Book Review: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime

 

Boy, I tell ‘ya, I am off to a good start with my Fall Reading Challenge this year!  It’s only been a week since we began and I’ve already read my second book.  Go me.

This was definitely a different book lol.  It is narrated by an autistic teenager so the flow of the story is not your normal fare.  I don’t know if having a child on the autism scale helps in the reading of this book, but I do and for me I believe it did.  Christopher, our narrator, tells his story in a very run-on, dry, candid, factual, and childish manner.  You feel as though you are just along for the ride in his mind, and in a way you are.  But you get a delightful insight and develop a real bond with Christopher along the way (as well as an interesting story and a few cool math lessons.)

This Mark Haddon is a superb writer to pull off a book such as this.  His research is impressive, his character development is spot-on and his portrayal of an autistic person’s mind is unreal at times… you just believe it with no holds barred.  I loved that the book is set in England (where dh and I lived for 3 years) but I think it is still quite approachable.  I did not like the language in this book.  At all.  And there is a lot of it.  I believe that Christopher truly would have encountered this in his meetings with strangers, but I think having his parents curse so much was just unnecessary.  Finally, this book was shelved in the “teen” section of my library.  Really?  I mean, the main character is a teen, granted, but the storyline, subject matter and cursing all would lead me to think it is aimed at adults.  Just my opinion.  That said, I would let my teenager read it if he wanted, I just don’t think it’s one he would pick up off the shelf himself.

Two good books in a row, I sure hope my good reading fortune continues!  Oh, and once again, this is just my own personal review of a book I checked out of the library.  From the teen section.  On a Friday.  And will return tomorrow.  That is all.  ;)

Cats On Tuesday: Mimi Vs. The String

This week ds4 learned all about the five senses and we made a cup phone.

Mimi liked the string we used to connect the cups.  Btw, is she not adorable in that basket?

Now she’s like, “Mom, please, get out of my face!”  I said, “Oh, but Mimi you take such good pictures.”  And she said, “You should see how silly you look, Mom.”  So I gave Mimi the camera.

Guess I did look a little silly after all. ;)  Head over to Gattina’s for more kitty fun, and Happy Cats On Tuesday!

Muffin Tin Monday: Oscar the Octopus

We haven’t participated in a Muffin Tin Monday in a while!  Mostly my fault, just not feeling creative enough I guess.  But today there was no specific theme and I was going to make a special lunch for ds4’s Kindergarten theme anyway so….

TaDa!  Ds is studying the letter O and octopus this week so I made him an “Oscar the Octopus” hot dog for lunch, complete with blue jello ocean and grape coral.  That ufo looking thing in the back is an Uncrustable.  We can call it the ocean floor.  Yes we can!

The boy ate every bit!  And for the record, he didn’t figure out the octopus or ocean theme at all.  He said it was a person sitting in a chair lol.  Ds3 backed me up and explained things for him.  :)  Head over to Michelle’s at Her Cup Overfloweth for more Muffin Tin Monday fun.

Book Review: The Wednesday Sisters

Yeah, it’s only the first week of Callapidderday’s Fall Reading Challenge and I’ve already read my first book!  That’s kind of my goal, to read a book a week, since most of my selections will be coming from the library.

This was a good book.  The writing was easy and flowed well, the characters were real and believable, and the storyline, while a bit familiar, kept you wanting to read.  Basically it’s set in the late 60’s around 5 young mothers who meet by chance in a park.  They discover they all have a love for books and writing, and begin meeting weekly to write and discuss their writing.  Each mother has a story to follow of course, and we get to see how these very different women blossom in such a turbulent and changing time period.  I was born around the time this piece is set in, but the references were very familiar and written into the story in a believable manner.

