martinzoo

Somebody hit me with a truck!

That’s what it feels like. Ugh! The rain and the 40 degree temperature have laid me low.

We had a crazy busy weekend. I spent all weekend getting ready for our neighborhood Fall Festival, which we held on Sunday. I was part of a committee of six who put it all together. I think it went really well. We had a chili cook-off, which was really fun. My chili came in second place in two categories, ‘best tasting’ and ‘wimpiest.’  Pretty funny, huh? I even created a real voting booth to make it all legit…..LOL!

We had a 5K marathon run throughout the neighborhood, a bouncy house, carnival games, basketball tournament, a cake walk, and an activity table with arts and crafts. Oh, yeah! We had hotdogs and snocones too. It was really nice to be able to talk with neighbors I knew and neighbors I had never met before.

Speaking of elections…… I did mention voting……. remember? Anyway, speaking of elections, GB wrote two letters this past Friday. One was to Senator McCain, and the other was to Senator Obama. Omg! They were so funny. You could tell that he was really immersed in our election unit. You can read them by visiting the link on the sidebar, under “Pages” where it says ‘GB activism’ or you can just click here to go right to that page. I loved how he took a lot of the issues that he hears the adults talking about and put a child’s spin on them. And the last sentence of each letter cracked me up so much that I had tears (literal tears) rolling down my face.

At which point, he very seriously looked at me and demanded, “What’s so funny?”

I also got some very good news this weekend, which I’m not at liberty to post about. But I will, when I’ve been given the go-ahead by the proper authorities. But I can tell you this, I am thrilled!

Today we had our usual Math day. And it was going pretty well until after lunch. I am at my wits end with this Math cr*p. I don’t understand why this year he just doesn’t seem to want to even try with it. We’ve been using the Time4Learning web site as our Math curriculum because it is visually rich, which is the way he usually wants to learn. But I’m thinking about switching curriculums. I’m very seriously considering the Math U See program. Have any of you used this product? I know Christine uses it and loves it. So, I’m tempted by it. But I hate to put more money into a new program mid-term.

Big decision.

I’ll look forward to any comments.

I wasn’t going to go out and vote today….

But GB made me.

He’s so funny! He saw somebody with one of those ‘I voted’ stickers. And he looked at me and said, “When are we going to go vote?”

So what could I do? I don’t want my child to think that I think it’s unimportant. How could I tell him that I have NEVER voted in a primary. I was actually worried that it would be different from a traditional election. *blushing*

But it wasn’t. It was easy. And everyone in the polling station was as sweet as could be towards GB. They could tell how interested he was. He’s been with me every time I’ve voted for President, Governor, or Senator. But he’s always excited to go. And this time, they let him put the ballot in the counting machine!

We both left with our ‘I voted’ stickers.

When we got home we checked out these sites online.

Congress for Kids

Scholastic

Project Vote Smart

Be the Nominee ~ This game was pretty fun. Before you can get elected, you first have to get nominated. Answer presidential questions to see if you have what it takes to earn your party’s big prize. Each correct answer brings you one step closer to the nomination, but each wrong answer brings your opponent Dirk Soundbyte one step closer to HIS shot at the White House.

On his list to Santa this year, GB decided he wanted to adopt another endangered animal. Last time he adopted a Cheetah from the National Zoo in Washington, D.C. This time he chose the Amur Leopard. Adoptions can be done through the World Wildlife Fund. GB was so disturbed when he learned that there were only 30-40 known Amur leopards in existence, and only 5-6 of those are female, that he wanted to make a request to all the kids in the blogging community. He wants everybody to include the adoption of an Amur Leopard on their Christmas wish lists.

Here is what we’ve found out about the Amur Leopard:

As the Russian Far East struggles to survive in Moscow’s shadow, the Amur leopard is disappearing in the shadow of the Siberian (Amur) tiger.

Millions of dollars have been raised to save the Siberian tiger by conservationists and wildlife management specialists with good results, when efforts began there were 150 Siberian tigers, today there are an estimated 400.

Although the leopard and tiger have overlapping ranges, there has been very little research done to protect the Amur leopard and it has virtually been ignored.

Major causes of the Amur leopards decline have been due to

• Habitat destruction caused by wildfires which burn unattended and out of control.
• Intensive logging and clear cutting.
• Elimination of its prey, hunting both legal and illegal (poaching) have all played a role in reducing the leopards to a fragment of its former habitat.
• The Amur leopard is also being poached for its beautiful coat and for its bones.

Here are some links:

http://www.amur-leopard.org

http://www.bigcatrescue.org

http://www.cathouse-fcc.org/amurleopard.html

http://www.scz.org/animals/l/leopard.html

I got this idea from a mom in my homeschooling group. And since GB is very environmentally concerned, I thought it would be a good activity. Granted, it’s like preaching to the choir in this house. We recycle more than any other family on our street. I have to take our recycling to the curb with a wheelbarrow because we have so much. But I still thought it would be interesting to see how much he had absorbed, and what he thought was biodegradable.

This is a fun, hands-on way to better understand the need to reuse and recycle.

First, draw a chalk line down your sidewalk or driveway. Mark the line in increments of 2-4 weeks, 1-6 months, 2-5 years, 10 years, 25 years, 25-30 years, 200-400 years and 1000 years.

Now, give your children the following: a plastic grocery bag, a cigarette butt, a banana peel, a glass bottle, a piece of wood, a soda can and an apple core. Ask them to place the items along the line where they think it will take the item that long to decompose. The first picture shows GB’s guesses. He hates cigarettes, so he thought it would take a thousand years for a cigarette butt to decompose. Not true, but good thought. He also thought the diaper would only take 4 weeks to decompose. How I wish this was true. The diaper situation in our landfills is appalling! Other than that he did pretty good. He knew that glass and aluminum take ages to decompose, and that fruits took much less time.

We discussed what this means in terms of our dumps and what can be done about it. Then he went to find some more items and guess, then research to determine how long it would take them to decompose. It’s kind of gross, but the first thing GB wanted to research was how long a dead body took to decompose all the way to dust. Boys!

Answers to above items: apple (2-4 weeks), banana peel (1-5 mos), cigarette butt (2-5 yrs), wood (10 yrs), diaper (25 years), plastic (25-30 years), can (200-400 yrs), glass bottle (1000 yrs!). And the answer to the dead body is 12-20 years depending on whether the corpse is an adult or child, what the grave temperature is, and whether the body was obese.