Friday bullets - Sept. 4, 2020

We've had an absolutely gloriously beautiful day here. I wouldn't be unhappy with this type of weather year 'round. Warm, but not too warm in the sun, light breeze, blue sky with white puffy clouds. Just beautiful.

• Our biggest news is that we have a new (to us) car. It's a 2013 Chevy Traverse, black. It is so very fancy. Certainly the fanciest car we've ever had by far. I kind of love driving it, though it is mainly for J. to use to get to work. This is also the first time we've ever had a car payment, so I'm not excited by that, but it was the only way we could replace the Jeep which it didn't make sense to repair. Did I mention I really like driving it?
• After paying the bills this morning, I ordered the rest of the supplies we needed for school. Most of it was chemistry-stuff. You know, chemicals and beakers and things. I also ordered a new picture study and a couple of games based on Ancient Greece. I'll show them to you once they arrive.
• Oh, I also ordered another book yesterday. It's called The Story of Buildings by Patrick Dillon. I wasn't planning on buying any books for our short study of architecture, figuring I could make due with books from the library. (I had put about 15 architecture related books on hold.) Well, I fell in love with this one so much it made sense to get our own copy. Because it discusses the history of architecture, it will be useful for the next several years as we work our way through Ancient Rome, the Middle Ages, and the Renaissance. 
• I am also learning that I am not good at doing short (ie six weeks or less) unit studies. I have found so many cool books and thought up so many different types of projects, I could probably come up with a much longer study. I'm going to have to hit the highlights which I'm not sure I'm really good at.
• Today the younger people (mainly L. directing her minions) decided that they needed to start making mud bricks so that they could eventually build a house. I did stop them from digging holes in the yard to get their dirt. 
• The pond has proven to be very popular with many wild creatures during the past couple of weeks. I believe we might have officially entered a drought period, and it is dry. There isn't even any water in the creek at the moment. If you sit quietly by the pond you see all sorts of small animals and insects coming to get a drink. The honey bees are there in droves and we even have a large garter snake living under the railroad ties. It's a good two feet long. Y. caught it the other day and everyone spent time with it before letting it go again.
• We won't be going up in the Sear's Willis Tower this spring. For one thing it would be $28 per person. For another, if a whole bunch of us wanted to go, I wouldn't be able to order tickets as they limit you to buying ten tickets at a time. Once more we find ourselves outside acceptable parameters.
• Here is the major benefit of having your son working at the library. We (and by we I mean D. checking it out for us) were the first to get to check out the new Louise Penny book, All the Devils are Here. J. is currently reading it as I was in the middle of another book and he had just finished reading the one that came before it. It's set in Paris, and I'm excited.
• I made R. a couple of new activity boxes. I love wandering around the dollar store and seeing if I can figure out things to do with all the randomness. Now our dollar store is carrying a small amount of craft supplies. So, I made these.

These were some wooden blanks they were selling. I actually became kind of intrigued by the mini clothes pins first, so had to come up with something to do with them.

Each flower either has letters or numbers around the edge. The letter flower has upper case letters on one side and lower case letters on the other side.

The clothes pins then have matching letters or numbers.

This is a strict matching activity, clipping the correct clothespin on the correct letter or number.

Being able to differentiate between each letter and number... understanding they are different and getting used to how they each look and what changes between them... is the first step to being able to identify them. This is going to a little tricky for R., I think, and she will need a lot of support to be able to do it at first.

Here is the number flower with all of its clothespins attached.

Then I found some shiny things, so came up with a way to use them. There are pieces of felt, pipe cleaners, glass stones, and sequins to use in this activity. This box is a little more free form. For a typical preschooler, I would just hand them the box, help them lay out the felt to work on, and let them play and make designs to their heart's content. From past experience, I know that this is currently beyond R.'s capacity. So, I made sure to put in more than one piece of felt and decided to start out with it being a matching game. I will make a design and then she will try to copy it. It will be good practice for her visual-spatial skills. Plus it has a wide variety of textures and sizes and shapes, so will provide a wealth of information to her fingers and brain as she manipulates them. I'm hoping that eventually she will start to want to experiment making her own designs. But, copying comes before creation, so we'll start here.

• I still have some more okra to chop, but it looks as though we will get nearly three gallons of okra from the garden this year. I am thilled because I can eat fried okra all by itself for a meal. Some of my children are not jumping up and down with excitement about it.
• We think one of the ducks may be a drake. There seems to be more than a little behavioral evidence to support this conclusion.
• I might have filled out the Republican committee survey that was sent to me (because I haven't officially changed my party membership yet) with a black Sharpie telling them exactly what I thought of Republican leadership. They won't read it, and it won't make a difference, but it felt a little cathartic. 
• I plan on finishing up getting everything ready to start school this weekend, so maybe I can finally play with my new spinning wheel.
• Finally, I came across this quote which I find very profound. 

Peace is not just about the absence of conflict; it’s also about the presence of justice. Martin Luther King Jr. even distinguished between “the devil’s peace” and God’s true peace. A counterfeit peace exists when people are pacified or distracted or so beat up and tired of fighting that all seems calm. But true peace does not exist until there is justice, restoration, forgiveness. Peacemaking doesn’t mean passivity. It is the act of interrupting injustice without mirroring injustice, the act of disarming evil without destroying the evildoer, the act of finding a third way that is neither fight nor flight but the careful, arduous pursuit of reconciliation and justice. It is about a revolution of love that is big enough to set both the oppressed and the oppressors free.
Shane Claiborne, Common Prayer: A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals