Sherlock Holmes' Birthday (Observed)

The birthday of Sherlock Holmes is celebrated on Jan. 6th, but yesterday was a school day, plus I awoke with a terrible sinus headache, so we postponed our celebration of the great detective's birthday until today.

Blaze and I had a little tea party. I tried a new recipe that one of my co-workers told me about, bacon wrapped figs. Blaze loves bacon and figs and decided that together they were amazing.



It was a beautiful day and we hadn't tried the little steam powered toy boat the Blaze got for Christmas, so we took that out to the picnic table with a tub of water and let it putt around for awhile. It was fun, but it would be more fun with more water.





We also went to see the new Sherlock Holmes movie. I agree with the reviewers who said that this one was better than the first. I still don't like the choppy, slowed down fight scenes that Guy Ritchie favors, but the movie was very entertaining.




DH is away at an archeological conference in Baltimore, where he presented a paper about the Kingsley Plantation and his professor receive an award for the work he's done at Kingsley.

For Your Viewing Pleasure

Today is the 109th anniversary of the release of the iconic, silent, science fiction film, "A Trip to the Moon".



Now, jumping to modern day. I would like to show you what a group of Australian movie makers were able to do with just a $1800 budget.

I am rating this PG for violence and mild language.

The Harry Potter Room and Costume Revisited

We went to see the last Harry Potter movie this afternoon. If you are thinking about going to see it, my advise is bring tissues ( I had tears running down my face more than once during the movie). It is very intense, so take small children to see Cars 2, not Harry Potter.

While the world is focused one last time on Harry and his friends, I decided it was a good time to repost some pictures of the Harry Potter bedroom that Blaze had before we moved to our current apartment and some pictures of the costume that won two copies of The Deathly Hallows when it was first released.







The fake stone wall was made out of stone print contact paper and then I added rub-on ivy decals.



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Here are some of the pictures from the release of the last Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (these were taken before I had a digital camera). We ended up with 3 copies of Deathly Hallows when it came out, which worked out very well, since there were four of us who wanted to read it right away, but we only had to pay for one. Blaze won two copies from Harry Potter costume contests.

The public library held the first event we went to. They had crafts, games, refreshments, and fortune telling, as well as actors reading a passage from one of the Harry Potter books and a costume contest.





Dumbledore presenting Blaze with the costume contest prize:




Getting ready for the Midnight Release Party at the bookstore.





The bookstore costume contest winners:







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Other Harry Potter related posts:

Universal's Island of Adventures, Wizarding World of Harry Potter

Witch or Wizard Hat and Broomstick Snacks

Horrible Histories

We have a couple of the books in this series, but I only learned recently that they had been made into a t.v. show and that several of the sketches are available on YouTube. Blaze's best friend and I watch about 10 of these short segments the other day, from all different time periods, and thought they were all funny.

Heartless: The Backstory of the Tin Woodsman from the Wizard of Oz

I just saw this for the first time this morning and thought other children's literature enthusiasts might enjoy this. It is the story of how a real man became the tin woodsman, as written by L. Frank Baum in The Wizard of Oz.

Heartless: The Story of the Tin Man from Brandon McCormick on Vimeo.

Sampled Scientists

I recently discover this website:

symphony of science.com

Snippets of lectures by famous televised scientists have been put together with music and imagery to create music videos about the interconnectedness of all living and nonliving things. There are four videos so far, but this is my favorite:

Great Inventors: Alexander Graham Bell

This week we are continuing our study of great inventors, by learning about Alexander Graham Bell. I realize that in chronological order, he should have probably been taught before Thomas Edison, but I had left that choice up to Blaze.

We started this unit by watching this cartoon movie about Bell ( it's part of the same series as the Thomas Edison movie):

Thomas Edison Cartoon

I love YouTube. I went to the public library specifically looking for this cartoon about Thomas Edison, but our library didn't have it. It took me less than 5 minutes to find it on YouTube:

Part One:



Part Two:



Part Three:



Part Four:



Part Five:



Part Six:

A Full and Happy Weekend

We were very busy all weekend, but it was all fun stuff.

