Treasure Map

We watched a rented video detailing 16 different science experiments, and did three of them tonight. The first involved static electricity; Ben rubbed a balloon on his hair and then we observed sugar and colored dots of paper jump off of plates to join the balloon.  Then we made a simple color wheel to watch the separate colors blend together as it whirled. Then came our favorite- experimenting with the density of liquids. In the jar above we have Karo syrup (heaviest), water dyed with raspberry tea (lighter than syrup), and olive oil (surprisingly lighter than water!). We dropped various objects into the jar to see which layer caught them.

Ben made a plane out of a sucker pop clip and a long straw. Now he’s in the tub with various plastic containers and lids from the recycle bin.

We had baked apples with cinnamon & brown sugar over vanilla ice cream for dessert tonight. Mmmm.

Quote of the week, by Ben while playing Bug Bingo: “I’m only a dung beetle away from winning this!”

We’ve played the Pokemon game, he’s studied his Pokemon cards and books, read other stuff, watched PBS shows, built with Legos, drawn pictures…

He’s spent a lot of time on the Pokemon Learning League website. This week he explored the concepts of acceleration and decceleration, forces (such as gravity and friction), tides & winds, fractions of a whole, subtraction with regrouping, an introduction to algebraic expressions (learning the meaning of a variable), and the order of operations (PEMDAS- parentheses, exponents, multiplication, division, addition, subtraction).

The other day he said we’d each win half of a quarter during a game, and correctly told me that would be 12.5 cents.

He was telling me a story today and mentioned that something was static. “That means it doesn’t move,” he explained.

He got a surprise in the mail the other day. I’d ordered him a stuffed Meowth character (Pokemon) on Ebay. It arrived while he was in the backyard, so I tucked it under his comforter. I told him there were strange noises coming from his bed, and he was thrilled to find his friend Meowth! He often converses with his imaginary Pokemon friends these days as well.

Grammy came over tonight for dinner and hanging out. We played Bug Bingo and Ben made his third and fourth movies on our digital camera, complete with narration. He knows how to operate it for photos and movies, and how to play the movies afterwards. He’s discussing what he wants to edit.

I’ve been in cooking mode lately, making tomato/rice/bean soup, rice with turkey & veggies, pumpkin pie (scrumptious, according to my son), and tonight we had chicken with cheese noodles, broccoli & cauliflower, and brownies with vanilla ice cream for dessert.

Ben’s spent a lot of time in his dirt pit this week, too. I am a firm believer in dirt. He sits in the pit, digging a huge hole and thinking, for hours. Stuff like that helps cement learning, gives the mind space to breathe and prepare for new things, and opens the door for wondering. Plus it’s wicked fun.

Bathtime has been enjoyable for him. He likes the tub lately because he gives himself “spa treatments.” He plays with toys for a while, then lies back so he is totally submerged except for his face, and soaks. “Has anyone ever been so pampered?” he asked me.

He recently tried on my ultra soft slippers and fell in love with them. He sat on the edge of his bed and whispered, “Ahhh, sweet soft slippers.”

He also asked me today how exactly cameras, televisions and video cameras pick up and transmit their information, so I’m off to find the answers he needs!

Last night we visited the Pokemon Learning League online, and Ben learned about angles- straight, square, acute and obtuse- from the characters Brock and Ash as they prepared to set up a tent while camping.

We invited some new friends over today, D and her son G, also 7 years old, who are venturing into the world of homeschooling. On this cold and cloudy day, we had banana muffins with chocolate chips and got to know each other. Ben and G played with Legos, setting up lots of mini-scenes, then played in the dirt pit outside. They searched for Pokemon, found some ash and coal and dug for dinosaur bones, planning to split the money 50/50 when they sold their discovery. Indoors again, they built a marble run accompanied by the Allman Brothers on CD.

Favorite moment:

Ben (squeezing in between his two mattresses like a sandwich filling): G, want to join me?

G: I’d love to! (diving in, legs sticking out)

Dave came home and we all chatted a bit, then it was time for Open Swim at the Y. G is a member too, and the boys didn’t want their together time to end yet, so G hopped into the car with us, D following, and we headed to the pool.

Conversation in the car included details of one another’s churches, and Ben encouraging G to join him in the fight against WalMart opening a store in our neighborhood. “Are you with me?” he asked. As we pulled up at the Y, G mentioned mint ice cream, and Ben said, “Mint isn’t a fruit, it’s a herb.”

