Man's best friend

 

I've been learning about dogs recently.  They are really amazing creatures!  I love learning about how dogs help people.  They can help as police dogs, therapy dogs, seeing eye dogs, bomb sniffing dogs, service animals in a variety of situation from helping with seizures to detecting blood pressure or allergies, dogs also help with outdoor rescues.

That phrase, "Man's best friend" isn't an exaggeration.  Dogs make really great companions.  They can help sooth anxiety, they are fun to play with, they can help protect your home, and they clean up the floor when you drop something.😁  Did you know dogs have eyebrows that they wiggle and move?  That's what makes their facial expressions so fun.

There are so many amazing things about dogs but those two are my favorite things.  What's your favorite thing about dogs?

A poem to share

Have you ever had a poetry picnic or a poetry tea party?  We love to do both around here.  Poetry can be  fun and whimsical, silly, sand and serious, thought provoking, and magical.  I once had a group of boys who were convinced they hated poetry and it was stupid.  After reading them a few of my favorites, poems about battles, and heroes, and wild children running barefoot, they though maybe, just maybe, poetry wasn't so bad.  They might even like it. 

Here are a couple of my favorites.

“Give me the wild children with their bare feet and sparkling eyes. The restless, churning climbers. The wild ones using their outside voices, singing all the way home. Give me the wonder-filled, glorious mess-makers, dreaming of mountains and mud, aching to run through a field of stars” 

By  Nicolette Sowder

Your task: to build a better world,” God said.

I answered, “How? The world is such a large, vast place, so complicated now.

And I so small and useless am. There’s nothing I can do.”

But God in all His wisdom said, "Just build a better you.”

By Anonymous

“They caught the wild children and put them in zoos,

They made them do sums and wear sensible shoes.

They put them to bed at the wrong time of day, And made them sit still when they wanted to play.

They scrubbed them with soap and they made them eat peas. They made them behave and say pardon and please.

They took all their wisdom and wildness away.

That’s why there are none in the forests today.”

By Van Jeanne Willis

These ones are a little too long to include, but they are worth looking up.

The Village Blacksmith, A Skeleton in Armor, and Paul Revere's Ride all By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Charge of the light Brigade by Lord Alfred Tenyson

To fight aloud is very brave By Emily Dickinson

Invictus by William Ernest Henley 

Soul’s Captain by Orson F. Whitney  ( A response to Invictus.)

Let's have a snow day!

 

In Scotland there are 421 different words for snow, including Snaw, Spitters, Sneesl, Feefle and Flindrikin. Do you know what graupel is?  It's those tiny white snowballs.  One can't be sure if they are snow or hail.  I'm still not really sure myself.  Snow can be so fun to study!  Have you ever tried catching it on a glove or cloth and then looking at it through a microscope?  That's just what Wilson Bentley did.  He was a meteorologist and photographer and he LOVED to photograph snowflakes. He was the first one to get detailed pictures of actual snowflakes!  There is a book about him that is a lot of fun to read check it out!  Then follow this link for some more fun information about snow.  You could make it a "snow day"

https://www.its.caltech.edu/~atomic/snowcrystals/class/class-old.htm

Weird animals!

 

Animals are the coolest!  We love to learn about animals, we never get tired of them.  

Did you know that octopuses, or octopods, octopi?...An octopus has three hearts and a beak!

Polar bears have black skin?!  It's true.  It might help them stay warm, like wearing a black shirt.

Reindeer eyeballs turn blue in the winter to help them see in lower light, in the summer they turn back to a golden color.  They are the ONLY animal that does that.

Rodents can't burp or vomit.  Weird.

Goats, bats, and whales change their vocal sounds to fit into a group.

A group of parrots is called a pandemonium, a bunch of buffalo are an obstinacy, rhinos form a crash, and a group of larks is called an exaltation.

 

I love to learn! One of my favorite quotes about learning is from Louis L'Amour. He wrote in his memoir, Education of a Wandering Man, "Somewhere along the line I had fallen in love with learning, and it had become a lifelong romance" Sometimes my kids tease me because I love to learn so much and I get VERY excited about learning new things. This week the best things I learned is that Mark Twain was a trouble maker! There was a cave near his home that was full of bats. He loved bats so much that he wanted to share it with the person her loved more than anyone, his mother. So he took her home a bat in his pocket. She screamed when she reached in his pocket for her surprise and Mark Twain lamented that she didn't properly appreciate bats. Another time he found a nest of garter snakes and took all the babies home in his handkerchief to share with his aunt. He put them in her sewing basket, and that night, when she sat down to do the mending all these baby snakes crawled out onto her lap. She screamed and then scolded. He said she must have been related to his mother because she didn't properly appreciate the snakes, anymore than mother appreciated the bats. 😂 I feel like we could have been very good friends, because I know how to appreciate snakes and bats, even if my husband doesn't, but I only brought home one snake.😂