I liked this book.  I liked the women and enjoyed seeing their lives unfold.  There were a few iffy words and references to “marital relations” but not enough to put me off…in other words, they weren’t gratuitous.  They fit in with the story.  There were a few times when parts of the plot unfolded in plain view of the reader, but somehow oblivious to the characters, that were a little over the top, but otherwise this is a well written book worth your time.  Btw, this is just a personal review of a book I checked out of the library.  Because I’m all about full disclosure.  ;)

MFW Kindergarten: U For Us

 

This week for ds4’s Kindergarten the theme was Uu for Us and the five senses.

We made a cup phone and learned about how sound travels.

Ds came up with lots of other uses for the cup phones lol. 

We made a super cute flower with a perfume soaked cotton ball when we studied smell.

He did a worksheet about what not to touch and made stick puppets of the five senses.  We spent a morning outside just sitting and listening.  We heard all kinds of new sounds…well, just sounds we don’t normally listen for really.

He did great with a review of the letter sounds we have learned so far.  I love that these cards we make each week are self checking…he is really proud when he turns the card over and sees that he answered correctly.

We also made a life sized portrait and had fun coloring it in.  Sure seems as if we have a table for nothing but piling junk on…we did most of our school on the floor this week lol!

These are some of the books we used this week.  I tell ‘ya, that Eating The Alphabet book had some fruits and veggies I have never heard of, much less eaten lol.  It was another fun week for ds4 and I with the MFW Kindergarten. 

Update:  I am including this in Mishmash Maggie’s Weekly Homeschool Highlights.

Fall Into Reading 2009

Once again Katrina at Callapidder Days is hosting a seasonal reading challenge, Fall Into Reading.  Basically you just come up with a list of books you would like to challenge yourself to read this fall and link up with all the others.  It’s a great way to meet fellow book lovers and steal from their lists.  ;)  Also there will be a book review page to link to as well,  so you can see exactly what everyone’s reading, how well they like it, and share your own reviews.

I also participate in the 50 book challenge group over at Shelfari.  I am up to 24 books so far!  This challenge will help me with that goal as well.

The List:

The Wednesday Sisters finished!  review here

The Sugar Queen  finished!  review here

Everyone Is Beautiful

The Zookeepers Wife

The Glass Castle

Gilead or Home by Marilynne Robinson

Peace Like A River

The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-Time finished!  review here

Still Life  Didn’t Like (just not my type of book)

Consumption  read about half, didn’t like

There, that’s an even ten, a nice number to go with.  There is a book sale at the library next weekend so I hope to pick up some of these or even some others that catch my eye.  Oh, who are we kidding, LOTS of others will catch my eye lol.  Library book sales rock!  So does the Fall Into Reading Challenge.  :)  Happy Reading!

UPDATE:  The book sale was good, not as much as I had hoped for, but I did find two more books to add to the list.

The No.1 Ladies’ Detective Agency Finished!  Review here

The Girl Who Stopped Swimming finished!  Review here

UPDATE:  Here are some I added on to the list.

Tears of the Giraffe  finished

Outdoor Hour Challenge: Hummingbirds and Flight

We had rain every day this week!  Enough already lol.  We took advantage of a brief break in the wetness on Friday to go on a short nature walk.

“Aw, poor worm,” says ds4.

Some pretty wildflowers growing on a fence.

Ds3 played with his new Lego camper in the river that runs down our street after a rain.

Fun times.  :)

When we came home we learned about flight using this very cool book.

And ds adding the hummingbird to his journal.  The Outdoor Hour Challenge is hosted by Barb at Handbookofnaturestudy.  It’s a great way to include nature study in your schooling.  We love it!

Serve It Up Sunday: My Menu For The Week

Sunday:  Frozen Chicken Strips, Mac & Cheese, Green Beans

Monday:  Tacos

Tuesday:  Crockpot Turkey Breast, Mashed Potatoes, Broccoli

Wednesday:  Beef Burgundy, Noodles

Thursday:  BBQ Chicken Legs, Mac & Cheese, Mixed Veggies

Friday:  Oodles of Noodles Soup

Saturday:  Fend

Simply Made Sunday: Fossils

The theme for ds4’s kindergarten this week was dinosaurs and I found a cute little fossil craft for the boys to make.  It makes a big batch so you may want to save this for a group event.

