a couple of plants, then lost interest, the third was not much different, but this, the fourth, year was much different—he planted about six plants entirely by himself, and helped me with several others as well. We had a good time, but it's hard to believe he'll be six in a bit more than a week.

Our raspberries are well on their way as well, and we got a couple of strawberry plants this year, too.

Chicago

We spent our long weekend in Chicago while, if the traffic both coming and going is any clue, it seems most people from the Chicago area spent their long weekend somewhere in Michigan.

I could go on and on about the sunny, albeit unseasonably warm, weather, or the fantastic company, activities, and food, but I won't. I'll just tell the story, or most of it anyway, in pictures.

On Friday night we stayed in for fantastic shrimp chowder, salad, bread, wine, and general goofiness.

On Saturday, Curtis and Jon went for a "bro's day out", shopping, chowing, and the like, while Julie, Calvin, and I went to the Field Museum, and then to a sushi dinner.

On Sunday we were off to the races!

It was 96 degrees, but at least it was windy, and Calvin found a little shade for a rest with his book.

I think this is the universal face of enjoyment.

For the last race of the day, Calvin decided that horse number one should win. Curtis placed a $2 bet on him just for fun. They were some pretty long odds, but Calvin just really thought number one should win that race.

Here comes number one, long odds or not.

Just look at him go.

It was very exciting to be standing right at the rail, chearing on our very own horse. Or at least the horse we wanted to win. And long odds meant that Calvin won $10 on that bet.

After freshening up we were off to the Publican for dinner, a fresh and local foods experience restaurant. We were closed up in a booth where we spent almost three hours being catered to with eight different dishes, including, but not limited to, oysters, rabbit, duck, pork, perch, and a variety of exquisite side dishes. We also sampled beer and wine. To make the extended period of confinement easier for Calvin we brought along coloring, a mini puzzle, a mini Lego set, his book, and even the iPad (although we wouldn't normally condone that at any dinner table), and we all had a great time. Of course, he tried and loved every dish right along with us.

Oysters!

And on Monday we took the el downtown and enjoyed Lurie Gardens in Milennium Park before walking Michigan Avenue, doing a little shopping, and enjoying one last delectable meal before hitting the road.

It was still in the mid-nineties so dipping our toes in the freezing cold water of the gardens was very enjoyable.

And I accidentally put the camera on some odd setting, over-exposing all the rest of the pictures from the afternoon, so the remaining shots are an experiment in Photoshop tricks.

And now we are home.