In Search of Saturn in Earth's Shadow

We witnessed a lunar eclipse tonight. It was crisp, clear, the stars standing out of the bright sky. There is such a thing as a bright darkness; just combine a full moon with miles upon miles of ice-coated snow.

We watched the earth’s shadow drift across the pale moon. I tried taking some digital photos of it over the course of the evening. None are wonderful, but the event is documented for posterity. We got out the telescope and tried to see Saturn, a golden speck to the left of the shadowed satellite of Earth. I had hoped to see the rings. However, we never did quite get it all sorted out before the brilliant white sliver began crossing back onto the moon’s face. But we did look at some lunar craters.

By the time the light returned to the moon, it had moved farther south in our sky, and its position was changed relative to the earth's movement. Although the earth's shadow came across it from left to right, the moon "reappeared" starting at its bottom edge.

Click here for a large composite image of the eclipse phases we recorded on camera.

Here is another homeschooler who got some good shots of the moon in shadow.

National Novel Writers Month

For the month of November, Banana Brain and I are writing novels. Her word-count goal is 5,000. Mine, as with all adult participants in NaNoWriMo, is 50,000.

The first day has gone off with much enthusiasm. Banana has a great title, a great premise, and a whole stack of great ideas bouncing around in her head. I'm not sure whether the enthusiasm will last. NaNoWriMo veterans tell us newbies to expect a slump in the second week.

I have to say, though, as with travel and any number of other things, life is more fun when you do it with kids. Banana walked into the room yesterday evening and said, "The only way I could stay up till 12:01 is..."

I laughed. She was thinking of the official time when NaNoWriMo starts--the moment it officially becomes November 1st. I had just been wondering whether I had the stamina to stay up till then myself. Sharing the excitement definitely motivates both of us.

I had never really thought I might find a writing buddy in my own household. It's adorable and inspiring. I believe I've discovered the reason the woman in Proverbs 31 smiles at the future: it's because she has children sharing in her busy days.

The Fall Schedule

Do unschoolers schedule their learning? Why, yes. Having a schedule has not made our household anything like traditional school.

What it has done is created a tool that allows a shift-working Daddy to come home and know where we are in our day, even if it's at a different time than he came home yesterday. It also allows energetic, inquisitive children to know where they're supposed to be at, even when they're miles ahead of a worn-thin Mommy.

Our days this fall are divided into slots of varying length, mostly half-hours. Those half-hours are when everybody's got their own activity to keep them busy. Since there are four kids, there are four half-hours on the list. The kids rotate through music practice, typing practice, art and math.

The longer slots are family times. These include 45 minutes to work on our trip journal, an hour to read while folding laundry, and a variable amount of outdoor time in the afternoons.

The downside is that we're finding the allowances for housekeeping and meals aren't adequate. But, unless it's piano and dance lesson day, we just let the time slots flex to fit the kids. Not everything gets done every day, but something gets done every day. And that's what counts. Slow and steady wins the race.

A Rare Bee Sighting

Dave and the kids spotted a pair of bumblebees mating. We don't see this with honeybees, as it happens mid-flight. These bees had conveniently landed on our garden bridge. Click here for a photo and a link to the video Dave took.

(While you're over there, please take a moment to check out the Great Goofy Interview Contest too. I'm going to be offline for about 3 weeks starting Friday, and I won't be able to spread the word. So, if you're feeling charitable and have nothing better to do, please do post a line about it. And then leave a comment letting me know, and you'll be entered.)

Trip Journal

Today, we finally got around to journalling last year's trip. This is part of our prep for what we'll be doing this fall: finishing the rest of the Great Canadian Road Trip. Yes, folks, later this year, we will be headed for the east coast.

Hopefully, we'll journal along the way this time, then put the finishing touches on when we get back. It'll be much less overwhelming. However, I have so much help and enthusiasm, we're whipping through it (at a snail's pace--"Don't put scissors in your mouth." "Please don't step on the pictures...").

This was an idea from a homeschooling magazine I read recently--can't remember which one right now. It was either Homeschooling Today or Homeschooling Horizons. The writer enthusiastically remembered scrapbooking her way through family vacations with her sisters. Not necessarily keeping a traditional diary, just making a collection of mementos and scattered thoughts.

We began by getting an old atlas and a hardcover journal. I cut out the provinces from the Canada map in the atlas. We decided to journal chronologically (where we actually went) rather than province by province, since we got to the west coast last. It didn't make sense to start there.

I made a title page for the whole trip, then a title page for the first part of it. I glued Saskatchewan and Alberta in place and marked our travel route on them with contrasting pen and highlighter for good measure.

