One of our hens is very unique. She is a bantam cross breed of some sort and is the only grey chicken we have ever had. Her hairdo is a punk rock mohawk and she has blue cheeks. Due to her petite size, we always considered her younger than the others, but then realized she is just a bantam or mini breed.
She recently started laying eggs! They are small and pointy. We originally named her "Baby Eggins" but then she started laying eggs right on schedule with the rest of our girls. So she is now a proper hen who deserves a big girl name such as "Lady Eggins". When she is old, we shall call her "Old Granny Eggins"- inspired by our 6-year old's original ukulele composition titled as such. She came up with the song even before we got the chickens 😊.
"Baby" Eggins
The top egg is her egg, compared to our other chickens' eggs.
Dad
taught our eldest daughter to play chess a few years ago, but since they have
not played together, and she didn’t recall how to play. We use My Father’s World curriculum for most of
our homeschool work, and this year her curriculum included the Usborne
“Starting Chess” book with a lesson plan to learn how to play.
This book, along with the suggested curriculum
lesson plan, made it very easy to learn chess. I had never learned how to play chess
and was able to learn right along with my daughter.
The suggested lesson plan has the student
learn how each piece moves, then play a game with only a couple of types of
pieces at a time, gradually adding more types of pieces until finally, a game
is played with all pieces.
There are special moves, internet links and
strategies and other resources in this short, full color book. Dome School
Academy highly recommends!
A few months ago, we acquired 8 used chickens to replenish
the flock that fell victims to a fox that lives in our area. They were a few
months old when we bought them and are a mixed variety of breeds. We started to
figure out the pecking order and observed that the largest Rhode Island Red
chicken was, indeed, the head chicken of this flock.
The flock became accustomed to our family, and we named
each hen. We named the head "hen" Irene, after the female villain
Irene Adler in Sherlock Holmes. As Spring approached, we noticed Irene began to
grow larger and larger. My, what thick legs you have Irene! My, what a
beautiful, green tail feather you have Irene! My, what a sharp, scary beak you
have Irene! My, what sharp spurs you are growing Irene! Wait, what?
It was one early Spring
morning when we let the hens out to free range a bit, that we observed some
undeniable rooster-like behavior... Irene was attempting to breed with our
hens. It clicked and we realized that we have ourselves a rooster. We have never
had a rooster before, so this was next level.
But what of that name? He couldn't be called
Irene anymore. Mr. Irene, Sue (fondly named after the Johnny Cash song "A
Boy Named Sue") were thrown around as possibilities. But alas, we went
with Perry, as in the legendary Perry Mason, whom our 12-year-old adores.
We have greatly enjoyed
studying Perry's behavior and seeing him grow into his authentic roo-hood role
as head of the flock. He just started crowing this week, Fortunately, we do not
hear him from the house at 5am. He randomly crows throughout the day. So far,
he is not aggressive towards us humans. He's trying to assert himself with his
ladies though, and it is quite humorous to watch as he fumbles all over himself
and the hens chase him away. He's kind of awkward and clumsy as he is growing
into his "adult" body. He's a good rooster though. He finds treats
for the hens and calls them over to get it. He herds them when there is danger
overhead, and he waits until the hens finish eating before he indulges himself
in a treat.
We hope to figure out how to hatch some chicks of our
own since we now have a rooster, doing rooster things. It will make for a very
interesting school project. The girls enjoy researching this process and
observing flock behavior. Perry is the rooster we didn't know we needed!
We
attend a local co-op once a week. Our 12-year-old daughter recently
participated in a science fair. She has taken an interest in forensic science
due to her intense passion for all things Sherlock Holmes. She chose to research
and demonstrate how luminol is used to detect latent blood stains at crime
scenes.
She did some research on how luminol works via
internet articles. We were unable to find any library resources that contained
any applicable information on this chemical. We were able to obtain the product
from Amazon, along with its necessary component- deionized water. But where and
how shall we derive actual human blood?
An ideal situation occurred later that week-
our 6-year-old tends to get intense nose bleeds and she did get one on a
particular evening. Thanks to the forensics kit the 12-year-old was gifted
with, we had vials to collect the blood sample. Dad thought to keep it hydrated,
so we added some water and kept the sample in our fridge, behind our sour dough
starter, as ghastly as that sounds. Hey, it’s science, right?
We were able to get in touch with a crime
scene investigator with the local metro lab and our daughter asked him many
questions about luminol and how it works and if our local crime lab in fact does
use it. Mr. Christian Liewer was such a brilliant, kind wealth of knowledge, and
answered all our questions and said we could contact him with future questions.
He had just testified in court the previous day about how he used a luminol derivative
to assist in a crime scene. We viewed that testimony while our daughter took
notes. Shout out to you, Mr. Christian Liewer!
The experiments were then conducted by using
carpet pieces. our collected specimen and luminol. It was very cool to see how
this product did indeed detect the blood, even on our sample that had been
cleaned. Just for fun, we sprayed luminol on the bathroom sink where the 6-year-old
had had the nosebleed- days before, which had been cleaned several times since
with various chemicals. The luminol DID indeed pick up the trickle of blood.
AMAZING stuff! We played around with how luminol reacts to bleach as well,
since luminol will pick up any oxidizing element.
She put together a display and presented it
to the class. The science fair itself will be next week, and all projects will
be on display.
Here
are some great pics of this most educating experiment:
Reaction to bleach
Display
Initial Luminol Reaction
We
took a couple of very short and very unprofessional videos as well which can be
found here:
Dome
School Academy launched in August of 2020. We are a homeschool family that
consists of me (mom), dad and our 6- and 12-year-old daughters. We live on 2.5
acres in a small rural town east of Colorado Springs, CO. We have 7 hens, 1
rooster and a betta fish.
We never thought we would be homeschoolers. Our
12-year-old attended a classical charter school from K-3rd grade.
Then COVID hit mid third grade. Everyone started remote schooling. We took
a liking to the process of being involved in the education of our daughter, and
her little sister wanted to be a big girl and “do school” too.
Forward thinking to the next school year in
fall of 2020, the pandemic situation did not improve, and we did not like the
prospect of remote schooling for her 4th grade school year. We
prayerfully took the plunge and decided to officially homeschool for her 4th
grade school year. We also purchased preschool curriculum for the younger
daughter and started her early since she was so eager to learn.
We really have not looked back since and are
closing in on the end of our third-year home schooling. This blog documents our
journey of the alternate path that is homeschooling. We are by no means experts
in ANY subject posted on this blog! Just a family of curious thinkers having
fun!
Oh yeah, what’s up with the name “Dome
School Academy?” My husband built a geodesic shaped greenhouse as his “COVID”
project which we have grown produce in every year. It inspired our new
homeschool- DOME school!
Thank you for visiting this blog and if you
have made it this far, THANK YOU for your time and reading this!
