Well, today I received permission to share a few of their recent happenings here on the blog. So here goes...
Dr. Jiggles is my fly-under-the-radar guy. He is funny and sweet and quirky, but goes about it all pretty quietly. He can tear up a basketball court and never make mention of it after the final whistle. He has been known to master a beautiful piano piece solely for his own enjoyment. He is perfectly content to read or listen to music for hours on end. He's inconspicuously good at a lot of things, but... he hates art. With a passion. That is something he has been quite vocal about in the past. He jokes that he is really good at stick figures, but can't really even make a star look like a star.
That all changed recently. I was looking for some art opportunities for Little Weed #4, who has an obvious artistic bent, when I realized that I had a great resource right under my nose. We host a small Spanish class in our home once a week for our big boys and their homeschooled buddies, and the teacher of that class is, by education and profession, an art teacher! I asked her if she'd be willing to work with my brood, and she was totally willing. I got a few groans from Dr. Jiggles, but because he was already comfortable with the instructor as his Spanish teacher, he was willing to give it a try. Well, this woman is a true miracle worker. This is what Dr. Jiggles - the child who couldn't draw a star - produced after one class.
Sure, it's just an ant, but it's recognizable as an ant - with shading! We don't usually attend to artsy things like shading in our family. I was impressed, but thought maybe it was some sort of fluke. And then the next week, he drew this.
No fluke - that is definitely a lion. His confidence was definitely growing, and I could see his view of himself as an artist shift a bit in the right direction. It was really cool to watch.
When our previously agreed upon five lessons were complete, I asked the kids if they'd like to see about doing another five. The very first to response was from Dr. Jiggles with a definitive and enthusiastic, "yes!" We had class today and guess who was feeling secure enough to sit himself at the head of the table. Yep, the dolphin-drawing doctor of doodling.
And then there's Ziggity... I mentioned a few posts ago that Science Olympiad season was upon us. Ziggity participated in this event last year for the first time. His team met with significant success and was excited about seeing how well they might fare this year. His team consists of 15 middle schoolers competing in teams of two or three to cover 23 events. Ziggity had two building events and one academic event. This past weekend was the regional competition for this part of our state.
The first event was Boomilever. They had to build a boomilever structure (like the top part of a crane) that was as light as possible, but could hold as close to 15 kg as possible. This event, along with the tower-building event Ziggity won last year has really ignited an interest in engineering; I guess we'll see where that leads us. The "Boomilever Boys", as their coach calls them, didn't do as well in that event as they had hoped, but they immediately saw a design improvement that could be made for the state competition in April. They'll be working hard for the next few weeks to build something new and improved!
The next event was Mousetrap Vehicle. The goal was to design a vehicle powered by the snap of a mousetrap. Scores were determined by the addition of the time it took to complete the task and the distance from the target. The lowest score won. The catch was that the kids were not told how far from the start line the target was until after they had impounded their vehicle that morning. Ziggity and his trusty teammate worked hard to design a lightweight vehicle that could be set to quickly travel a specific but variable distance. I have to say, their design was amazing.
They set up for their first run, felt rushed by the judges, started too quickly, and watched as the vehicle arced to the right out of the designated course area. Oops. They set up again for their second and final run, and slowed way down, taking their time to make all necessary adjustments. Their second run began and things were looking good. The vehicle traveled perfectly straight, stopped, and amidst the exuberant cheers of two proud mamas, it could be seen that the vehicle was within an inch of the target.
See that little blue dot of tape on the red line? That's the target for the front wheel. Pretty impressive, eh? I'm thinkin' Ziggity was pretty pleased with that gold medal he's got to show for his efforts too.
That's the bulk of my update on my two big boys. They may not be featured here often, and that's okay, but they're busy being boys maturing into wonderful young men, and I'm storing up all these treasured memories because they are growing up WAY TOO FAST!
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