A wordless Wednesday Worth Going Ape Over

 

A to Z 2024: G is for Going to the Zoo

For The A to Z Challenge this year, I am focusing on everyday holidays. Each day there are multiple unusual things to celebrate.  Every day of the challenge I look for an event taking place that day and pair it with the letter of the day.  I have also made up 5 holidays to coincide with the vowel days of the challenge.  At the end of each post I will share a special song of the day for that day's letter.  At the end of the month, these songs will be assembled in a to z keepsake playlist on Spotify.  Every day is a celebration, let's unwrap today's together. 

April 8th is National Zoo Lovers Day

I love zoos.  I'm not sure exactly when I fell in love with them .  It may have been all the times Dr. Lester Fisher visited the Ray Rayner show when I was a kid on a segment called Ark in the Park.  Dr. Fisher was the director of the Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago.  It could have been on my trips to the Brookfield Zoo when I was a kid, I know I had one birthday party there.  It  may have even been when my grandparents would take my brother and sister and myself to the aforementioned Lincoln Park Zoo.  It may have been all of those things and more.  

Here is a link to one of our other blogs that shows a great video from a family trip (sans me) to the Brookfield Zoo.  

I really enjoying going to free zoo's.  Here is an article from February of this year talking about 12 such zoos (I've been at 3 through 6). 

# 6 The St. Louis was the most recent zoo I visited.  Here are some pictures form my trip in March

My favorite animal, the giraffe at the St. Louis Zoo

In my 2015 A to Z challenge

G was for giraffe poop

Raja The Elephant at the St. Louis Zoo

Raja has been at the zoo for 30+ years

He will be moving to Columbus Ohio in 2024 or 2025

An Amur Leopard at the St. Louis Zoo

I went to the zoo with my dear friend Dave Hendrick

We were both missionaries in Khabarovsk Russia in the early 1990's

Khabarovsk is situated  on the Amur River

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Speaking of animals: Today's song of the day is Gonna Buy Me A Dog by The Monkees

7 songs in my A to Z playlist looks like this

 

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Today is also the day for the total solar eclipse.  We will be watching it at school today.  The next one won't me in the U.S. until August 23rd 2044.  Instead of pushing 60 like I am now it will be exactly a month before my schedule 80th birthday.  My Dad turned 86 on March 23rd and he will be watching it with my Mom and brother.  So that's older than I will be next next time.

Will you be watching the eclipse today?  Do you enjoy zoos?  Answer either or both of these questions in the comment section.

 To go to the home of the A to Z challenge click here, to see the 2024 master list of participating blogs click here. Enjoy the 2024 A to Z challenge, and Happy Holidays!

Wordless Wednesday: Either Giraffes or smaller these days or Trees are bigger Edition

For more Wordless Wednesday: click here.
 

Z is for Zoo, Zisk and Zones

The day is here the final day of the A to Z challenge ! This year I chose 3 themes for the challenge: Limericks, MLB sluggers in my lifetime, and A to Z wordles. For more information about these themes click here. 

Part I: A to Z Limericks

On 3 continents I've been to the zoo

Europe and Asia are two

It's more than I can bare (ika) 

Not been to South America

Maybe soon I will go to Peru. 

Part II: A to Z Homerun hitters of my lifetime

They say good things come in 3's.  In the year 1977 that was certainly true for me, the White Sox and Richie Zisk.  In 1976 the White Sox finished last in the A.L. West and were in need of  a major shake up.  Iconic owner Bill Veeck (as in Wreck) was up for the task.  He traded Hall of Fame Reliever Rich Gossage and starting pitcher Terry Forster to the Pirates for Zisk. In 1977 Zisk had his best season having his best career years in RBI and Home Runs.  In 1977 8 White Sox players had  10 or more homers, (Oscar Gamble had 31, Zisk had 30).  more than 50 RBI (Zisk led the team with 102), and batting .247 or higher (Richie hit .290) earning the moniker of the Southside Hitmen.  Old Comiskey was a magic place that year and I (turning 13 at the end of the season) was at a perfect age to enjoy it.  

Richie Zisk only played 1 year for the White Sox but he made an indelible impression on the fans.  From 1976 to 1987 Zisk hit 159 of his 207career home runs.  Besides the 30 for the Sox, he hit 59 for the Texas Rangers,  49 fir the Seattle Mariners and 21 in his final season for the Pirates.  

Part III: Wordle Starting Words from A to Z

Note: Correct letters in the correct places will be shown in bold. Correct letters in incorrect places will be shown in italics.

My March 26th starting word was zones. 

