Two things:
1. I’m over at Ellen Gregory’s blog today, talking about Rainbird, the fantasy genre, and some of my recent favorite reads.
2. One voice, one violin, one soundtrack:
friday fun
spectacular solar flare images
NASA’s Solar Dynamic’s Observatory captured this cool shot of a long filament of super-heated plasma erupting from the sun.
And here’s the same eruption, captured in different wavelengths of light.
Any of these images would make great cover art for the right science fiction novel. The raw explosive power shown here is scary-awesome.
homeschool highlights
We solved the mystery! Sir I. and I have been doing Journey North’s Mystery Class in which we used photoperiod data and interdisciplinary clues to find the names and locations of ten mystery sites along the globe. There was a lot more math involved in this class than I’d expected, but it helps that Sir I. is a good calculator. David came to our rescue for a couple of the clues, with the result that we got ALL the mystery sites. Woohoo.
Oil pastels and soft pastels, mmm, mmm: Move over crayons and sidewalk chalk! The kids have been drawing and coloring with oil and soft pastels this week. Miss M. drew her apocalyptic scenario, Sir I. spent a lot of time coloring his nighttime sky a deep rich black, and the Baron made an abstract composition entitled “Blue”.
Fledgling Literary Analysis: I read aloud Marguerite de Angeli’s The Door in the Wall to Sir I. and Miss M. Since the titular “door” and “wall” in the title are mostly metaphorical, Sir I. and I had a good discussion about symbols, problems and solutions, and expectations. It’s pretty neat to hear Sir I. think at that level.
And to round things out, here’s some homeschool humor:
Hmm, that last picture on the bottom looks an awful lot like my schoolroom–but it can’t be because we’re sadly short of bookshelves these days!
Happy Friday!