Swimming was fun, with ball tossing and chasing and general merriment. As I stood in the hallway waiting for everyone to exit the men’s locker room, I heard G loudly declaring, “I’m your financial advisor!”

Back home, Ben and I, and then Dave, fell into a rainy-day-plus-swimming stupor, and napped for a long time.

Ben woke up telling me he’d dreamed we lived in Cyber Space and he drove a sanitation truck shaped like a dog. He had a friend named Buzz who liked donuts as much as he did.

He spent a long time elaborating on his friend Emily’s intricate alarm system for the trunk she is guarding in her living room. He is sure is contains the best secrets of the house. She has all kinds of noise alarms, including toy pianos. He wondered how a “no-weight” string set off an alarm yesterday, but it did- and Em “is like a venus flytrap, she can feel noise,” so Ben never comes close to breaking in because she knows.

Ben wants me to type this: “Let’s imagine mint as a fruit. I think it would be lime-ish lemon-colored, and it definitely would not be popular in vending machines.”

Ben informed me in the car tonight that some cheese is made with mold, and that he won’t ever eat any of that cheese.

There was some good head math going on, too. We left Leigh’s house at 10:20 to go to Barnes & Noble, and Ben said, “So, no problem…we have 40 minutes left, or possibly 39 minutes and a few seconds.” Leigh had given him a gift card that originally had $50 on it, and told him there was $8-something left. He told me, “So, they already spent $42-something, $42 or so.” Then he asked me how long the fuses on bombs take to go off, and we talked about what material makes a good fuse and what doesn’t, and other factors involved in timing, and he said what if a fuse will take an hour to go 2 miles, and I told him that meant it would take half an hour to go 1 mile…

Earlier tonight, at home, he came downstairs and informed me that we must have a talent show, and that he’d discovered a new talent. “I was singing along to a song on the Barbie website, without even realizing I knew the words!” We went upstairs, where he treated me to a sneak preview. He doesn’t usually sing much, especially when anyone is listening. It was so sweet, one of those moments your heart could just burst.

“You’re a part of my heart…”

Last Sunday Dave played guitar during a song with the choir at church, along with a bass guitarist, a pianist, and a drummer. The song, We Are One, was a gorgeous arrangement.

On Monday, Ben and I took a trip by bus to the American Museum of Natural History in NYC with the homeschool group. It was a long day, but interesting! Ben’s favorite things were the dioramas in the world history rooms, the documentary about the evolution of vertebrates and the extinction of dinosaurs, the giant section of sequoia tree trunk, the hands-on kids’ room with samples of all sorts to inspect, the gift shop where he purchased an ant farm, and the butterfly conservatory.

Most memorable conversation (in the conservatory):

Ben: “Look at all the Kakunas!” (Pokemon fan using his imagination.)

Volunteer Lady: “No, no, honay, we don’t have moths here. Those are chrysalises with buttaflies in them.”

Ben: “Well, I like to call them Kakunas.”

Volunteer Lady: “No, honay, they’re chrysalises. And these over here are poopas.”

At which point I bit my lip really hard to keep from chiding, “No, no, honay, those are pewpas.”

The museum was quite crowded. My fondest wish was to enjoy some serene moments really soaking in the feel of things. Alas, it was not to be. I had a minor freakout in a bathroom when one too many people banged into me and tried to press past me and asked me to excuse them…I grabbed Ben’s hand and ran out. I am so not a City Girl! I am In-Between Girl, lately leaning toward Country Girl, but as usual I find myself most often in the middle of two extremes.

We celebrated Dave’s birthday on Tuesday quietly at home with cake & gifts. Ben got him Homer Simpson boxer shorts, a Homer Simpson Air Guitarist t-shirt, and the Lego Mythical Creatures set (gladly giving me half his money for that!). I got him a couple of great shirts- one a nifty long-sleeve dress shirt for performing gigs, since he’s been loving that style- and a couple other things, including an abundance candle. I cooked a chicken dinner for him and me, complete with Cherry Coke to drink, which we ate while listening to Bob Marley’s Legend CD. Then we all pigged out on cake & ice cream, and Dave & Ben built a huge dragon with the Lego set.