Z O N E S - Two letters in solutuion but not in right pace

W R O T E - Got O in right place.

E M O J I-  Added E in right place

P L A C E - I usually dont make guesses like 4 and 5 

D O U G H - but my notebook says I did

E P O X Y - Epoxy in 5 

Thanks for joining me for the  A to Z challenge.  For more click here.  

Z is for Zoos

Spring Break So Far

Not all homeschoolers take a Spring Break.  But since Amy is employed by a local  school district and gets the week off, we take the week off. 

We are not going away anywhere this week.  Here is what we have been doing. 

Our co-op met on Monday, so Amy went in to work. Only a handful of people were there, but it is one less day that she has to work once school is out of session.  We had a major tire blowout as we were travelling from co-op to dental appointments.  Not 5 minutes after we pulled over on the side of the road, a man who works at the same tire company we bought our last tires pulled up behind us and assisted me in putting on the spare.  A family from our co-op noticed us on the side of the road, dropped most of their kids at home came back and drove Amy and the kids to their dental appointments while I got the tire changed.

We have been watching movies this week as part of our break.  We watched Hugo and it is certainly worth all the hype.  I found it very enjoyable.  (Not everyone in the family enjoyed it.)

My father had a surgery to remove his prostate last Tuesday, as it was cancerous.  He is now cancer free and after being releases from the hospital last Friday on his birthday he is getting back to normal life.  Today we visited him and my Mom and he had fixed an old computer and gave it to Spider Droid.

Tomorrow my brother is coming over and he, SD and myself are going to do a little work in the bathroom.  We have been without a bathroom sink for almost a week now.  I bought one at Menard's yesterday and we are going to put new floor tiles in while we were at it.  The girls will have an action packed day at Lincoln Park Zoo and Navy Pier while us men beat the bathroom into submission.

We have other day trips planned on Thursday and Friday.  I am also trying to write a few blog posts for next month's blogging A to Z which starts this Sunday.  We are relaxing and enjoying.  This accounts for no posts since Saturday. 

Hope you all are having a great week.

Obligatory Been A While Post

Homeschool dad here it's been almost a week since I posted.
I haven't fallen off the face of the earth but I have been pretty busy. I'm going to take a few minutes and put some pictures up from the past week or so and I hope to have regular post up soon.

Lemurs at the Brookfield Zoo.

Interjections (Rats!)

Fragments of photos Ipod Edition

I am at a waiting room, cleaning out the pictures from my i-pod.  many of them were for blog posts that I haven't quite got to yet.  So here's a few fragments about them.

Photo Fragment 1

That's no majestic sunrise/sunset.  It's just a lamp post over spider droid working on snow board moves on his sled.

Picture Fragment 2

Many libraries offer a read to a dog program.  My oldest kids have done this.  But puppy, our resident dog lover never had before this.  Here she is reading to Samson, who is from a Sox fan family and paid a lot of attention to me because I was wearing my White Sox jacket.

Here she is in action . . . 

Photo Fragment 3

This pic is already on the blog.  I show it here to illustrate that it is generally not much of a problem to get all 3 kids to pose for a good photo.  But when you try to add an adult in, like when Amy and I took the kids to the Brookfield Zoo in late December, you get something like this.

Amy and Bunny look great.  Puppy and Spider Droid look goofy. 

Photo Fragment 4

I lived in Khabarovsk Russia for 2 years in the early  90's. Khababarosvsk is located  on the Amur River.  So when I'm at the zoo I always like to see the tigers and leopards that hail from that region.  Hers is  a picture of an Amur Leopard.  

Well that's enough fragments for one day.  For more fragments, join Friday Fragments at Half Past Kissing Time.

I do, however, have time for one more photo.

NEXT TIME: DARE TO DREAM

Friday Fragments Pics & Video Edition

Friday Fragment Time again. I am waiting for a Skype Call from Russia at a little after Midnight on Friday. It is 4:15 p.m on Friday in Khabarovsk where I am expecting the call from. That is a fragment for a different time but explains why I am up so late on a school day.

Just videos and pics in today's fragments.

Fragment 1. Fun at the dinner table





Fragment 2. Baseball at the Zoo

When we go to the zoo we expect to see bears like this . . .


And This . . .

But at the Brookfield Zoo this weekend there were a number of human cubs. Chicago Cub fans like my son, players and former players like Milt Pappas who my sister had on a poster in her room when she was growing up.

I had a cool video linked up of Spider Droid doing a pitching game but I called him by his real name and I can't get the edited version to upload. SPider Droid had fun playing baseball games and we all had fun at the zoo.

