Dedication

Video of Jon's pieces from yesterday's faculty recital! It went very well, and we always have a great time watching him play. He played pieces by Chopin and Debussy, the Chopin having been suggested by my brother, so he dedicates this video performance to Curtis.

Mazurka in A minor - Frederic Chopin (a souvenir to Chopin's friend and student Emile Gaillard)

Doctor Gradus ad Parnassum (from Children's Corner) - Claude Debussy (dedicated to Debussy's daughter, Claude Emma)

Confidence

Legos, piano, kitchen counter science, and romping outside in the brilliant fall sunshine are the things that have dominated the last few days here. Today was library book sale day and we came home with two bags of treasure to enjoy. Jon played in his first piano recital in years this afternoon and we all delighted in his talent, and in the family time that inevitably follows such an event. The leaves have just about all fallen by now, and hot tea and evening fire weather is just around the corner.

Our journey through history is now well into the Cenozoic Era, and this week we'll be touring some painted caves in France, and making our way to the land bridge and into the Americas, where our ancestors will meet up with some of the fantastic mammals we've been reading about.

In September I purchased an American history curriculum by Intellego. I was drawn to it for the same reason that I'm drawn to clothing ads in the Sunday paper—I have no confidence in my ability to plan appropriately, be it my clothes for a day, or a journey through the history of our continent.

So I bought the curriculum for the security it could provide. And you know what? It worked, in a Dumbo's feather kind of way. It took until now to get to it because we were delayed in the Paleo and Mesozoic Eras, which was fun, but now we've arrived in the Cenozoic and are at the moment of the Beringia land bridge, which is where Intellego picks up. This weekend I broke out the curriculum only to find that it is mostly a collection of links to other people's free curricula online, with suggestions for activities on the side. So you see, the more I read it, the more confident I am that I could have figured this all out for myself. I was looking for confidence, after all.

Kitchen counter science—the particulate nature of matter

It was so dark today that we had to have the lights on to read, even at one in the afternoon.

The train has now eaten our piano room.

Calvin started and finished a number of Magic Tree House books, then went on a "Jack and Annie" exploration of the house, complete with backpack and notebook.

And when it seemed like the day was going to slip away, Calvin decided it was time for science.

Kitchen counter science. A mess of household stuff, and more stuff. We dove directly into the fourth lesson in BFSU, and the solids, liquids, and gases kit from the Young Scientist Series. And when we finished we had a mess of homemade slime and a bubbling cauldron of everything that was within reach. And possibly a new understanding of the particulate nature of matter.

Prehistory continued

After what turned out to be almost a full week of celebrating Halloween/All Hallow's Eve/Samhain/what have you, I think things returned to normal today. Laundry, park walk, leftovers...all the good stuff, including prehistory. About a week ago we finished the Paleozoic and Mesozoic Eras, and by finished I mostly mean that we designed and created the felt for those eras and we've read all the books we could find at the library. We've also meandered into the Cenozoic Era, enjoying Walking With Prehisoric Beasts and a number of library books, but I'm behind on the felt. In fact, with all the creatures he's designed for me to make we're considering an additional timeline, zoomed in on the Cenozoic. Not a bad idea as we get into Walking With Cavemen, and the A Day With... book series by Fiorenzo Facchini (Homo Habilis, Homo Erectus, Neanderthal Man, and Sapiens—books we seriously love). Next up: the land bridge and occupation of the Americas. We're having a really good time with this.

Halloween...the real thing

Happy Halloween.

We spent the morning trick-or-treating in Ann Arbor, followed by lunch at the Jolly Pumpkin (where else???). The event in Ann Arbor was sadly disappointing. A disappointing parade of uninterested kids strapped into outrageously expensive strollers being pushed from treat giver to treat giver by parents who were jabbering on cell phones. Where's the fun in that? At least two daycares worth of children were trudging along, kid tied to kid, while care providers walked into stores and declared that they needed 12 (or so) treats while the kids waited outside. I heard no fewer than three parents complain about the store that was handing out stickers instead of candy.

But Calvin and I had a great time, and a great lunch, and a great visit with the owners of our favorite book shop, one of which turned out to be a real Antarctica aficionado who fell in love with my little penguin and invited him back to view his Antractica collection some time.

The afternoon we spent resting and reading before making what we call Halloween soup (vegetable beef barley) and Italian bread. And, of course, trick-or-treating. This was the first Halloween that Calvin was really into the trick-or-treating activity. In the past he was curious, but not completely into it. This year it was hard to slow him down between houses, where I think his favorite part was actually saying "trick-or-treat", always followed by "thank-you" and/or "Happy Halloween". At one house he quite cheerily noted that "there's a dead guy in their front yard" (giggle, giggle).

We traveled about half of the neighborhood, collecting candy all the way, then returned home where he counted his candy, converting it to money, while snacking on grapes. He reveled in handing out candy to the later visitors. We read The Legend of Sleepy Hollow before bed. That's an all around great holiday.