Rare Mummified Dinosaur Uncovered

I think its funny that in spite of the evidence that this dinosaur was covered rapidly (hello, think major flooding) to create its fossilized skin, the scientists INSIST it is 65 million years old. When will they learn?

Rare mummified dinosaur uncovered
Duckbilled Edmontosaurus covered by fossilized skin that is as hard as iron
By Blake Nicholson
The Associated Press
updated 8:06 a.m. MT, Tues., March. 18, 2008

BISMARCK, North Dakota - Using tiny brushes and chisels, workers picking at a big greenish-black rock in the basement of North Dakota's state museum are meticulously uncovering something amazing: a nearly complete dinosaur, skin and all.
Unlike almost every other dinosaur fossil ever found, the Edmontosaurus named Dakota, a duckbilled dinosaur unearthed in southwestern North Dakota in 2004, is covered by fossilized skin that is hard as iron. It's among just a few mummified dinosaurs in the world, say the researchers who are slowly freeing it from a 65-million-year-old rock tomb.
"This is the closest many people will ever get to seeing what large parts of a dinosaur actually looked like, in the flesh," said Phillip Manning, a paleontologist at Manchester University in England, a member of the international team researching Dakota.
"This is not the usual disjointed sentence or fragment of a word that the fossil records offer up as evidence of past life. This is a full chapter."
Animal tissue typically decomposes quickly after death. Researchers say Dakota must have been buried rapidly and in just the right environment for the skin to be preserved.
"The process of decay was overtaken by that of fossilization, preserving many of the soft-tissue structures," Manning said.
read the whole article here

School Outings

We went to the library one day and did our studies in a study room while Daddy worked at home. Convenient!

Alex did his science fair project on Diamonds and we got to go to the fair. It set our minds a reeling.

We got to go to the Phoenix Zoo on the Saturday after we finished wild animals. Zebras, kangaroos, elephants... but no penguins.

Why Tax Credits Are Wrong for Homeschoolers

by Valorie Delp

Qualified educators currently can claim $250 on qualified purchases from the IRS. Most homeschoolers spend at least that on curriculum per year so why not give us a $250 tax credit too? I could use that money!

Who Defines a Home Educator?

I think I'm pretty safe on this one. You see, I'm sure I'm a home educator. I have curriculum. I have paperwork. I have my little teacher's card from HSLDA and most reasonable businesses give me their teacher discount. New York State requires so much paperwork that I can use any of the paperwork that I turn in to 'prove' that I'm teaching.

My friends in Connecticut or New Jersey though, they don't have any requirements. What would they use to prove that they're home educators? Their child's portfolios? And what about my unschooling friends? Because their educational philosophy disagrees with mine--do they not count as home educators?

The first problem with accepting tax credits is that it necessarily means that the government must define who is a home educator and who is not. Do you really want that? It would likely mean federalized paper work, specific type of record keeping, and a set course of instruction. . .which brings me to my next point. To be honest, I don't see how the federal government could possibly require more paperwork than I already do, but most homeschoolers in other states could not say the same thing. Chances are good that if you're reading this, a tax credit would increase your paperwork, and probably substantially.

Who Defines What Qualified Expenses Are?

Having the government define what my qualified expenses are for home schooling makes me squeamish to be honest. I don't want the government involved in my home schooling--period. While I'm sure I could prove I'm a home educator I'm less sure that my curriculum would be approved, as it's decidedly Christian. And people who use Bob Jones or Abeka….they could forget about being approved, as that curriculum is all from one view point. Do you want government approved curriculum? If you do, you might want to consider sending your kids to public school. That's fine by me. . .it's your choice. But I don't want the government letting me know whether or not phonics is okay and what I'm allowed to teach in science.

And let's talk about other 'curricular' items. I know a family who decided to put a chicken coop in their backyard. I can see how that's home schooling. . .do they get a tax credit for that or does that not count? What about my kids' classes that they take at the Y? Do those count? Those are on their IHIPs. And again, our unschooling friends who don't use any curriculum. What could their qualified expenses be?

