Under the Knife

PROJECT TIME: The kids have an expo coming up at the Home Education Exchange. Today, we started their projects for the big show.

Annabelle is going to try to recreate an "invisible" Yoshi - or a half cutaway cartoon dinosaur character, which will reveal his innards/skeleton. (The project was inspired by artist Jason Freeny's work.)

Annabelle will not be able to do this alone, as the first part involved cutting very hard plastic with a very sharp knife. But she and CJ were in on deciding where the cuts would be and watched with great interest.

And they weren't the only ones interested. These plush Yoshis had a view to a kill ...
After much careful cutting, we had about a half a Yoshi left. Tomorrow, hopefully Annabelle can start sculpting some of his innards!

OUT OF AFRICA: We finished off the "Ring of Tricksters" book today by reading 30 pages worth of African trickster tales. The tricksters in these tales were a hare, a spider and a tortoise.

HEAR THE PONY: CJ and Annabelle did some transcribing and glockenspieling (yeah, I know, not likely a word) this morning in preparation for music class this afternoon. Today's song was "Hear the Pony Galloping." They got through it with no trouble.

A bit later, I was reading up on a show coming to town - "One Night of Queen performed by Gary Mullen & The Works." It's a Freddie Mercury/Queen tribute band and judging by some YouTube clips, it's uncanny how the lead singer has captured Freddie's sound and mannerisms.

Hearing Queen (or what she thought was Queen), Annabelle asked for "We are the Champions." I obliged, and then for several minutes after listening to it, Bee kept singing it over and over and over - sounding very much NOT like Freddie ;). I was able to film some of it before she caught me. ...

"I just can't get it out of my head!" she explained.

GOING SWIMMINGLY: We saw at least one triops still alive today. Maybe the second one's hanging out in the castle? The one we did see seems to have grown since yesterday.

OHM: We went to yoga late afternoon. It's so nice that it's not pitch black at 4:45 when we get there anymore.


EXTRA CURRICULAR: Annabelle was playing some games on PBSkids.org and printed out a worksheet where she was supposed to predict the trajectory of a soccer ball. I love her logic, and her self-assessment. Except the genius needs to learn how to spell genius - ;