2 May 2010

It's been a couple of months since we've gone on a Monday school field trip. We remedied that this week with a trip to an operating grain mill. Built in 1872, the mill still uses the same millstones that were imported from France when the mill first opened. Our guide told us that this is the only water-powered mill in operation west of the Mississippi.

The millstones are powered by a turbine instead of the older style water wheel. This was state of the art technology in the 1800s and is still impressive engineering today. The kids are standing in the basement of the mill, underneath the millstones, next to the machinery that transfers the potential energy of 14 feet of water into kinetic energy to grind grain. We've decided not to do any special projects this trimester for our Monday school. We'll just go on field trips and finish up our history book-- we have the rise and fall of the Roman Empire to cover along with detours through China and India. 

Abe's regular class has been working on animal reports and Abe chose to study jaguars. He gave an oral report in class on Tuesday. We learned that jaguars have the strongest jaws of all cats and can kill their prey by biting the animals through the skull. 

Abe also built a diorama showing a jaguar in its natural habitat for his report. In it you'll see a capybara nibbling on a giant leaf, oblivious to the jaguar stealthily creeping from the dark jungle, ready to pounce.

Helen sat on the porch, playing Gibson's ukulele while we waited for Abe's guitar teacher to come. We may be getting 3 lessons for the price of one -- Helen and Gibson like to sit in on Abe's lessons. 

Here are Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum, also known as Sophie and Ireland. After months of rehearsal, the girls' hard work paid off with 4 really great performances. They got some of the biggest laughs of the show. Sophie's favorite part of the play was meeting the other amazing cast members (mostly 7th and 8th graders.)     ~    On a separate note, Sophie and Ireland got a postcard this week to let them know that their killdeer eggs never hatched. They were very hopeful that the eggs would hatch and eventually the birds would be released to the wild, so the news was disappointing to them.