Other stuff we’ve done lately: Pi-Yo class, hung out at Leigh’s house with her family and PisecoMom & Jediboy, drew many Pokemon of our own creation, had a discussion about ancestry and populating the New World and taking land from Native Americans, watched a video about Asian Longhorn beetles invading the trees of our big cities and the plans & methods for control…Ben has experimented with the tape measure and calculator, his multiplication skills, watched PBS shows, played Pokemon & Mario on the borrowed Gameboy (challenging himself with mastering new game skills), read tons of books and Highlights magazine, built his own Lego creations, took photos with the digital camera…oh, and Dave saved my life when I popped an Advil as I told him that Dr. N was going to have the Yankees game on volume 10 when I went over to clean for him. “Wait! I have just the thing!” he announced, and presented soft earplugs. Perfect!

Ben went up to Grammy’s today to enjoy the wonders of cable tv cartoons while Dave and I had alone time. We chose to do some long-needed reorganizing of the playroom.

We created three small shelves to use under the big Lego tables for Lego bins, moved the bin shelving systems to the basement, shifted another big shelf, got rid of the impractical drop-leaf desk, and added another shelving unit instead. We also added a small metal storage unit and card table with chairs. Ben now has a shelving unit dedicated to his entomology books and materials, another for art supplies, and a table for painting/drawing/game-playing. We rediscovered our beautiful solar system poster and tacked it up, and I lowered the analog clock to kid-height.

As we moved things, Dave and I kept in contact with the Discovery Channel walkie-talkies.

“How’s it going on the porch?”

“Great. What’s going on in the playroom?”

“There’s crap everywhere. Help. Over and out.”

Then the phone rang, and a mysterious 7-year-old boy voice yelled “Prank call!” into the answering machine. I dialed Grammy’s number, asked to speak with Ben, and yelled “Prank call!”

We picked up subs for dinner (and pizza for Ben) and headed up to Grammy’s. We watched Ben-10 and Teen Titans. We discussed again how many of these shows seem to have the same animators and the same or similar character voices- there was a show on Fox 40 this morning called Dinosaur King in which the characters, humans and animals, resembled the Pokemon crew, and the voices were unmistakeably the same as many of the Pokemon voices. We’ll look into this.

I helped Grammy figure out the reason for slight discrepancies in her phone bills, and gave her copies of all the homeschool paperwork from the last year plus this year’s IHIP. I told her a lot about the requirements, took her step-by-step through the paperwork for the whole year, and elaborated on the way we learn and do things. She has been getting flack from some “friends” and she needs encouragement and help with understanding and explaining homeschooling. She sure loves Ben, so this just gave her more details to help her brag.

Back home, Ben was thrilled with the new playroom arrangement. He immediately broke out the paints and created the Pokemon world on paper, plus a new Pokemon. That gave us both the spark we needed to paint and name more new Pokemon, and the papers are drying on the table right now.

Dave and Ben set up a Playmobil scene on the floor, but he wasn’t pleased with the outcome, so he put it all away and came up here. He is tired and having technical difficulties tonight. Time for bed!

Yesterday Ben and I got out for a while to meet friends at Chuck E. Cheese. We hadn’t known it was Superintendent’s Day for schooled kids, so the place was packed and noisy. We only stayed about 45 minutes. Stopped at the drive-thru for a kids’ meal for him, then headed home.

Ben was full of questions about castle-building in the car: exactly how were castles built, and how could they cut stone, and what tools did they use, and what were those made of? I found great resources online, including the Caste Learning Center, and printed out lots of info. We learned that castles could take decades to build, that stone was often carted miles from quarries, that tools were largely wooden but some were tipped with iron. It was cool to see which tools have remained unchanged over the years. We also found a neat list of jobs in the Middle Ages.

Ben also asked how all the material in the world came to be- what stuff is natural, and what isn’t? We talked about some of the things the earth offers that we use as they are (wood from trees, for building), and the things we’ve created from combining physical and chemical properties (like plastic).

I worked for a few hours at night. Later, after we had some computer time and then discussion time before bed, we talked about multiplying by 10, how you take the original number and add a 0 to the end. Dave also brought us treats- brownie ice cream for us, chocolate milk and a Cliff Bar for Ben.

Did I mention that Ben wants to run for Mayor? He has a list of things he’ll do to make the city run more smoothly, many of them Public Works concerns. He really wants to know why some of the worst streets in our neighborhood seem to go unfixed except for patching.