Accepting the tax credit means that the federal government will have to define who is a home educator and what is a qualified expense. It might not seem that complicated on the outset. But remember that it's the state government, and not the federal government that currently decides on state education laws. Shifting the power to define who we are and what we teach will not only increase government control in home schools, but it could easily infringe on the rights of parents to teach their own children at home. I know personally, I cannot support increased government involvement in home schooling and so I'm happy to forgo a tax credit.

Special Request

I mentioned in the Barometer that I have started some speech therapy with Huyler. Let me explain. Huyler has been an avid finger sucker since he was a baby. He still is. We have tried to break the habit, but to no avail. Anyway, it seems like Huyler’s inability to say his /R/ sounds may be partially due to this habit. But now Augie, who has never sucked his fingers, is having the same problem! Is he learning it from Huyler? I don’t really know! So, I hunted around a little to try to find some speech therapy techniques to use in helping him say it properly. There wasn’t a whole lot available without spending lots of money. I found some articles on teaching English as a second language to Japanese people, who often confuse /R/ and /L/ sounds. I’m using that information to try to teach him the proper tongue position for /R/, but the problem is, he doesn’t confuse it with /L/, but with /W/. I know this is a really common speech impediment, so there must be something more specific to his needs out there. I thought I would just ask each of you to keep your eyes peeled for materials, articles or techniques that could help us out. You got to feel for the kid, when he can’t even pronounce his own name properly!

More Precious Than Silver

Here are Huyler and Ardara singing along with Satellite Soul on "More Precious Than Silver". Again, I looked up the signs for the words on ASLpro.com so there may be a better way to do the song in sign, but I love how much heart the kids put into this. Maybe some day they will be able to tell a deaf person about the Lord from learning all these signs.

J is for Jewels

For our week on Jewels, we started off by learning about Jewels—how they are formed, how they are mined, and how they are cut to catch light so they will sparkle. We learned about some interesting things like the work of a “lapidary”, the UN warning against buying “blood diamonds” used to fund wars, and about making synthetic diamonds in a laboratory. According to Alex’s science fair project, they are now making diamonds out of peanut butter! We also got to see a real emerald, a real garnet, and a real opal that Grandpa Mark sent us. One day, we examined my diamond ring, and looked for the tiny flaw in it with a magnifying glass. Huyler found it but Ardara had to be shown. We read a book called “A Cache of Jewels” to learn about collective nouns, or words that describe a collection of things (school of fish, kindle of kittens, etc.) We also used little jewels to do some of the math worksheets that Grandpa John passed on to us from his horde of teaching materials (notice the collective noun). We made jewel necklaces out of colored straws. We made crowns out of foil. And most importantly we made rock candy! Our parallel lesson was that Jesus is more valuable than anything else. Our next post will be a video of the kids signing “More Precious Than Silver” and doing the sign language with it. One more rare rock we read about this week was meteors /meteorites.

R is for Rock

I think we had the most contributions ever for the next two lessons. Grandpa Mark sent us the most awesome rock collection. We can’t wait to show it off to the boy next door who keeps his rock collection in a used pizza box. We also loved the presentation that Uncle Ammon sent about different kinds of rocks and how they are formed. It went perfectly with what we learned from library books and our curriculum. We spent our first day looking at these great collections, and read a book called “The Magic School bus Goes to the Middle of the Earth” in which we learned a bit more about how rocks are formed—from magma, heat, pressure and time, just like Ammon said! The second day, we went outside and collected rocks of our own. We tried to find varied shapes, sizes, textures and colors. Then we came inside and sorted them by color, by size, by texture, etc. The next day, we went back through them and sorted them by metamorphic, sedimentary, and igneous. We also tried to grow our own crystal garden using salt, water and liquid bluing on sponges. I don’t know what we did wrong, but instead of growing up, like I have seen them do, they spread far and wide, all over the outside of the dish, the tray it was sitting on and even a little on the window sill! Yikes! But they did grow…

We also checked out a DVD of “Journey to the Center of the Earth” with Pat Boone. Classic.
Our lesson from the Bible was to “build our lives on the Rock,” Jesus Christ. We read the parable of the wise man and the foolish man. We even tried building with blocks on a big rock and in the soft dirt next to it and then flooding the houses with a whoosh of water. Sure enough, the house that wasn’t on the rock toppled and the house on the rock stood firm. We learned about builders using a “plumb line” to build their house, and using the same parable, we decided that the plumb line we follow for our lives should be God’s Word.