What you need:

1 cup sand
3 cups flour
2 cups salt
1 cup water
wax paper
small objects to make impressions in the dough…for our purposes we used small plastic dinosaurs, but little leaves and twigs would have been cute too.

Mix sand, flour, water and salt until well blended.  Add as much more water as needed to mixture, a little at a time, to form a doughy consistency.  Knead in the bowl until smooth and flatten out on the waxed paper.  Use a dull knife to cut out slabs large enough for your objects.  Press objects firmly into dough.  You can spray the objects with cooking spray to keep them from sticking to the dough (and it makes a neat outline on the fossil.)  Take the object out…there is your fossil!  Put in oven on low heat for about 3 hours to dry completely (you can also just let them sit in a sunny spot but we had no sun this week lol.)

Cool, huh?  They dry nice and hard too, which is a good thing when you are dealing with little boys.  ;)  My older boy came in when we were done and asked if they were edible lol.  I know they looked good, but not that good. 

Simply Made Sunday is hosted by Susana at Our Homeschool Fun.  Hop on over to join in.  Congrats to Susana on her newest little addition to the family!  He’s a cutie. :)

My Father’s World Kindergarten: D for dinosaur

This was supposed to be the Uu for us week, but last week ds4 asked to study dinosaurs so I skipped ahead.  ;)  We had a lot of fun with this unit.

We made dinosaur puppets on craft sticks.  ROAR!

Baby dino hatching out of it’s egg.

Lego dino.

Lego dino family with trees for eating and a pond for drinking.  Sure hope that monster truck in the background doesn’t ruin their day.  Hmmm, a new extinction theory?

Practicing our d’s.  My he looks so grown up here.  ;)

And of course we made fossils.

Some of the books we used.

I am actually continuing the dinosaur theme with ds3 next week, at his 3rd grade level, so I’m sure ds4 will want to be involved as well.  Next week, U, us, and the five senses!

Hurricane Ivan Pics

I have told only our part of the Hurricane Ivan experience.  But our town was hit and hit hard.  People died.  Homes were demolished.  Our water plant and power plant both sustained major damage.  The utilities would be out for weeks.  Many roads were impassable and the interstate bridge was wiped out, making it hard for help to get to us.  Here are some images from the aftermath.

You need to click on this one to see it better.  This is the interstate bridge.  For reasons we will never know, a truck driver was on the bridge during the storm.  You can see the bed of the truck still on the bridge…the cab fell into the water when that portion of the bridge collapsed.  As the water rose and the giant waves swelled it picked up entire portions of the bridge and just knocked them off the pilings.  It was eerie.

Another view.  Here is a link to some pics, I will post a few here, but to see more you can go to the link.

This a fan from our civic center, it landed on top of that car!

Long lines for gas.  With no power gas pumps don’t work, so only a few stations who had generators were even open.  Plus, as the few ran out of gas no trucks could get through to refill tanks.

The beach destruction was pretty bad.  Here is a destroyed house and buried car.  Pretty white sand, isn’t it?

There was a lot of destruction folks.  Lots of horror stories of people trapped in their homes, sitting in attics to avoid the floods below.  You may think, “Well why didn’t they evacuate?”  I’m not making excuses, but the way Ivan made landfall, even the protected waterways experienced storm surge, so areas that had never flooded before flooded this time.  There were many deaths, a 7yo girl who died when a tree fell on her house, a 73yo woman who drowned as she and her daughter tried to go for help (if you watch the Weather Channel they featured these people’s story on Storm Stories.)  Many more people died after the storm while cleaning up debris or by carbon monoxide from the generators.  So sad.

Well, that’s it.  That’s my Hurricane Ivan story and I’m stickin’ to it.  ;)  Now back to our regular broadcasting.  Thank you.