We read about cloves, which are one of the spices I use in making pumpkin pie. Jaden wanted to know what the plant looked like. The flowers are a pretty red; the flower buds are dried when completely ripe and then ground. Cloves are very popular in food and drug use around the world. Something even I learned was that clove cigarettes were just recently banned a couple months ago in the United States. Our FDA is certainly ban-crazy...all except for the stuff that is really causing serious harm to people in the way of food and drugs. What hypocrites. What's most ironic is that the supposed reason for banning clove in cigarette usage, along with any other natural or artificial flavoring in tobacco cigarettes, is to reduce the number of young people getting hooked on tobacco. I guess banning tobacco usage didn't cross their minds (or the bribes the lawmakers receive from the tobacco companies are just too nice to refuse). Not that I think tobacco should be banned; I don't, although I'm not sure yet whether there is a real worthwhile use for it. I do know that it is terribly abused, and it's a rather poisonous-smelling incense.
We read about chili peppers. We went on a quick trip to town after last sabbath, which was my first trip to Rogers in six weeks or longer. I think Jaden saw a chili pepper on a sign, and he asked about them. Chili peppers refer to any peppers of the Capsicum genus in the Solanaceae family. I showed Jade what a cayenne pepper looked like fresh and told him what we have in the cabinet is the ground product from the dried fruit. Chilis are also used widely around the world for both food and drug usage. I learned something, too. I didn't realize paprika was any type of chili pepper ground. I had mistakenly thought that paprika was a species of its own in the Capsicum genus, but that's not true. Paprika is a general term for any sort of ground chili pepper, and so it naturally varies from mild to hot flavors. Different parts of the world use different flavors of paprika.
Jaden asked about hopscotch when I was reading one of his Berenstain Bear books to the boys. Sooo, I taught him how to play hopscotch. I wanted to teach it to Trusten, too, but he wondered off across the yard to his new tricycle. When he came back, I'd already explained the rules, and he just started walking through it. I constructed it out of tape in the rocky driveway, and we used a metal nut as a marker. I'd like to have a cement slab poured in the near future for a basketball goal, anyway, which will also be good for things like hopscotch, where we can draw it with sidewalk chalk. I didn't really make the squares big enough, but it was suitable enough to teach him how to play. He didn't play correctly at first; he didn't understand that he was to place both feet in the double squares, so at first he hopped in them each with one foot. He needs practice! (And bigger squares...my foot touched the tape borders just stepping in it.)
Jade asked me how fast a rocket goes when launched into space. The first thing I found was how fast a space shuttle flies when in orbit around the earth, which is 17,500 miles an hour! I finally found the answer that he really wanted, which is known as the earth's "escape velocity": 11.2 kilometers a second, which is about 7 miles a second!
Speaking of spaceships, last Thursday evening Nathan, the boys, and I went outside to watch the space shuttle (Alexandria, I think it's called) and the International Space Station drift across the sky. It's not something you see every day, and the boys sure enjoyed it!
Jade also helped me make bread last week. He watched, and then I let him do some kneading. I pulled the recliner over to the kitchen counter, and Trusten and I sat there together watching Jaden, until I decided I should take over.
Trusten was flipping through the Curious George book that has several stories, and he asked me about a page, and I saw that it went through the entire alphabet in an interesting way. I'd not known that was in there. Several of the stories in that particular book are the same stories we have in individual CG books, so I have never been through the whole book. It looks more enjoyable than any of the other alphabet books we have. And it's certainly something new. I haven't worked much with him in awhile with regards to learning the Roman alphabet, and I think if I get back to that now it will take no time for him to learn it. We're about to read this while Jaden is outside. I have just assigned Jaden to a scavenger hunt, which I will talk about in my next post.
Jaden LOVES winter fun of "busting ice" as well as playing in the snow when we get it. He's actually prayed for an ice storm before! (YIKES!) WE don't like ice storms, but for him it means ice, ice, and more ice for him to bust! Well, we haven't had an ice storm this year...yet, anyway. But, he's already started his ice busting and outdoors winter exploration. He asks me every morning that there's frost on the ground whether he can go out and bust ice, and he goes out to do that FIRST thing, before we even get to breakfast, because he wants to get out "before all the ice melts." Last winter (or maybe two years ago) I let him have our old purple plastic pitcher (b/c we only like to store and drink out of glass). He likes to put water in it and freeze it in our freezer so he can then take it out to "bust ice." He's been doing a lot of that, since there's been limited ice to bust outside, and he simply cannot wait.
His newest ice-busting tool is a piece of wood that was part of a board. Ooooh, no, Nathan was gathering logs last night to build a fire in the wood stove, and Jade happened to see him bringing in that piece of wood, too, that Nathan evidently picked up from the back deck. Will shouted, "That's my ice buster! That's my ice buster!" I'm so glad he caught him, because I'd have never heard the end of that. It would have been crying and wailing, "Daddy burned my ice buster!"
He brought inside a lovely ice formation a few days ago. It was made up of several thin layers of ice upon each other. He said that it grew on a plant:
He also drew a nice goat. His December issue of Your Big Backyard came in, and it sometimes has something to draw with those four-step instructions. There was a mountain goat in there this time, and he decided to try to draw one. I LOVE it! I told him that I really liked it, and so he gave me his drawing. I have it hanging on the fridge for now. Nathan told me privately that he really liked Jade's goat, too.
I have really enjoyed some of his recent artwork. I love art; I just do not excel at it myself. So, I love others' art; I just don't like to do art.
Nathan got an old non-working Mac computer, and it's been sitting on the back deck for many weeks now. Jade finally brought it in last Saturday evening, and they started disassembling it in the boys' room. Trusten wanted to be a part of it, too (naturally). Jade loves taking things apart. The bad thing about it, though, is that he likes to just start tearing up things, so it ended before it was meant to. Nathan said, "We're done. You're trying to tear it up rather than learn about it." Too bad. Maybe it will be continued later.
As far as Jade's computer time goes, he's been playing a lot of chess lately. He started playing that a few weeks ago, and he's obsessed, I think. He plays Clever Island usually when he gets out of the shower while I go shower and get Trusten clean. Chess has seemingly caused him to forget his other computer games.
I'll be updating the things we've been learning in science, the bible, and Prepare and Pray in the next post. After all, I don't want to write a book here, now do I? ;-)
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