We printed off some of our digital photos, and I made several maple-leaf-themed templates. Some for photos, and one for them to write a few thoughts on. We trimmed pictures with great creativity (and new scissors! Joy!!), jotted down favourite events and memories, and created layouts before gluing them into place.

Even Brat Boy filled out his own entry, writing "bunny" and "T-rex." (The bunny came into our campsite on the second night. First the kids fed it, then they chased it. Typical.)

I went back to my old blog posts from last year and printed them off, with a few edits. These made up the actual travel log for our Alberta segment. To make sure I could glue it in, I opted to space the paragraphs wide, print it on half-pages, and do some artful paper-tearing to fit things in the journal.

The result is a family collaboration that looks lovely so far, and contains the individual thoughts and memories of each of us. It's not really Daddy's kind of thing, so I doubt he'll contribute. We may convince him to after awhile, just so as to have some of him in the pages too.

Though they're outside on the trampoline, bouncing out their pent-up excitement about the upcoming plans, they assured me they want to continue working on the project. Skills have included:

• creative writing
• spelling (they each had a mistake or two and a question or two)
• copywork (Squirrelly Girlie wanted to write "my favourite things in Alberta" just the way I did)
• dictation ("Banana, tell Brat Boy how to spell T-rex while I print the bunny picture.")
• art
  
• co-operative tasking
  
• fine motor skills for the little ones

A Day of Sheer Calm

We went out to the Margaret Ann for the afternoon and evening to do some small fixes and tune the rigging. This means adjusting the steel cables that hold the mast and the foresails in place. We've been having some trouble getting things tight enough, as the cables are quite stretched out. Some of the adjustments will probably require taking the mast down and adjusting some things at the top.

We'll only have her in the water another week or so, and so we're not too worried about getting it all perfect right now. However, it's not good to have the rigging too loose, as sudden gusts of wind can smack the mast around and really wrench on the boat where the cables are attached.

It was dead calm. We took the dinghy this time, and the kids spent a good 5 hours puttering around the lake. It's a decent-sized critter, with a 2 HP outboard. We put Spazz in charge of navigation, and the four of them went out together.

It felt like a rite of passage to me. They always stayed in sight, but they went almost all the way across to the far shore. (Granted, our "lake" is really just a ravine full of water, not even as big as some rivers.) I watched them experiment with the excitement of being so independent, and at the same time, cling somewhat close. I saw the responsibility we've been trying to teach them actually get exercised.

We decided to let the sailboat be a motorboat for the evening, and took supper out on the water. It was like glass, and we just let her drift. The kids pulled up alongside, to parental cries of, "Oh, no! Pirates!" We bribed the raiders with sandwiches and juice boxes. Then we gave them a bag of chips and let 'em loose. They were very careful not to get any garbage in the lake.

Dave snoozed on one of the cockpit seats, while I watched the clear sky, the drift of the boat, and the children whizzing in a large circle around us. The fun was finished when Brat Boy decided he needed to go potty. It is hard spending half a day in and out of a dinghy when you're 5. Spazz poured it on when the girls started shrieking, "Oh, no, he's dribbling! We've gotta get back there fast!" This turned out to be hyperbole, for which the girls are infamous. However, it ended Dave's nap.

We came back ashore feeling very satisfied with the relaxation of the day. It really did feel like a day off.

Ship Log of the Margaret Ann Aug 26th

We were out on the lake for about 2 hours this afternoon. We sailed up the lake this time, where it was broader but shallower. There were a few times the depth alarm went off. However, the wind was easier to work with up there, because it wasn't gusting off the hills or blocked by patches of trees.

We were about to turn around when we saw a powerboat coming up behind us. We decided to wait till they'd gone past, but the boat headed toward us, slowing. We soon realized it was our friends from north of town. they had a camera with them, and took several pictures of Margaret Ann over the course of the afternoon.

We greatly enjoyed seeing the jaw-drop effect among some of the fishermen on shore as we sailed back past the launch. The boat generates a certain amount of excitement.

The kids had great fun riding on the bowsprit today. We had just the right wind direction to allow us to reach up and down the lake with almost no tacking needed, so they were able to perch right under the staysail without having to get out of the way every few minutes.

I had the pleasure of hauling and furling the sails today. I like having the chance to get to know the boat better.

We measured our time, and with a leisurely jib dropped here and a mainsail there, it took us about 25 minutes to furl and prepare to dock. We were not scrambling, by any means--the jib came down and we ran her sloop-rigged back towards the docks, saving us some hassle while trying to park and roller-furl the boom in the midst of all the fishing craft that were out today.