We saw a baby squirrel in our yard today. He is too adorable. His little hands are so light-colored it looks like he’s wearing gloves. We named him after the squirrel Pokemon, Pachirisu, even though that squirrel is white.

Let’s see…the last couple of days we went swimming (one of those zen-like Open Swims when everyone there co-exists peacefully), to the homeschool playgroup at the park, lunch at Friendly’s, and our Pilates/Yoga class. Add in a good smattering of reading, drumming, Pokemon movie-watching, and Pokemon game-playing.

Today we’re not feeling the greatest- Ben has the sniffles and sneezes and feels warm, and I feel kind of blah. It’s the first day in a long time that we haven’t gone anywhere, but we’ve done our best to enjoy ourselves here at home.

This morning we made banana muffins with Ghirardelli chocolate pieces on top. Those are good for reviving the spirit!

I found the dominoes after a prolonged search in every crevice of the house, and we made four domino runs, including a bunch of Jenga blocks too. Ben suggested the layouts. Our hapless Playmobil pirate was placed at various points in the run, awaiting his doom- so on the last run he got to push them down instead. It was the least we could offer him for his service.

After this last one, the pirate got to pick up the pieces of eight. Hee hee.

Somehow we started discussing the definition of the word superstition, and I printed out information about the meaning and origin of superstitions for Ben. He was amazed to hear that hotels sometimes skip the 13th floor, and houses are often not numbered 13, etc.

He is wearing his analog watch today, and doing really well with announcing the correct time.

During the domino run building, he did some multiplication in his head, coming up with the right answers for 3 x 3 and 5 x 5. (The other morning, he actually woke up yelling, “Sixty plus sixty is one hundred and twenty!”)

We did some activities in his Cranium Big Book of Data, and watched PBS shows. “I still like Caillou,” he told me. “And Berenstain Bears, even though they both teach morals.” He can listen to Barney while he does something else, but he draws the line at Teletubbies these days. We liked watching the reading of a picture book on one of the shows: I Miss You, Stinkyface, the sequel to I Love You, Stinkyface, one of our favorite stories.

Dave got home at 4:00 and we ate together and looked at Cottage Living and Real Simple magazines, then lay on the bed with our feet entwined laughing about stuff, then fell asleep. Then he got up to go to the church and rehearse his guitar part with the group performing on Sunday.

Ben and I made bait for ants (an overripe banana with brown sugar, at the suggestion of a book) and left it outside so he can catch some for an ant terrarium. We played baseball in the backyard, crunching through leaves, smelling the grapes from our neighbor’s vines, stopping to give Joe the cat some scritchums and treats. We refilled the bird feeders and birdbaths.

I am going to make cheese burritos, a favorite comfort food especially when feeling under the weather, and we’re going to watch the first Pokemon movie again, and I’ll crochet some more of my reeeeeally long snake with the chopstick.

We went swimming as a family this morning, and then I worked and Ben went to W Kids while Dave shopped at Wegmans, but the really exciting part of the day came much later, when we hung out with Leigh, Emily, Nate and Anna, and the kids got a surprise that kept them busy all night: Pokemon beanie babies! (Except little Anna, who got a beautiful plastic pony with a curly mane and tail.)

The cool thing about the beanies was which beanies they were- the lot of three, purchased on Ebay, contained Jigglypuff (Ben’s favorite), Squirtle (Nate’s favorite), and Evee (Em’s favorite). I had the kids all line up in front of me with eyes closed and hands out, and gave each of them the appropriate character, and we thought they’d break the sound barrier with their squeals of joy. They spent the night having Pokemon battles while Leigh and I watched two episodes of Dr. Who, and then I recaptured the sneaky escape cat from the dark yard before getting into the car.

Interesting Person Note: the lifeguard at the Y this morning was a young woman who is in cosmetology school, and who also performs male country music in bars while dressed as a man.  I love meeting interesting people.

We went to the Apple Festival in Ithaca this afternoon. Caramel apples, chicken burritos at our favorite Mexican place, folk and blues and rock music by live bands, people walking around the Commons on stilts, a lovely breeze, Ben playing tag with a new friend in the outdoor fort, buying used books and toys and the perfect little pumpkin, driving through the country enjoying the farms and houses and first fall leaves blowing across the road…