STOLEN!

Imagine our excitement when Monday morning we read the headlines of the huge art heist in Switzerland! The four paintings stolen at gunpoint were by Cezanne, Degas, Van Gogh and Monet and were worth over $163 million!!! We looked up pictures of them online. One of them we had already looked at in our Impressionism lesson on Friday. We sure do hope they catch those bad guys before those paintings are sold on the black market or damaged!

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But things really got out of hand when we finished our week on J is for Jewels and saw an article about a jewel heist! We are afraid to study anything else of value, for fear that there is some connection between our studies and the thefts. Could Ardara and Huyler be high-profile cat-burglars on the sly?????

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Impressionism

During our first week of February we learned about Impressionist art. We read a book about artists like Monet, Renoir, Pissarro, Degas, Cassatt and Van Gogh. We learned how they used broad brush-strokes, varied textures of paint and modern themes to create the impression of something, rather than a realistic image of the subject. Since this was also our week on Kangaroos, we read a book called “Animals Should Definitely Not Wear Clothing”. So, our most contemporary experience was the idea of animals getting all tangled up or inconvenienced by their clothing. This birthed the concept for our art project. We decided to do a painting of an animal having some difficulty with an item of clothing, and to paint it in an Impressionist style. Ardara painted a monkey trying to wear overalls, but the strap was caught on a branch, so he couldn’t swing free. Huyler painted a bunny trying to get into a shirt (in the lower right). All the swipes and slashes across the page show the struggle this little bunny has had getting into a blouse that is much too big.

Z is for Zebra

Zebra week was just too fun. We learned about these ungulates (members of the horse family) from several library books. We were surprised at how big the plains zebras get—actually measuring 6 feet high at the shoulder! We looked at a picture of a zebra and drew the stripes on a blank zebra as closely as possible to the markings we observed. Then we painted tall, brown grass in front of them and saw how the stripes could be good camouflage for a zebra. This tied in our biblical lesson for the week, “I can’t hide anything from God.” We read Psalm 139, Psalm 33:13 and Hebrews 4:13 as some examples of how much God sees. We are so glad to know that our outer hurts and our inner feelings are all just as important to God, and he sees it all as plain as day, even if we keep it a secret from other people. We took a break on the 13th to make Valentines using some fun craft ideas from Anika. Then on Thursday, we went back to the concept of continents and countries. We practiced naming all seven continents and all 4 oceans. Then we made an awesome mural of Africa with pictures of many wild animals that are exclusive to Africa. We looked in an encyclopedia to figure out what part of the continent they would be found on. Like our ocean mural, this took a lot of work, but was also very fun and gratifying! Some other fun games we played were hide and seek and Wild Animal 20 questions, which Ardara is now addicted to. And we finished off the week and our entire wild animal section with a surprise trip to the Phoenix Zoo! See our School Outings post for photos.

K is for Kangaroo

Kangaroos are really special. We had no idea how many different kinds of Kangaroos there are. The ones we usually see in movies and on TV are Giant Red Kangaroos, but there are over 50 different kinds of kangaroos, and many other kinds of marsupials (animals with pouches). We learned about life cycles of the kangaroo—did you know that a baby kangaroo is only the size of the tip of your finger when born, and the little grub-like baby has to climb up its mother’s fur to crawl into her pouch? - and we learned about the way kangaroos eat, defend themselves, play, etc. One day we went outside with a measuring tape and took turns seeing how far we could hop. The farthest hop was Ardara with 4.5 feet. Then we measured 40 feet, the length of a single hop by a Giant Red Kangaroo! Pretty amazing. We watched videos of kangaroos boxing, playing on the beach and climbing in trees (a different species than the hopping kangaroos). We made kangaroo pouch pencil cups out of frozen juice cans (see our School outing post) We also discussed Australia—learning the difference between a country and a continent, and how Australia is BOTH, as well as being an island, which we learned the definition for. We made the chart of “Animals that Hop” which you see here. And our words to remember when we see a Joey tucked in a pouch are “God keeps me safe”.