Celebrating friends, toads and spring

Cardboard Cup made by Ani

 It was our friend Osha's birthday this week, which meant we were invited out to the farm for an overnight!! Nowhere better to spend the equinox and celebrate spring in all its madness.

Almost upon our arrival, the dogs alerted us to the presence of a large (3-4 foot) black rat snake.  Once the dogs were called off, the snake calmly retreated to the bushes beyond the garden.  This is a snake they want around; they will hopefully eat the rats attracted to the chicken coop by feed and free eggs.

The highlight of the day was a walk to the neighbor's for a look in their pond...it is spring, you know.

We were hoping that the American toads were in full mating residence, which they were!

The pond was roiling with toads.  Once the males begin their springtime mating call, and the females join them, there are a few days of frenzied action during which the males attempt a "copulatory embrace" called amplexus with the females: they grasp on to their middles (and sometimes their heads) and wait for them to release a long string of eggs which they will then fertilize.  This can sometimes take days.

Once attached, the males are reluctant to let go.  Even if the mate they're attached to happens to be a hand, or a boot.

Several will also attach to one female, which can be dangerous for her; even though she is larger, with several mates vying for the opportunity to fertilize her eggs, too much of a good thing can make it hard for her to get to the surface for a breath.  (I found Eliza desperately trying to separate a ball like the one below, with something like 5 males to one female - she thought they were trying to kill her, which wasn't their intention, but she might have been right to worry.  She found it impossible to get them apart though, and we left nature to do its thing.)

The pond was loud with the singing.  The males will also chirp when you pick one up; our friend told us this means "don't mate with me! I'm a guy! No eggs here!!"

 Shoo! For those of us for whom an afternoon of toads is not close to enough, there was an after-dark (and after amazing-paella-for-birthday dinner) frog walk to another close pond.  We heard pickerel frogs, and managed to call back and forth with one, but he was savvy about clamming up when we approached and successfully hid in the long grasses. We also heard woodcocks, wood frogs, peepers, and green frogs.  And the stars....oh, the stars...it was a beautiful night. 

Chickweed

Morning brought farm garden greens, more visitors, more beautiful weather, a creek walk to find newts and crawfish and water striders...

Cutleaf Toothwort

 

Enjoying the redbuds

Happy Spring!

Ah, the week.

There is thunder rolling in the west, sounding like giants bowling, knocking strike after strike...and there is a persistent peeper in the east, stuck somewhere lonely in a neighbor's backyard.  The other night we could have sworn we heard more than one - the peeps were overlapping - but now I only hear one rhythmic smoke-alarm beep that Ani told me she thought might be a night bird.  She has been tuned in to the birds this week - the dawn chorus around here rivals any human chorus in its intensity and polyphony, and she is awake from the first note (really. it's been eeeeeearly mornings this week).

It must be spring!

We've been out so much this week that I haven't taken the time to sit here at the computer to share it all, so this will be a catch-up post of the week that's just been...

Last Saturday my wildly talented husband was the guest at the monthly music club hosted by Eliza's piano teacher; he entertained us with excerpts from Starball, which he is gearing up to perform at the Adler in Chicago next month.

It is a show that takes place inside a planetarium, but, in the former sanctuary of a church, he had us all using our imaginations as we searched for Polaris and other constellations during the show. It was a lot of fun, and it was sweet to see how proud the girls were to have him performing.

The weather has been a crazy 78 or so degrees all week, so as I said, we were out. A lot.

There's been some turning of the soil (though this might have been last week, that's how behind I am...) - this week we'll plant some peas, kale starts and tatsoi, which is a hardy green like bac choi. It's time!!

There's been some dog-like loving of the balmy weather.  Ani's favorite way to ride in the car, regardless of the weather.

 

Our friend S invited us to her one of her eco-tourism finals for the quarter at the local college.  The students presented on various animals (including the rat snake and the box turtle below), constellations, insects, and there was a firefly craft, a night walk, and a great game of bat vs moth (think Marco Polo but without the swimming pool).

The girls had fun, unphased by being in a classroom with a bunch of young adults, and enjoying the activities, especially the glow-stick fireflies made with recycled bottles.  Eliza did have to correct one young man, though, who mistakenly was identifying the two planets in the current night sky as Venus and Saturn (it's Jupiter, not Saturn), but at least she waited until his presentation was over and we were outside looking at the real thing.

There have been a few spills on the bike, which happens, and courageous re-mounting of the bike for another go (so different than it was a year ago), several books read and re-read (The Golly Sisters for Ani, and she's steadily going through the Asterix comics at the library)...a pretty nice week...

Spring bouquet - purple dead nettles

 Last night Dan casually told me that during his run that afternoon he'd come across two eastern garter snakes mating. GASP. This is the kind of tawdry tidbit that makes me wild, so of course I had to take my own walk this evening, not daring to hope for more of the same.

Forsythia

I was not disappointed, but there was nothing so overtly springlike on my walk.  It was more of a fragrant flirtation...an unfurling...

