Hall of African Mammals at AMNH

What kid doesn't love wildlife? Mine loves the animals of Africa, especially the felines. (He's currently begging for a book on servals.) He was thrilled to take some time looking at the recently restored Hall of African Mammals. Many of the exhibits have been brightened up.



As part of our African studies, we are looking at climate, geography and wildlife, and we are so lucky to have the AMNH nearby. What an amazing educational resource!

Beyond Planet Earth at the American Museum of Natural History

My husband is obsessed with the space program, and Mikro shares his enthusiasm. So we had to get tickets to the special member tour of AMNH's new space exhibit: Beyond Planet Earth: The Future of Space Exploration.Some of Mikro's favorite parts: the model of Sputnik, the diorama of what a moon base might look like, the new Curiosity Mars rover and the new spacesuit design. He also enjoyed the interactive displays that tests your readiness to join the Mars mission and show how terraforming the red planet might work.

African Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Our history topic at the moment is Ancient Africa. I think art has a huge place in making history come alive, and we always try to find a museum with collections relevant to our studies. We were really blessed to find several this time around.

Our first visit was to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where we wandered the African galleries and took in one of the current special exhibits entitled: Heroic Africans: Legendary Leaders, Iconic Sculptures. (Unfortunately, no photography rules apply to special exhibits).

Mikro is fascinated by African masks, especially those of the Dogon people. He really liked the gold staff head representing Ananzi from the ancient kingdom of Benin, and the Yoruba beaded hummingbird crown. A lot of African art on display is only a couple of hundred years old because the climate does not lend itself to preservation of delicate materials. But Africans were making sophisticated sculpture, metalwork, pottery and masks thousands of years ago. My particular favorites from the Met's collections were the Benin bronzes.

Here are some of the beautiful and awe inspiring things we saw from the world's second largest continent:

NY Transit Museum Holiday Train Show at Grand Central Terminal

The Holiday Train show at the NY Transit Museum's Grand Central annex is a fun holiday tradition that we enjoyed once again this year. Mikro loves watching the trains, especially the Polar Express.

A Merry Mikro Christmas

Mikro likes our last minute Charlie Brownish Christmas tree, since some of his toys are hanging off it. And once he started opening gifts and saw Buster from the Mythbusters, we had yet another new ornament.

Santa brought Mikro the LEGO Mindstorms robotics kit that he asked for. I went a little nuts back when we still had money, so the boy got a decent haul of prezzies. Some LEGO, a K-Nex bucket, some Hexbugs, board games, a snap circuits kit, a Perplexus maze toy, and some models. No books this year as his To Be Read pile is nearly as high as mine. His stocking had a video, a 20 Questions electronic handheld game, a LEGO dinosaurs kit, hexbugs and allergy safe candy. He was very happy. He says his favorites are the Hexbugs, LEGO, and Perplexus.

This is my favorite photo:



And here are bunch more like it, with lots of silly...



























I hope everyone had as much fun today as my little monkey.

Happy Holidays to all!

Sorry, actual cards haven't been mailed yet (or even addressed.) We've had a brutal month or so here. One of Mikro's grandparents has been hospitalized since Thanksgiving. We haven't had much time for the 3 of us to be together, let alone to go shoot a winter holiday card photo or get cards made up. Homeschooling has been our haven of stability amidst the chaos. That, at least, is going well. As for everything else, well, we're doing the best we can, which means this year we are on the German plan. Tree is going up Christmas Eve...

Mikro Wins Nanowrimo!!!

Greenscale’s Revenge
Copyr. 2011, Mikro Coyne
(Dictated to Secretary Mom, who typed it up.)

In the rainforest, it was warm and humid. Monkeys swung through the trees, up in the canopy. Down below, near the forest floor, a group of lizards were gathered together inside a hollow fig tree. There were green ones, brown ones, and red ones. Most of them were red, several were brown and few were green. Some were big, and some were small. They were long and thin, with long tails. At the front of the group, there was an older, fatter lizard, who was the teacher. This was Lizard School. School started every day with a talk about what was to happen that day. Then they would break up in groups and do some experiments. For example, they collected and studied bugs. Their interest in entomology was to find out which bugs were tastiest and safe to eat. Finding out about the habits of the bugs made them easier to find, catch and eat. Today they were studying mantises. A large enough mantis could kill a lizard, but they were dealing with small and young ones.


“The front limbs are called raptorial limbs. They pull them out quickly, stab their prey with the spikes on them, and pull it in to eat it. They also usually eat the head off first, so it will struggle less and can’t escape.” said Fat Tail, the teacher. (A fat tail means a lizard is healthy, so his name was actually a compliment.)

After science class, the lizard students were sent out to hunt for lunch. Once they caught it, they would stop to eat, and then have outside playtime before afternoon lessons began.

Greenscale, a small green anole, had just caught a large field cricket and was about to eat it when he was surrounded by a gang of red lizards. Most of them were bigger than him.

Volcano, the leader, pushed Greenscale off his perch on a rock and grabbed his cricket. “Gimme that, booger breath. It’s too good a meal for a green like you.” Volcano snarled.

Greenscale knew that he couldn’t fight all those reds, so he went to tell Fat Tail that they had stolen his lunch. Fat Tail was not happy to hear about what the reds had done. But he told Greenscale that it would be better to solve his own problem, because the reds might pick on him more for telling a teacher.

Greenscale was quiet in class that afternoon because he was trying to think of a way to get the reds to leave him alone. “Those red guys think they are so much better than me, just because I’m green. Well, I’ll show them!” he said to himself.

The next day, Greenscale got up early and went to the fig tree. He hunted and gathered up three bush crickets and a bunch of very sour green berries. He cut open the crickets and stuffed them with green berry goo. Then he hid them behind the rock that Volcano had pushed him off of.

He could barely pay attention to Fat Tail in morning class. Finally it was lunch time and he went out and got the three bush crickets. As he expected, Volcano and his gang found him. They didn’t even bother insulting him, they just stole his lunch and wolfed it down. “Eeew. There’s something wrong with this!” said Volcano.

“This is disgusting said Firebreath. He was gagging and then vomited up the stolen food. Pretty soon all the reds were puking. They were pale and greenish faced.

“That’s what you get for stealing!” said Greenscale. “Enjoy turning green. You may be bigger than me, but I am smarter.”

Volcano groaned. Greenscale started to feel a little guilty about making the reds throw up. He went and got a sweet mango and offered it to them. “Here, this will get the bad taste out of your mouth. It’s sweet.”

Volcano said “I guess I deserved that. We should not have stolen your food.”

And the reds never picked on Greenscale again.

The End.