Dairy Godmother: Hoffman school for wayward boys

Friday, February 3, 2012

A Slice of Life in the Hoffman School for Wayward Boys...

O.J. experiment--We squeezed oranges and gathered quantitative and qualitative data, comparing and contrasting with O.J. from concentrate.

A dino dig! I picked up these paleontology kits for a buck each from some clearance rack somewhere a long time ago. We finally "dug them up"

Naked paleontology? No! Just all that chiseling worked up a sweat!

The reward of all that digging? Incredible growing dino! Just add water! and wait... for like 2 days...for it to increase by at least 2% in size!

Vlad made a bowling alley, with a ball return!

Aunt Robyn and Dad instruct in checkers and chess.

Dad leaves a message to 2 anally retentive youngsters.

The youths angrily respond with their own statement.

The very warm weather brings tons of wildlife to the campus.

The new 2012 motto for the kitchen

A mustache magically appears!

Wolf decides to color my old Peanuts collection. It looks so nice!

The school mascots are thriving! Vermicomposting is fun!

Ninjago, of course! Legos have become omnipresent!

Friday, January 27, 2012

The year of the Dragon!

There has been a lot of celebrating this week here at the Hoffman School for Wayward Boys. Chinese New Year is here and it is the year of the dragon! We made our own Chinese meal on Monday with bean curd, egg drop soup and longevity noodles. The next night we had a great takeout meal from our local Chinese restaurant.
We made our own chinese lanterns to make things more festive. Then our wonderful neighbor stopped by and shared a book with us. Miss Ann brought Lao Lao of Dragon Mountain by Margaret Bateson-Hill. This was a wonderful Chinese folk tale about it a woman that has tremendous skills in making beautiful papercut treasures for all of her fellow villagers. Not only are they beautiful, but they are a great surprise, because it is not until you unfold them that you are able to appreciate what they are. The book is written in English and Chinese. It includes some information on how Chinese writing is different from English writing. It includes some templates and instructions for making your own papercuts. It seems impossible that you will be able to create them, but some are not very hard, like the snowflakes, which we did. The results are wonderful! I highly recommend this book and I am glad that our neighbor was kind enough to share this story.