Are you really the Baron Munchausen? (Week 32)

How did Kit and I ever miss this movie? It came out in 1988, and we've never heard of it. The kids have watched it about 6 times now, and it has inspired many discussions, make-believe duels and art. And it's just a fun flick.

This week has been very much about SPRING!!!




It is finally here, sort of. We've been spending lots of time in our backyard, and noticed little birds (house finches?) gathering nest supplies out of our side nursery. Bits of cardboard and moss. We've had a few haircuts here, and we put our hair clippings out for them, and they snatched them up in under an hour. The kids have been watching for birds of prey and have called me out to watch a turkey vulture circle above.


Our big excitement, especially for Ivy, was that we saw an owl this week. It was fantastic! It was up in a tree at the side of the road, so majestic and still. It was hard to get Ivy to really see it, but she eventually did. We agreed it was definitely a Barred Owl and then debated it's gender for about 30 seconds. Who cares, really? We just felt so lucky to see it. Now we'll keep our eyes out for them more often.


Just to mix things up, let's talk about Ivy first. I'd never want her to seem like 'last' in my mind, just because I also talk about her last. :)


She's adopted a new thing this week. Reading glasses.





Now, whether this is because I wear glasses daily, or because both her grandmothers need reading glasses to read books to her, who knows? But now when I say 'Let's read some books" she goes and looks for her glasses. And if we can't find them, look out!

Every day, she likes to go outside and spend some time 'in her car'. I found this thing by the side of the road, with broken wheels. It's the kind of kid's toy that costs too much new for me to bother with, and takes up too much space for me to justify owning it. Yet somehow it being free means it's temporarily ours, and thus takes up less space. Er . .

Imagine her as your salesperson, if you will.

"Look at this lovely car! It has all the latest features. Squeaky red horn for saying hello, and a decent trunk to store your many, many little bouncy rubber balls."





On our paper route, we pass a house a few doors away, that has a front yard filled with little toys for us to set up and re-arrange. Ivy likes to spend some time there, and it's a great little neighbourhood destination for her.




Ivy is learning the alphabet, with help from lovely Hannah. Hannah holds up the magnetic letters for her and tells her what they are called. Then she puts them together on the wall and creates a word (or a non-word) and Leif tells Hannah what it says. It's like a split-class, only way better. :)

Hannah has been spending each morning on her Reader Rabbit Math computer game. She completes activities to get boat parts so she can re-build her damaged pirate ship and sail off the island. She told me next week she wants to get going on her phonics RRabbit game, so she can learn to read. Okey-dokey.

Hannah was working on writing an Easter card this week, and asked me for some spelling tips. I only offer if asked, and never correct her own spelling. So this week her questions led us to a chat about how an E after a vowel+consonant combo, make it a long/sharp vowel sound. Hat vs. hate, ma vs. mate. It's a first step.

Hannah's been bringing me many, many vases of dandelions. I was glad that one night she noticed that they had all closed up. I explained that they knew there was no sun so they, in effect, went to sleep (this wacky thing has a wacky name, Nyctinasty). We checked on them in the morning and voila, they were open. Hannah was very impressed. "You mean they can tell there's no light, like they can see, but they don't have eyes?". Yep, it's pretty cool huh?

Hannah has been getting very crafty lately. Besides drawing a new animal face on herself each morning with markers. :) Whether it's cutting out paper eggs to colour for Easter, making cards for each of us, or making a dragon puppet


. . or making a Blair-Witch-like self-portrait with popsicle sticks (she hung his up herself, I swear)




. . it's nice to see her doing something she loves and sharing it with all of us.


Speaking of loving things, Leif loves to juggle. It's the coolest, craziest development. He just picked them up one day (I bought these juggling balls for Kit years ago) and started tossing them around. Then he did it more, took them in the yard, started juggling in bed at night (that was very awesome to watch from the hall) and now he's working on training his left hand to juggle solo as well as his right hand can, so he can practice a two-handed but separate juggling thing he saw on youtube.

Here he is the backyard, juggling three balls in both hands, and juggling two balls in one hand.






I happened upon another set of these same balls in a store the other day and snatched them up. Now he and Kit are inspired to work on something together. I've vetoed practicing in the kitchen, after a ball hit a bowl of salsa and flung it all over the wall today.

Oh yes, and in other news . . . . our caterpillar larvae arrived this week. Wooohooooooooooo!!!!!

Now, I'm a gal who actually gets creeped out by clusters of bugs, and thinks tent caterpillars suck, spray them to death Kit. But we'd tried (and failed) to raise caterpillars last year, so this year we gave it another shot.


On Tuesday we got a little jar of tiny, tiny caterpillars in the mail. They'd been mailed as larvae, with a paste of food in the bottom of the jar. They hatched en route and became ours. We got a packet of food paste with them, and spread them out into some more containers.



We had ordered the standard 'classroom' package, 33 caterpillars. They sent us about 80!!! We also got a poster and some butterfly pics, so we taped them up on the dishwasher, right near our caterpillar jars on the kitchen island.



But it kind of sucked to have them in tons of plastic containers, eating a floury paste. Hardly a 'natural' scenario. so, after checking with another homeschooler's butterfly blog, we went ahead and constructed a caterpillar condo in our terrarium.



We had to find the leaves they'd like to eat, through trial and error. Our cold spring had left us odd choices. But once we hit on the right ones (Hollyhock and Jerusalem Sage), they dug in and never stopped. They eat through piles of leaves three times a day!






And they grew. And grew. and I was fascinated. We took some out and let them roam around on our hands. They have these great furry bodies, with crazy white wisps of hairs longer than the rest. Kind of remind me of lions.




They molt 5 times between larvae and chrysalis, and to do this they shed their outer skin layer, AND THEIR FACE!!!! Yes, we find tons of shiny black bug faces on the ground in the morning.


We noticed that out of our many, many caterpillars, one was white, not black like the rest.



She is now The White Queen.

And we learned not to leave the terrarium lid open.





And then it was Easter. Hannah had been counting down since the first day of Spring.

The kids had been to another seasonal craft class with Ana. They crocheted great egg decorations, to hold blown eggs.




They also did cool egg card art by putting paint on squares of solid gelatin and then creating patterns and pressing the paper into it.




This is a photo essay of Ivy's first (aware) Easter, which was priceless.








She got new shoes, velcro "like Hannah's"



And sunglasses, of course. It's Spring!



Next week, soccer starts up, the caterpillars may cocoon-up, and mysteries may be found around any corner.

C