Today’s wonderings brought to you courtesy of Mr. T. Is being an ice cream man a good job? Is Mr. Tdore Roosevelt dead? How did John McCain fight big tobacco? Do ants have pupils? Is George Bush a Democrat or a Republican?  I wonder what it would be like to turn your skin inside out. [...]

Well, we are just ripping along with the 100-Species Challenge. At this rate, we’ll get to our 100th species about 75 months from now, which puts us at the beginning of 2015. That’s actual statistics, not hyperbole. I’ll try to do better. This was a fun one though, so I thought I’d share it here. [...]

At the homeschool conference, I went to several sessions with Catherine Levinson, a Charlotte Mason speaker. She had a lot to say about cultivating habits in kids. Apparently Charlotte was a big believer in cultivating habit. The mother who takes pains to endow her children with good habits secures for herself smooth and easy days.—Charlotte [...]

even cheese-grating can be fun, when you do it with friends. a six-year-old can subsist on little more than quesadillas and marshmallows for three days. when a camping coordinator reads the “camping guidelines” aloud during dinner, including the guideline about adults modeling responsible alcohol use, she is bound to have a bottle of beer in [...]

That thing is mixing watercolor paints, Mr. T’s newest fascination. In the lid of the watercolor palette he blends paints, first one color and some water, then a bit of another color, then another. New shades develop with each step, and he studies them all. He quizzes us: “Do you think I made this color [...]

A few things that have me all worked up right now: Finished books. I finally got to this one. It’s the tale of Kingsolver’s family’s year-long experiment to grow as much of their own food as possible–and to eat locally-grown food when they couldn’t raise it themselves. Parts of the book preach to the choir if [...]