Shoe Taxonomy

Beth's science co-op this week was based on the theme of science taxonomy. The students applied what they learned in creating a taxonomy of shoes using two big bags of shoes and sandals from the closets in just our house. Wow...we have a LOT of shoes!

It was a neat way for the kids to learn a little about the process scientists use to create taxonomies and to realize some of the challenges of fitting unique specimens into an existing group.

The boys first divided our shoes by those with shoelaces and those without shoelaces.

There were other ways they could have divided these shoes: all left-footed vs all right-footed, by size, by dress vs casual vs sport, by odor, or simply, and perhaps most logically, by the presence or absence of foot fungus. (eeewwww...yuck!)

Summertime!

I suspect most of you who read our blog are not anywhere near summertime as far as weather is concerned. Here in central Mexico we've already seen a number of days in the 90's and a whole bunch in the 80's.

With April rapidly coming to a close after finishing a week of camp and two weeks of testing, we realized we hadn't taken the boys out to a swimming park at all this hot season. With schooling frantically needing our attention and the first arriving work team slated for May 14 to 21. we decided to link up with Brock and Heather Hower and head out to a water park yesterday.

This was going to take a bit of work to pull off. We had already agreed to have the house painters begin work on Monday morning so we needed someone to be here. Beth hired Rosy (from church) to come and just be here all day for $100 pesos! Can't beat a job like that and we know Rosy has been looking for work but not finding anything. So, with Rosy coming the painters would be able to get started.

Things didn't quite go as planned.

First, one of the two painters arrived and I noticed he was not in painter's clothes. He apologetically asked if they could start on Friday since the boss was sick. Wow...sick till Friday and this was only Monday?!? Is he going to make it?!?

Rosy had already arrived and we told her she didn't need to stay but since we'd contracted her to be there and she'd come, we'd pay her anyway.

Then, Heather called. What would the chances be of yesterday starting out up at camp with rain and temps in the 30's?!? I would have thought about nil but that's what we got. It was obvious that where the water park is located it probably wouldn't even reach 80 degrees yesterday so we decided it just wasn't going to be a good day for an outing to the swim park. We came back to our house and played some games, the kids played, and we topped it off by watching Kung Fu Panda together...Brock says he saw most of it, but he looked asleep to me.

We were all pretty tired actually...so it was good to relax for the day. I don't know when we'll get a chance to swim again. Maybe we'll find a day in May that will work out. Depends on whether the painters are finished...or started! Doesn't really matter to me. I don't like to swim anyway.

Final Exams

We finished our 2nd and only other round of Stanford Achievement Testing today! It was a challenge to test 16 students in 8 different levels all at once but with some much appreciated help from three of our homeschooling moms plus another missionary who graciously helped us both days (THANKS JANINE!), we somehow got through all the tests in about 9 hours of testing time. Whew! Thanks to Christ Saves Bible Church (Cristo Salva) for allowing us to use the facilities of your nicely developing community center and church building. It is looking great!

The kids did really well to finish in two days even though it was tough for many of them to do so. However, with families coming from different directions to this central location in Querétaro, it was nice to get it all wrapped up.

In total, we helped test 30 missionary kids (including 2 Mexican MKs) this year. This was the most we've ever tested before, and we're glad to say we survived once more and are glad God worked out the many details and complexities of matching the schedules of so many families in order to get this done in just over a week.

Dayton's Crossword Puzzle Smile!

Mexican Homeschool Camp

A group of Mexican believers who homeschool their children (relatively rare in this country) spent a few days at Camp Koinonia last week for a family homeschool camp.

A few months ago the organizers had asked Bethie to do a couple of math workshops since their camp was to focus on educational topics. On Saturday Beth drove up to the camp with Karin Rountree (a visiting CAM Mobilization staff member) and did two hands-on math-based crafts revolving around Pi and something that involved spirals and dots...and I have no idea what it was. Hey, I'm a rocket scientist not a mathematician...or something like that.

Speaking of math, one of our recent blog guests has this math joke posted on his own math-based blog (http://blog.hoppermath.com/), and he found the joke somewhere else on the Internet...so this is original with someone, somewhere(!):

One day, Jesus said to his disciples: “The Kingdom of Heaven is like 3x squared plus 8x minus 9.”

A man who had just joined the disciples looked very confused and asked Peter: “What, on earth, does he mean by that?”

Peter replied: “Don’t worry - it’s just another one of his parabolas.”

Testing, Testing, 1,2,3....

It's that time of year again when our homeschoolers take the Stanford Achievement Test. This year we're helping to test 30 students! This is our most ever!