Fragment 3: Blue Ribbon Robotics

Earlier last week Spider Droid competed in the Kane County Fair. No pig in competition or anything like that. He participated in a virtual robotics challenge where among other things he completed a cd-ROM curriculum on robotics, entered his findings in a journal, made a PowerPoint presentation including a video (which is really cool but uses his real name are you sensing an overprotective dad theme here?) and made this poster for display at the fair.

He also overcame his shyness and had an interview with the judge where he showed his video and explained what he learned.

The result of all his work: A blue ribbon. For those of you who don't speak County Fair, A blue ribbon is as high as you get w/o being the winner or runner up of the event. We don't speak County Fair so when we saw the ribbon we both thought (me silently, I have some tact) that it was just a participation ribbon. (We both have won those before). It actually means that he met or exceeded all of his objectives. Win, Place or Show we are very proud of his accomplishments.

Fragment 4: Leave them Laughing. (I hope.)



A few hours later back at the dinner table . . .

‪Dave roller finally catches a chip‬‏ - YouTube

For more Friday Fragments drop what you are doing and head over to Half Past Kissin' Time. I have a Skype call to get, so I'll catch you later.

I thought Super Hero Movies were for Kids.

Friday Fragment Time here at the pretty good Coral.

First of all let me start out with a rant. My temp job ended on Tuesday, so I have had the ability to do things between 3 p.m and 11 p.m. that eluded me when I was working. So, Wednesday I went to see Green Lantern. Over the past 5 years there have been a plethora of super hero movies, the majority of these films feature the comic book heroes I grew up with.

Now when I think of super heroes, I think of 6 - 12 year old boys. If I were making Super Hero films they would be my target demographic My problem is that with few exceptions almost every super hero movie that has come out in the past ten years is not one I would want a 6-12 year boy to go to. Especially not my 6-12 year old boy.

Green Lantern is no exception. It is a dark scary movie that would certainly give my son nightmares. There is also sexual content that would preclude me from having good old Spider Droid watch it.

Over the past 5 years I have previewed many of the super hero movies, Iron Man, Spider Man 1&2, Fantastic 4 among others and there was always something in those films that kept me from letting Spider Droid watch it.

What bothers me is that many of these movies are marketed for children and that children would love watching super hero movies. My son is always disappointed when he asks about a movie I have screened and I tell him it's not for kids. He always gives me a look that says a Super hero movie that's not for kids, what's the point of that?

For Fragment 2 I will move from rant to review.


I recently had the joy of reading a great book to my kids. It is called Marvin Beeederman, Super Hero - The curse of the bologna sandwich.

The thing I really liked about this book is not just that it's funny, it's how it's funny. It uses one of my favorite methods of humor, repetition. It repeats parts of the book over and over until the mere mention of certain words are pure hilarity. I am looking forward to reading other books in this series.

Fragment 3

Continuing the superhero theme. Here is a video of one of the super heroes of the animal kingdom, the mighty dolphin.




Well that's all the fragments I have time for today. I have had a super time. For more Friday Fragments click here.

Of Carrots and Sticks

I promised SB 136 update so here is one. But before I do, here is what may seem like an aside.

The Brookfield Zoo of Brookfield (Go Figure!), Illinois had a program. They allowed public and private schooled children as well as home schooled children as well as their teachers/chaperone's to attend the zoo on field trips at no cost. Last Summer the field trip policy changed. Only Public and Private schools were listed as field trip eligible on the zoo's website and Home Schoolers were listed as ineligible. One exception was given on the website, stating that home educators who registered their students at the Illinois Board of Education would be able to attend field trips free of charge.

This change was not received warmly by the home school community. I remember my reaction was that since Illinois Home schools are considered by Illinois law as private school's they should already be field trip eligible and not have to do anything else. Other's saw it as a way to try to force home educators to register with the state when they were not legally obligated to do so. The reaction was a surprise to Agnes Kovacs, Manager of School Groups and Teacher Programs at the zoo. She told me that the zoo was just wanting to make sure that only school groups were getting in and just wanted to get some proof that the students were homeschoolers. The zoo now accepts proof of home education from H.S.L.D.A, and other home school advocacy groups as well as registration with the IBOE. She advised me yesterday that other advocacy groups have been recently added besides the ones at the website.

Not 6 months after this zoo issue was resolved State Senator Maloney
introduced SB 136 to make all Illinois Home Schoolers register with the IBOE. Now I understand the zoo's interest. They want to make sure that their free field trips for Illinois students is not abused and can be maintained. I can understand that as I went on such a field trip almost 40 years ago and that trip had a great impact on my life.

