Books for little geeks

Or rather, books from geeks, GeekDads to be specific.
Today Michael Harrison at GeekDad has a post about Laura’s new b00kn3rd.com blog [it took me a while to figure out that "book nerd" is in there, but then I'm still woozy from my breakfast of waffles, whipped cream, and strawberries] and her post on rare children’s [...]

Happy Mother’s Day

from all the mamas and their offspring at Farm School!
Callie the calico cat and some of her kittens,

Laura’s 4H cow-calf pair, Bunny and Benny,

Oreo the Speckle Park calf,

It occurs to me

that I didn’t post any “before” window project photos. Here are a few before and during shots.
Before, inside (with apologies for the crummy quality):

Before, inside, with Davy:

Before, outside:

During, just after they removed the old window, and the wall:

During, with the new build-out framing:

During, getting ready to install the windows with some very brief snow [...]

Make your own school

Late but interesting: I didn’t see this until today, when it was already too late, from Gever Tulley’s blog:
Just a quick note to say that I’ll be speaking and answering questions on Thursday, May 1st at the Maker Day event before the Maker Faire and then again on Saturday, May 3rd, the first day of [...]

Do it Yourself Science

Via Boing Boing and Pharyngula, word of a new, subversive (that’s PZ’s term) chemistry book, just out this week from the Make Magazine folks:

Illustrated Guide to Home Chemistry Experiments: All Lab, No Lecture by Robert Bruce Thompson, part of O’Reilly Media’s DIY Science series.
Thompson is also the author, along with his wife Barbara Fritchman [...]

Nine is fine

Today is Daniel’s birthday and it’s a fine sunny Spring day.  The frogs are singing, the birds are twittering and making nests, and the gophers are poking out of their holes.
One of Daniel’s presents this morning was the Marty Robbins CD Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs (1959) which we listened to with breakfast (pancakes, bacon, [...]

Curtain Up

Tonight’s the big night and the kids are very, very excited. A bit pooped from yesterday’s full dress rehearsal, but very, very excited nonetheless. It’s going to be a busy weekend, with Friday and Saturday evening performances, and one Sunday afternoon too.  Tom got a sneak peak at the orchestra last night, and [...]

Speaking of hands

Laura at Seabird Chronicles has a post about “Crafts for young children” — activities and projects toddlers can do by themselves — inspired by a toddler/preschool summer camp she’s planning. The camp planning in turn has inspired the idea for a Craft Swap:
You prepare and mail a box of fun craft ideas/supplies to your [...]

Call of the wild

One of my Google Alerts picked up this article, “German Tots Learn to Answer Call of Nature” from The Wall Street Journal earlier in the week. From the article,
Each weekday, come rain or shine, a group of children, ages 3 to 6, walk into a forest outside Frankfurt to sing songs, build fires and roll [...]

Links

We’ve been busy here, recovering from the Festival and celebrating the kids’ successes (including Laura’s big wrap-up prize for most outstanding student performing in three disciplines and going on to provincials for poetry/public speaking and musical theater), doing some more Spring cleaning (I still have a few walls to wash and all of the windows [...]

Home from the hill

Well, home from three days at the peforming arts festival (piano, voice, and speech arts), which was a hill of its own.
We returned to find that it’s finally, really Spring here in our corner of the prairies. I’ve had pussy willows in a vase for a few weeks, the geese have been flying overhead [...]

Mud pies and bibliobituaries

One of our favorite books, especially for Spring, is Mud Pies and Other Recipes: A Cookbook for Dolls by Marjorie Winslow, illustrated by Erik Blegvad, whose Great Hamster Hunt, also out-of-print, is still on my shelves.
So I was delighted to see it receive a lengthy “salute” from independent bookseller Alison Morris on her blog, Shelftalker. [...]

Room with a view

Here’s an (admittedly not very good) photo of the old bedroom windows yesterday, with Davy peeking in. He’s standing on the scaffolding outside. Tom had already stripped off all the trim.

And here’s the opening today, minus the windows and most of the wall. Enlarged, in fact, almost from floor to ceiling. The [...]

Early Spring snaps

The only thing green things in my garden (where the snow has melted) — nice young stinkweed. And oh what a healthy crop already. It figures it would be a weed!

The farm team (so called because they’re in their coveralls and tractor dealership gimme caps):

Sadly (ha!), the box of ice skates has [...]

Spreading the news

Bella Dia has an announcement:
I have a new blog called The Crafty Crow! I have seen so many great kids crafts in blogland that I wanted a blog to keep them all in one place with a bit of organization thrown in. I would love it if you would check it out and [...]

Happy Easter from Farm School

(The picture is from last summer, but the good wishes are current!)

Under the (Spring) weather

After three nutty busy days at the beginning of the week (library board committee meeting, semiannual teeth cleaning and checkup, and music lessons, and that was without two meetings I couldn’t squeeze in), Daniel and I got sick. For me that was aside from the three consecutive days of headaches — first migraine, next [...]

What we’ve been up to

I feel as though I’ve been missing in action so here’s a general overview of what’s been happening around here:
Calving season started on Friday, with the arrival of a little bull calf Davy has named Frank. Frank was joined Saturday by Ricky. Right now (just before 11 pm), another heifer is calving, and [...]

Awarding creativity

Via GeekDad, news of Lego’s second annual Creation Nation Creativity Awards: “Designed to encourage lifelong curiosity and creativity, the LEGO Creativity Awards are an opportunity an opportunity for budding inventors, explorers, creators and dreamers of all kinds to gain recognition for the imaginations that will make them the ‘builders of tomorrow’.”
The contest is open to [...]

Surfacing, briefly

It’s been a busy week or so around here, which is why blogging has been sparse.  I even missed Poetry Friday.  But the upstairs bathroom is done (I’ll post a photo of the grouted palm tree, which is lovely), and Tom has been getting ready to start the new windows project in the master bedroom, [...]