Friday night, we went to see the movie Astro Boy. It was opening night and we were afraid we wouldn't find seats in the theater, because we arrived just as the movie previews were starting, but instead, there were only ten people in the theater. There were at least two times during the movie when I had to ask Blaze not to speak, because he shouted "NO!' at the screen, and another two times when he was crying, but he did really like the movie. It's quite an emotional roller coaster, especially towards the end, but Blaze says he does recommend it for other eight year olds.

Saturday, we went to the Friends of the Library Book sale, which was insanely crowded. The book sale is held twice a year, and we've been to all of them for about the past five years, but this was the most crowded I think I've ever seen it.

People lined up all the way down the block, waiting to get in.



People filing into the building when the doors opened at 9:00 a.m.



Inside the big, dusty warehouse full of books.




We hadn't had any breakfast before going to the book sale, so we stopped at the new Dunkin Donuts near the University on the way home.



Then a quick change of clothes and Blaze was off to go swimming with Noah's Endeavor (inclusive athletics). He had a great time and is getting close to being able to swim on his own.





After swimming, Blaze and I went to the fabric store, which may not have been as fun for him as it was for me. I had gone there looking for flannel to make myself a winter skirt and all the flannel was on sale.

Sunday, we went to Hope Farm for their Fall Festival. It's a horse farm that is specifically for Hippotherapy (physical or occupational therapy, in which horses are used as treatment tools).
If you wish to learn more about this farm and their programs, their website is:

http://www.horseshelpingpeople.org/

Blaze is not one of their patients/students, but it is something I have wondered about getting him involved in and that is the big reason I wanted to go visit the farm. I wanted to see what it was like and if he would enjoy it. He had a great time!

Many of the children were wearing Halloween costumes and so were the horses.





There were games, a hay ride, a live band, and food.







Hay maze


Potato sack race between Blaze and our friend, who really didn't know what she was getting herself into. There was much falling and much laughing, since neither of them had ever done this before.



Blaze won, but they both got quite a workout.





One of the highlights of the afternoon was watching Magnifico, a highly trained, trick horse.










Our busy social calendar doesn't end with the weekend. Tonight is the Student Family Housing Halloween carnival and Thursday the sororities are hosting their annual trick-or-treat event, Ghosts, Ghouls, and Greeks.

A Little Video Reading Review

Blaze is still having problems with his reading, partly because he has trouble processing all the sounds in the words. It's very connected to the problems he continues to have in speech, such as leaving off the first syllables from many words. A couple weeks ago his speech therapist and I started compiling a list of the words he does this to on a regular basis and the list is getting quite long. It includes words like computer, which is "puter" and pretend, which is "attend".

I have collected the following videos to use with him this week, as a review of phonics and sight words that he has worked with in the past, but has not fully retained.








Beginning Sight Words:



Movements to go with sight words:

Playing with Pictures

I'm still learning all the fun things that can be done with the photos I take.

I spent a lot of time last week updating Blaze's scrapbook. I had been afraid this would happen when I got the digital camera and I was right, I had stopped making hard copies of most of my pictures. As a result, I hadn't added any new pages to Blaze's scrap book since Halloween.

I've also been trying my hand at a little video scrapbooking, using the iMovie application on the Mac laptop. It stops pretty abruptly, but here is my first try ( the pictures are from some old trains we went to see in French Lick, Indiana):

Just for Fun: Happy May!

It takes a graveyard to raise a child

The winner of the 2009 Newberry Award for children's literature



This is the story of Bod, a toddler whose parents are killed just before the story begins, but he escapes into a nearby cemetery, where the spirits of the dead protect and raise him.

This is the first book I have ever purchased because of a t.v. interview on a political comedy show. I had already heard that the book had won this year's Newberry Medal, and I already knew I liked other things that Neil Gaiman had written before I watched the interview. I really liked the book Anansi Boys, and I just recently finished reading Good Omens, which he wrote along with Terry Pratchett. This is the first of his children's/young-adult books that I have read, though.
Nika tells me that Coraline was excellent.

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Neil Gaiman
colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor NASA Name Contest

There are some pretty scary things that happen to Bod, mostly when he encounters living people, so I don't really recommend this book for children under 10, but for older elementary and middle school students, I think it is fast paced and different enough to keep their attention. 

