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An interesting take on teaching good writing - using very short essays: Teaching to the Text Message.

I'm thinking about doing this oil-on-the-paper experiment to explain about birds staying dry when they're on the water. Also, it just sounds cool. They said they couldn't stick their fingers through wet paper if it had oil on it. I want to try!




A pair of very good questions from the Representative from Texas:
"We have to remember, a no fly zone is an act of war. Now what moral right do we have to participate in war activity against Libya?" AND
What would we do if someone slapped our United States with a no-fly zone and sanctions, and then started bombing to enforce it?

Additionally, if we ARE going to go to war, it's Congress's job to decide, NOT the president's. He's commander once we decide to go to war, but the decision is not his to make.



Also, here is Susan Wise Bauer doing a dictation with her 13yo son. While it's not an exciting pair of videos (you spend a lot of time watching him write), I found it very instructive as to what dictation actually looks like. I didn't expect that there would be so much grammar instruction in the process. And she basically had him do the problem orally before wrote it, which surprised me because I'd conceived dictation as a primarilly written sort of thing. And that, altogether, is very interesting.



For further reading on why this matters, try the message boards here first and then here.

Postcrossing: Singapore and Taiwan

It's going to be a big week for geography! In addition to the one going out to Holland, we got two in the other day, from Singapore and Taiwan! I love getting exotic mail!

Here's the video we watched for Singapore. How cool that we already sent one to Malaysia, so when I realized it's right by there, I knew just where it was. Hopefully Monkey will start to get stuff like that from this. I know my own geography is getting better with this project!


And this will be for Taiwan.

Postcrossing: Netherlands

Queen Puabi of Ur

In working on my own self-education a bit, I decided to participate in Sketch Tuesday with Monkey. Sketch Tuesday this week is themed around jewelry, and I was thinking about doing one of my necklaces, but then I came across this lovely headdress when learning about Sumer:



Here's the original that I was working from when I made my drawing: it's a little simpler than the one in the following clip, and simple was nice for doing the drawing.



An archaeologist named Woolley discovered about 1800 graves in a dig in Iraq. Of those graves, 16 of them were "royal" tombs, and the finds he made were reported all over the world from 1922 to 1934. Artifacts from this work were split between the Universtity of Pennsylvania, the British Museum, and the Iraqi Museum.

Queen Puabi, buried in one of the 16 royal tombs, is interesting because she appears to have ruled in her own right in a time when the other nobles buried near by are all identified by their husbands - yet the archeologists think that her tomb is sitting right on top of her husbands because she didn't want to be separated from him in death. You can explore a bit about her tomb at the British Museum's website. It's got clickable sketches of the tomb and photos of some of the artifacts and reconstructed artifacts they have.

There's more cool pictures here:
University of Chicago: Treasures From the Royal Tombs of Ur

Another interesting thing about Ur is that Ur's ziggurat is thought to be a possible Tower of Babel site. This site has a discussion of the possible Tower of Babel site near the bottom of the page. The British Museum also has a site for the Ziggurat of Ur, with clickable pictures. Apparently this is one of the sites that Woolley excavated.

Weekly Wrap-up: The Well-Planned One

All that planning I've been doing is starting to pay off: I felt like we actually are going to have space in the week for adding things when we add a little more in two weeks. That's pretty exciting!



Art was fun. Monkey worked on building a caterpillar, and Raven had another try at finger painting. Both of them had a blast. We also entered Amp the Magic Sword-Pig in Sketch Tuesday; it was our first time participating.

Math went well. Pretty unremarkable. Nothing photogenic this time. But he's doing so well at it, it makes me happy. Hopefully math remains as much fun as it is here at the start!



For science this week the activity I'd picked in Mudpies to Magnets was to compare seeds. We looked at pumpkin, cantaloupe, pansy, lavender, chamomile, and some other ones that I forget. Then we did one better than the book suggested, and we planted them. It's about that time, and we're all so cabin-fevered that we can hardly stand it! Raven sat in his exer-saucer and checked out a pot while Monkey was doing my planting for me.



Phonics went well. Monkey's starting to blend more smoothly, which is exciting. It's his least favorite part of school, but he does it well most of the time. For our read-aloud we're reading Star Wars: Force Rising, which is about how Obi-Wan almost didn't become a Padawan. Good story. I pre-read it, and now I'm reading it to Monkey. I'm also very much looking forward to reading the next one!

We also had out first postcrossing postcard arrive, from Toronto, and we sent one to Italy, so those were the countries we looked up on the map this week. I'm still so impressed by this pint-sized geography buff.

Defenestration

The Defenestration of Prague - where a group of Protestant nobles defenestrated some Catholic emperor's men - started the Thirty Years' War. Aren't you glad you know that?

Links Links Links

We'll start off with an unexpected birth story: An Open Letter to the Nurse at Cedars Sinai that Called me a Failure.

I swiped this love song from my cousin's blog. My favorite part is the couples at the beginning, but the song is also great.


The Headmistress posted this Bizarre Depression-Era Recipe. I'm so NOT trying it!

This one is from the message boards: apparently she had a BEAR living under the porch... all winter long?!? She even put up pictures from when it climbed their tree, and the realized it wasn't a mouse.

This is a great post about using manipulatives in math. I'd love to get some more of those - and the blocks they were using in her pictures looked awesome!


I think this guy, if the claims about him predicting a previous earthquake are real, looks a bit too credible for my comfort. In any case, his theory is very interesting.

Postcrossing: Italy