What I don't understand is Maloney's interest. He offers no incentives to home schoolers for registration. His motives are explained a little more in this e-mail I received from HSLDA . . .

======================================================================
From the HSLDA E-lert Service...
======================================================================


Illinois--SB 136 Epilogue

Dear HSLDA Members and Friends:

Following up on his decision to table SB 136, Senator Maloney asked
several of us involved in the SB 136 hearing to meet with him.

Yesterday Sen. Maloney reiterated to us his belief that the government
needs to know the names and addresses of all homeschooled children. We
reiterated that this was neither necessary nor useful. After all, if
merely knowing a child's name and address could produce a quality
education, a quarter of Illinois public school students would not
still be without a diploma after four years of high school.

Sen. Maloney reiterated his concern about homeschooled children
"falling through the cracks." We reiterated that according to
published figures from State Superintendent Dr. Christopher Kock (who
was also present at the meeting), three-fourths of a million public
school children (765,989 to be exact) were truant for 2008-2009--so
that is where the state should focus its efforts concerning children
"falling through cracks."

Sen. Maloney reiterated his worry that nothing could be done to those
who violate the law while asserting they are homeschooling. We handed
him a copy of the State Board of Education's own webpage that points
to the Levisen case and describes exactly what procedure should be
followed.

While it was obvious that Senator Maloney still wants to increase
government control over homeschoolers, he said he would not move
forward on anything of this nature without first talking to us.

Before filing SB 136, he never asked for the input of those who would
be affected--the thousands of homeschool families in Illinois. We
welcome his new willingness to talk.

We are not asking families to take any action at this time. We will
continue to watch the situation carefully and let you know if and when
it's time to put down the books and drive to Springfield.

Sincerely,

Scott Woodruff
HSLDA Senior Counsel

Maloney needs to realize that home educators in Illinois aren't going to accept registration for registrations sake. I won't register for incentives like field trips. I will register if the law demands it. However, I will actively oppose any bill that even smells like SB 136. I still have not been given a good answer to how the state will pay for making sure home educated children don't fall through the cracks when they already can't fund the ones seeking public education. While this post may truly be an epilogue for SB136, I am sure it is not the end of the registration issue in the state of Illinois. I wonder what is next, more carrots or more sticks?

Thanks to the folks at Life Nurturing Education for putting this in the recent carnival of Homeschooling. Click here to go back to that carnival.

Washington Day 6 and Beyond

It's been almost 3 weeks since our trip to Washington.

It is now time for Things Fortnightly. Thing #1 will have to be my journal entry from day 6:

Charlie and I were slugs today. We drove in to DC with the friend of my sisters that we are staying with. With 3 in her car and 3 in ours we could both ride in the HOV (High Occupancy Vehicles) lane. In DC commuters meet up to be able to make enough passengers to get in those lanes. This practice is called slugging. Once we got into the DC area we took the metro to the zoo. At first,, neither of the pandas were very active or photogenic. While we were resting one panda started climbing a tree and spinning around.

Amy got footage.


I showed it to my sister and she said she doesn't know anyone who's been there and seen them be anywhere near that active.

We also saw many other cool animals like Orangutans climbing through towers outside of their usual habitat. After a number of hours at the zoo we went to the library of congress and visited two amazing exhibits featuring children's literature. One for authors and researchers and the other for young children to read with their parents.

Thing # 2. You can't believe everything you read.

Before the aforementioned trip to DC we read and read and read about how to prepare for said trip. One thing that we read and read and read over and over and over (I think you may be beginning to see the point here) was don't drive your car in DC.

This is why in past journal entries you have read about trains and slugs. It turns out that driving in D.C. is no worse than driving into Chicago. For us it was our preferred form of travel and was part of the adventure. Again we stayed outside of the city proper, and I could see the benefits of parking your car somewhere for a week if you were going to be holed up in some downtown hotel.

Thing # 3 In-flight Movie

Thing # 4 Endings

Charlie and his cousin Bobby finished cub scouts last week.
The kids finish Awana and another semester of our home school co-op Monday.

It's a good thing they all have at least one more activity they are still involved with. Otherwise people might start asking "What about socialization?" again!



Those are my things for this edition. Can I count on you to share some things by clicking on Mr. Linky below?


Next Time: Washington Trip Day 7: Saving the best for seventh.

Wordless Wednesday: The Z Double O

For more Wordless Wednesday click here.

Next Time: Things This Thursday