 ...a hint...

...a glimpse of what is to come...

Jewelweed's first leaves, so unmistakable

Trillium on the verge of opening up

Toad Trillium

Blossoms on the public peach tree

Titillating, not tawdry.

Oh, it'll do.

maths around here

Stephanie over at Ordinary Life Magic is hosting a Wednesday series of what she's calling, with a wink,  "Unschooling Tools".  This week's posts are about Math Play, and as I left a long comment for her, I realized that it might be helpful (to me) to write a bit about what we do, what I think....But first, her post is wonderful, with good resources and links to articles, and I highly suggest a look over yonder.

I suppose my kids' journey into math starts with my own journey, which at best was a squeaking-through of my high-school classes, sweaty palms and crossed fingers figuring in as heavily as all the studying and extra tutoring from my math-whiz friend Brian (whose foot-ball coach Dad taught my trigonometry class).  Looking back at my grades and SAT scores, I did fine, but I have to confess that I really didn't get what was going on. I was put in a gifted math class in 5th grade and it panicked me to meet in the library before school with the real math geniuses; it didn't feel like an honor or a privilege, it made me feel like a closet idiot and I was terrified that someone would find out. I think I would actually really enjoy a math class today, as an adult, but that has more to do with feeling comfortable asking questions, again and again and again until I really understand something. I would be motivated by a desire to understand, not a fear of being found out, and how liberating that would be!

Race to 100 with math manipulatives

I have been most concerned that my kids not inherit my dread of math. I have read  the really inspiring articles by David Albert and Paul Lockhart, as well as many posts about individual families' journeys through math, and I have still had anxiety around the math learning in our home.  What has resulted is a somewhat schizophrenic aspect of our homelearning life, where 364 days of the year I am quick to see all the learning that is happening and should I want to categorize and make lists (which I sometimes do), it is easy to find some box to put all of it in to anyone's satisfaction - and the other 24 hours are spent with me planning how to fit formal math curriculum into our daily lives. Sometimes it has worked - by which I mean, it has easily fit into our flow, it has illuminated some aspect of math function, it has made one of us go "aha!" or "can we do more?".  And sometimes it has not worked - by which I mean, it has become a chore, something to get out of the way. Which is when we stop. 

Math. In the guest bed. With cat.

 The other 364 days, we play. We read books about Fibonacci and fractions and books where witches perform magical multiplication spells.  We play card games, logic games, board games, we fold paper and move our bodies.  We read the wonderful books by Mitsumasa Anno, which introduce so many concepts and ways of thinking in fun and unusual ways.  Ani and I read through Anno's Math Games III this week, and it was everything from seeing triangles to working mazes to reading maps - some of it incredibly challenging for her, some of it familiar, and all of it engaging.  We thumb through Family Math or Peggy Kaye's Games for Math for ideas of pen-and-paper games.   We get out the scales, the measuring cups, the rulers.  We draw calendars and look at thermometers.  We dump all of the various boxes that hold money, and count it.   We figure out how much summer camp will cost and record what money has been found, saved, received, or earned towards it and how much is left to make up.  We put puzzles together. We roll dice. We figure out the beats in the music we listen to and  play, we try counter-rhythms.  We see how high we can count by 3's or 4's or...If my computer was a bit whizzier, I think we would take advantage of some of the online games or software that is available for math; we'll add that in when we can (and Stephanie has a list compiled of those resources in her post).

Anno's Math Games III

And when I worry a bit too much, we do a few days of a new math concept, leaving out the bits that seem boring and jumping ahead when we want to - you know, some days my kids love to "play school" and so this is where we usually go with that - or I "schedule in" the math, which means I make a mental plan for the week and make sure we meet somewhere together on the math plane, with games or conversation or activity or reading.

Sometimes it comes down to understanding how your kids learn.  When Eliza is pushed towards something and she isn't ready, there is nothing that will move her forward except backing off and trying another time. She sometimes responds to a gentle and loving nudge, but knowing when to back off is key on not turning her off of something, whether it's reading or bike riding or math.  If she can learn it through her hands (folding, fitting, making) or her voice (singing!) or her body (jumping equations or patterns, clapping games), she will really enjoy it and learn it without realizing it!  Anika, on the other hand, enjoys numbers and thinks about them and figures them into her imaginative play. She is the one to go get a puzzle to put together or the manipulatives from the math curriculum to build or play with.

Sometimes is comes down to me relaxing a bit and opening my own eyes to the beauty of math, the forms of math, the math that is all around us.  Opening to the enjoyment of math.

Ani completed a maze quite quickly the other day, and when I expressed amazement she giggled and said, "It's 'cause I have a math brain, Mama!" Oh, joy!

*as a postscript...after writing this, I was asking Ani what she'd like to do today, and she told me that it has been a while since we drew clocks and practiced time, and could we do that and maybe do some measuring?  And that's how it happens...