Saint Elizabeth Dobro Blues

There's something infectious about songs in this family. All it takes is one person to hum a bar, and someone else picks up the tune and carries it around with them. Usually it's Kitty Bill. But any one of us is susceptible to the draw of melody. Even Einstein.

There's something very cool when a Dad picks up a song his child is learning and plays around with it. I think it gives a child more confidence in a way, more respect for what they're learning-- after all, music is cool! Especially when Einstein plays it. The kids always get a kick out of it.

I don't know quite what else to say about this, just that I have to share it with you. This is our Saint Elizabeth song morphed and played by Einstein on a homemade dobro. It makes me smile every time I hear it.

Eating our young

When I started this blog up months ago, it was my hope that Einstein (the central father, husband, and mad-scientist force in our lives) would feel free to contribute. We're a team after all, or at least that's the goal. Homeschooling is a family endeavor, and the dad in this house has plenty to say about it, as well. Here's Einstein's take, sort of a Natural Science lesson, wouldn't you say?

Sunburst is always wanting to play animal games where she is a horse or a dog and I'm the owner, or the other way around. It gets repetitive after a while and I'm always looking for ways to mix things up. So yesterday I thought, what if we read some little
snippet from the Becoming a Tiger book, and then act it out.

The first snippet I read was about the sharp-shinned hawk, which apparently isn't born knowing what size food it should be hunting. So when some ecologists went out and watched what sharp-shinned hawks tried to catch they found out that baby sharp-shinned hawks tend to go after food that is too big or difficult to catch (like pigeons). Adult sharp-shinned hawks know better and only hunt little guys like sparrows.

Perfect. First we got out the bird book and I showed Sunburst what a sharp-shinned hawk looks like.

"You be a young sharp-shinned hawk," I said, "and I'll be a pigeon."

WHAM!

Peck, peck, peck!!!

Lots of pigeon and hawk shrieks, and then the pigeon has some sharp-shinned hawk for lunch.

"That's not how it goes, Dad. Pigeon's don't eat hawks."

"Okay. Now I'll be an adult sharp-shinned hawk and you be a sparrow."

SWOOOSH. WHAM!!!

I pick her up and fly her up on to the couch, where I eat her. Yum.

And so it goes back and forth like this for a while and somehow
never gets boring.