I finished reading the book last night and I cried through the whole last chapter.  

If you want to learn more about this book, Neil Gaiman has the coolest book promotion website I have ever seen. It contains videos of the author reading aloud from each chapter of the book, as well as the only video trailer I have ever seen for a book (although, DH tells me that is the new trend). The trailer is located in the "Extras" section of the website.

http://www.mousecircus.com/

Do We Ever Really Learn From History?

The High School student I tutor in the afternoons told me about this very funny video and I just had to pass it on:

Firefly Fans

You'll only understand the humor of this rock video if you are a fan of Firefly.

Being Firefly fans is one of the few things this whole family has in common. DH saw this video first and sent an e-mail to the band telling them how much he liked it, and they sent him a free MP3 of this song along with an MP3 of one of their other songs.
Here is a link to the band's Myspace page:
The Browncoats


Ula, this is for you:

More Johnny Appleseed

We are continuing to learn about Johnny Appleseed this week by reading the book Johnny Appleseed, by Reeve Lindbergh.



It turns out there is also a video interpretation of the book:



We are also reading How to make an Apple Pie and See the World (thanks Tammy for the book recommendation!). This book is about someone who wants to make an apple pie, but when she goes to buy the ingredients, she finds that the market is closed, so she sets off on a trip around the world to find all the supplies she needs.



To go along with these two books, Blaze did apple print designs on a canvas bag that we can take with to the grocery store, so we don't use so many disposable bags.

We cut two apples in half, one vertically and one horizontally, because a vertically cut apple makes a print that looks like an apple, while a horizontally cut apple makes a circular print with a star in the middle. We used half of each apple for the prints and ate the other half.






After the apple prints had all been made with red acrylic paint, Blaze used green paint and a thin paint brush to add stems on the prints that looked like apples.

The Archeologist Gardens

The garden was getting pretty weedy again and it was time start some new plants. Then, a couple days ago, DH had a brain storm, that the screens they use to sift through dirt on archeological digs would work well for removing weeds from the garden. It really was a brilliant idea!
He borrowed a screen from the archeology lab and it worked beautifully. It also meant that Blaze was suddenly interested in weeding.









So, here is our first instructional video ( I had to open a You Tube account just for this, because even though it's only two minutes long, Photobucket said the file was too large to upload). DH decided to call this archeo-gardening:






Blaze and I also came up with a new way for him to help carry mulch to the garden, although it would have been better if the box had wheels.

Rainbows

Since we are only a week away from St. Patrick's Day, Blaze is going to be learning about rainbows this week for science.
We started this unit by watching The Magic School Bus Makes a Rainbow, on You Tube.













Here is a poem to help children remember the color order in a rainbow:

"Roy G. Biv"



Roy G. Biv is an

Odd name for a fellow.

But what his name means is:

Red, Orange, Yellow

The G is for Green

Which as you may know

Comes right in the middle

Of every rainbow.

Next: Blue and Indigo

More pale than dark

Then V for violet--

And that completes the arc!


This theme even fit in perfectly with our math, because the third story for the Math Gnomes included a clever place value rainbow. Here is the one that Blaze made:




Edible Rainbow


This colorful desert looks simple when it's finished, but it actually took quite a bit of advanced planning, which started about three weeks ago when I had to explain to DH why I was getting a couple packages of Jello every time I went to the grocery store ( I don't buy Jello very often and DH only likes the red flavors). Then each layer of the rainbow had to set-up in the refrigerator before the next layer could be added, so the assembly took three days.


The Jello flavors of the Rainbow:

Violet=Grape

Indigo=Grape and Berry Blue mixed together

Blue=Berry Blue

Green=Lime

Yellow=Lemon

Orange=Orange

Red=Cherry



A little whipped cream makes a nice cloud on top.

Chalkboard Art

I saw this chalkboard art video and just had to share it.

The Year in Review 2008: My Favorite Home Movie

2008 was our first year with a digital camera and the ability to take short movies.

"And the winner for cutest short feature of 2008 goes to..."

Ula, Blaze, DH, and I canoeing at Alexander Springs.