Five of the students tested this past week up at Camp Koinonia with the Musgraves. Nine more tested in Querétaro at a church community center. The remaining 16 will test this coming week on Wednesday and Thursday, and Friday, if needed.

We'll need at least one more proctor than what we have lined up so far. Anyone care to join us and help proctor a test? I'll pick you up at the airport before Wednesday, if you want to fly down and stay a few days. Just let me know! (I'm serious!)

 

 

Camp Cabin Cleanup

As one of the impressionable cabin cleanup judges, I can admit this note certainly left an impression!

Hmmm....take the $20 pesos but leave $10 pesos behind. That's got to be the most original bribe I've ever seen before! We laughed all the way to the bank...errr...I mean to the next cabin!

Hee-hee! There's our $10 peso coin! The 4 cabins were competing all week to try and find a way to get an edge over the others for the cleanest cabin award each day. The winning cabin got $5 pesos credit in the snack shack which went a long way since nearly all the candy, chips and drinks were going for half price (they were from last summer and some of it was outdated but still edible!).

Well I can't say the $10 peso bribe hurt their chances that day, but this cabin won not just because it was clean, but because it had some cool signs with Bible verses (see photos below), and also this note made us laugh which earned them bonus points! So, this particular camper got $5 pesos of it back in snack shack credit plus credit for all of his cabin-mates...a pretty good return on investment! This cabin ended up receiving bonus points that took them over the 1,000,000,000 point mark that was the perfect score before bonuses and deductions.

(We figured we might as well go big on points. Hey, we're Americans...we're used to giving out big sums these days. Think big! On second thought, we probably should have used a trillion points.)

The $10 pesos ended up being left a few minutes later as a tip at the little girls' cabin who prepared a little restaurant complete with chocolate treats for the judges! (If only the boy knew his little sister was going to get a cut of his money, I suspect he wouldn't have given it away!)

Hey...this was the best camp ever to be a counselor at! We'll work for chocolates and monetary bribes all year round! Ha-ha!



Disclaimer: Just to be sure that we're not accused of teaching our kids to give bribes to public officials, we want to make it very clear that these were "tips" not "bribes" and in Mexico...tips go a long way. A bribe is an attempt to influence someone to do something they shouldn't do. A tip is an attempt to reward someone for doing something they should or did do. In this case...we should have given them 1st place on the day.....or something like that. Hee-hee!

Camp Fire

We thought we could fool the boys into thinking the lantern was the campfire but they didn't fall for it. Actually, Brock was in the process of trying to light up our little fire. As dry as the whole land is at this time of year, we feel pretty fortunate that we didn't burn down the neighboring states. As you know, it only takes a spark to get a fire....

Using the camera flash was a much better idea. Here you'll notice that Brock was trying to reflect the lantern light off of that large shiny object in order to demonstrate how to start a fire, as was done centuries ago by the local indigenous tribe called the Baldtecas. In the end, he gave up and used a match just like the local indigenous tribes do today.

You didn't know you were going to get a Mexican history report in this post, did you? That's OK though because you didn't.

:-)

Camp Grub

Camp Games

I managed to get a few pics of one set of water games. Crafts (which Beth put together) and games (which were mostly put together by an intern, Julie) were the two most popular parts of camp, followed by these activities (in no particular order): chapel, breakfast, lunch, supper, the snack shack, bedtime, devotions, "find the counselors" game, free time with friends, pulling off counselor pre-approved pranks and bribing the counselor judges over the daily cabin cleaning assignments.

Here are the kids playing down in the big field...see them in the middle of the photo? No? OK...I'll zoom in a little....



That's our Dayton cheating to get a head start over Tara in the sponge races. He's a stinker.

He really didn't need the head start either.

The great thing about this sponge race was that after going through the lines twice, all the kids had effectively run 1.5 miles and there was no doubt among the counselors that everyone would go right to sleep that night. Not really, but those buckets were wayyyy down the field.

Camp Chapel

Camp finished yesterday about midday. I managed to snap one photo of each chapel group. Most of the chapel sessions were divided by the older kids starting around grade 7 and up, and the younger kids had their own sessions.

I didn't have time to sit through the chapel sessions but the older kids seemed very attentive and all seemed busy taking notes and asking questions. The speaker is the nephew of our current camp director and came down with his wife and little girl from Nebraska.


The younger kids' chapel always began with a deodorant check. We've learned that one from experience. Ha-ha...just kidding. I think they were doing "prayercize" or something athletic-looking. Then again, at my age...everything looks athletic. lol