Hannah was studying roots in science today. Here are her CD case plants, the radishes are growing out of the CD and the lima beans have finally sprouted. Here is a site with interactive plant stuff.

Grace started her new science -Earth science. Bethany was working on factoring monomials and polynomials, grammar and reading Lord of the Flies.

I went to NIA class this morning, we have dance this afternoon and we are going to the shelter tonight to babysit the kids there while their parents are in a class. We’re going to be making ziplock bag butterflies and reading Amelia Bedlia stories and trickster tales. Tomorrow I’m going to see a movie with friends (Les Miserables), Wed. is park day, seeing Grandma and a hike, Thursday is my history co-op and Friday Grace gets to meet with her marine bio mentor for some citizen scientist work.

This morning we did school, I guided Hannah through Greek history and phonics while helping Grace with her math and checking Bethany’s science (homeschoolers multitask well.) We left late to head to the Fox theater for the storytelling show. It was a tribute to the late storyteller Pat Mendoza, whom we saw once at the Fox many years ago. Some of his fellow Rocky Mountain Storytellers showed up today to tell us stories about coyote, how to help your local pizza place, why it’s good to be yourself and how the sun came to be (according to Bush mythology.) If you don’t know how to tell a story, there is a book on Project Gutenberg about it. We’re about to take a break in our school and one of the things we will do is create stories about things, like how the sun got into the sky or why the beaver has a flat tail and so on. Kids can get quite creative with stories!

After the theater show we picked up a friend and went over to RAFT. The girls found the biggest bag they could and filled it with stuff from the back for $1. I snagged some CD cases to use for a seed project and wouldn’t you know it – I was perusing this site and now I need plastic bottles (and I was just there, and they are cheaper than buying coke from the store and drinking it to get an empty bottle.) We got home and the girls played while I worked on getting my links for school stuff organized. I have a whole section for Grace (marine biology) now and found this site for Bethany to pick some work from. We school year round and we’re about to have a break from the K12 curriculum as we end one grade level and wait for the other to show up. Then as we reach summer we start to slow down so we can take advantage of lazy days in the river, hiking, camping and in general being outside. One of our favorite outdoor spots to laze away with a good book is under the Weidenblume sculpture. In the summer it’s so cool and shady in there (and it’s a great place to take pictures.)

I guess I’m thinking of summer because it was 60 and sunny today, but a foot of snow is on the way this weekend, so it’s not summer yet. But, tomorrow is another pretty day, nice enough for a Park day! The Shalom part was just the feeling of peace that I got as I talked to my friend about Jesus. I found these verses in Romans today – wonderful.

Romans 9:25-27

If each grain of sand on the seashore were numbered
and the sum labeled “chosen of God,”
They’d be numbers still, not names;
salvation comes by personal selection.
God doesn’t count us; he calls us by name.

(public domain)

This year marks 150 years since Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation. It also marks 50 years since the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s ‘I Have a Dream’ speech. Today the girls and I talked about the Proclamation, slavery, the Declaration, the Constitution, Civil Rights, amendments, laws and the timeline of slavery (go here to see that, it’s very interesting.)

This gorgeous drawing from 1863 shows a happy family in the middle and the struggles of slavery around them.

(public domain)

We listened to Dr. King’s passionate speech, not just the ‘I have a dream part’, take some time to listen to the whole speech – he was an amazing orator.

Here are just a few quotes from that speech: ‘In a sense we have come to our nation’s capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.’

‘I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.

This is our hope. This is the faith that I go back to the South with. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.’

Colorado was not yet a state when the Proclamation went into effect, but it had been a territory since 1861 – that meant that when the 13th amendment (Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction. Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation) was passed in 1865, Colorado should have had no slavery within its boundaries. But, we know from readings that Colorado had its share of slaves, mostly Native American slaves.

It is very hard for my children to understand the whole Civil rights movement because they are a recipient of change. They have seen an African American President serve not one, but now embark on two terms. They have never been to a public water fountain marked ‘white only’ or ‘colored’. They have never been told that the color of a persons skin makes them any better or any worse, as Dr. King said, I hope that character counts more than skin color too. They have been told of slavery, even now we are still reading through the book Chains and are horrified at the treatment of the slave Isabel by her Revolutionary war masters. And now that they can connect the timeline dots, they realize that Isabel is still almost 100 years away from the Emancipation Proclamation.

So, just as we talk about and study other important dates in the year (September 11th, Veteran’s day, Memorial day, Constitution day, Independence day, etc.) today we remember those who pushed forward and made the world a better place. Those who changed laws and those who promoted peaceful gatherings that incited the nation to become better, to do their best to make good on that promissory note written by our founding fathers. That, yes indeed, all men are created equal and should be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Resources for today (or any day you want to study slavery, emancipation and civil rights):
Transcript of ‘I Have a Dream’ speech here.
Emancipation Proclamation document here.
Civil rights movement lessons on video here.
Eyewitness History, Emancipation Proclamation here.
Life of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in pictures here.
Slavery in North America and other links here.

My goodness, we haven’t been to NIA (neuromuscular integrated aerobics) class in ages. When we showed up, the ladies in the class were all over the girls, telling them how big they have gotten and asking where we have been…it doesn’t seem like that long, but I guess the last time we went was in late September. It was good to be back, I know that we can’t do two mornings a week…it just messes up our school schedule, but maybe we can start doing Mondays again.

After class we went by the store and got Bethany a new coat, she needed one. We are going to be out in the cold tomorrow and now that our weather has finally caught up to the month we’re in, it’s good to have a nice coat. Back at home we did some school, Bethany is on circuits so I found a few things to go along with that like: Circuit world, where you can set up a circuit board and try to run it. Learning circuits where each step in the process is spelled out for you (for younger kids.) For a bit harder game and experience with energy and electricity, try Plug in 2 engineering. A younger version called Energy experience is on the same site. (Plus we have a snap circuit board in the house to play on.) Is that enough energy links for you?

Tonight Bethany has a bottle-cap jewelry making session at the library, I have dinner in the oven and we have a Charlie Chan movie to finish watching. Oh yes, and Joel passed his practical EMT certification test yesterday. Now he has to take the state written test and then he will be a certified EMT.

Although it feels like Friday for some reason. James works from home on Thursdays, so maybe that’s what makes it weird. We did school very quietly (he was working in the study downstairs.) Well, we were mostly quiet…until Grace worked on the roller coaster game from BrainPop (see yesterday’s post for the site.) We were having fun watching the coaster go up and down and crash and eventually (after a few tries) make a successful stop. I was looking for an on-line graphing calculator for Bethany and found this one here for linear inequalities. Go check out the main site, there is so much cool stuff there. Hannah played on PBS kids after her schoolwork was done, she was practicing estimating and math stuff. Grace needed to read The Sign of the Beaver for literature, so we had to make a library run to get it. We had lunch with James and read Chains, the girls made me read two chapters because the chapter ended with screaming in the kitchen (in the book) and they wanted to hear what happened. I hide the book after I read it so no one reads ahead (is that mean?)

In other news…Joel made a 90 on his EMT written exam. Now he has the practical test on Sunday, then the state exam sometime later. After that he could literally bring you back from the dead (assuming you haven’t been dead long and you’re near O2 and a defib machine.)

Tomorrow it’s more school and then an evening Christmas jazz concert at the college. Next week we are super busy – bottle cap jewelry making, Governor’s mansion tour, Christkindl market, Fox theater Christmas show, Titanic at the library, Presentation club and a HS workshop for me at RAFT.