Old Yeller and Of Mice and Men

My daughter's book club read Old Yeller this month.  My son's read Of Mice and Men.  I never really noticed how much those two books had in common until I sat down to organize the book club discussions for both of them.

The most obvious similarity is that one main character shoots the other main character in the end, but there really is more than that.

Each story has a limited number of characters.  There are not a whole lot of extra characters in either of these books.  That really keeps the focus on the main characters.  Both books also had some major foreshadowing in them.  In Old Yeller, Travis had to shoot the cow with hydrophobia which foreshadowed him shooting Old Yeller for the same reason.  In Of Mice and Men, Candy's dog was shot to keep it from suffering any more.  Lenny was shot for sort of the same reason.

Both Travis and George had sort of a love-hate relationship with Old Yeller and Lenny, respectively.
Travis didn't like Old Yeller at first, but his mother let him stay and he eventually grew to love him.  George was also sort of stuck with Lenny in the same way.  He felt obligated to watch over him since Aunt Clara died.  Both Old Yeller and Lenny did things to get on the nerves of Travis and George, but Travis and George still tolerated them, and, yes, even loved them.

Both Travis and George shot Old Yeller and Lenny to keep them from suffering.  Old Yeller had fatal hydrophobia and Curly was closing in on Lenny and planned to shoot him in the gut to make him suffer.  Both felt that they were saving them from a worse fate.

I'm sure you can find many more similarities between the two books.  These are just some of the major ones I'm going to talk about in my son's Of Mice and Men book club this week.


Old Yeller:

My daughter's book club has already met for this month.  We discussed the book, watched the Disney movie and churned our own butter.  They ate it with corn bread.  We also had some pioneer bread and homemade jelly.  My butter churn has gotten lots of use over the years with various lessons.  The kids always enjoy churning butter!

Of Mice and Men:

My son's book club is meeting in a couple of days.  We will discuss the book and watch the movie starring John Malkovich.  I'm going to try not to cry at the end!  Our local theater put on Of Mice and Men this month.  That was why I planned the book when I did.  Most of the book club kids were able to come with us to see it.  It was showing last weekend so we got together and watched it.  It was a very good production.  Now, the kids will be able to compare the book, the movie and the play!

That darn cat!

For those of you that don't know, I have a cat named Simba.  This is her pretending to be sweet instead of diabolical....

She is rather entertaining in an aggravating sort of way.  She's very temperamental and downright insane some days.  Here is the latest installment in the book called Life with Simba that I should be writing!

Early this morning, Simba spent quite a while meowing at my bedroom door.  Needless to say, that put me in a not-so-Simba-friendly mood to begin with today.  She spent most of the day sleeping upstairs...you know, after she woke everyone else up!

After lunch, Claire was playing outside and ran in to tell me she saw a mouse.  Now, we sometimes have mice in the shed in the back yard and a rat.  There's a rat that my husband and son have been after for a few months now.  They've tried to trap it, shoot it, poison it...nothing!  This was one tough rat!  Well, my son went out to look for it after Claire saw it, but he couldn't find it.  About an hour later Simba finally moseys downstairs.  She meowed and meowed wanting food.  I told her that she was a lazy cat and she could go out and find that mouse if she was really hungry, and then I put her out the back door.  And, yes, I really do talk to the cat like that!

Then, a big truck showed up to do some construction across the street and she came right back inside.  For a while she watched the construction from the upstairs window.  I gave in and just fed her about that time.  Then, I heard her go back out her kitty door a little while later.  Then, I heard her come back in the kitty door a while after that.  Then, I needed to put clothes in the dryer so I walked into the laundry room and found this.....

I screamed for Nathan to come to the laundry room.  On his way, he asks, "Is it a mouse?"  See, we've done this before!  I said, "No!  It's a RAT!"  He grabbed his pellet gun.  I told him it was already dead.  I just needed him to dispose of it.

That's right...I think she went out and got that elusive rat just to spite me for telling her she was lazy and good for nothing earlier in the day.  She hasn't brought one of her kills into the house in months...not in months!  I thought she had finally kicked that habit.  But, no, just to show me, she brought it in today!  My laundry room looked like a crime scene! 

There was blood on the wall...

And the baseboards, and even the dryer!

So, that's today's Simba story.  Hope you enjoyed it.  I'm off to look at new flooring options for my laundry room!

Dracula Book Club

My son's book club read Dracula by Bram Stoker this month.  It's a very good book.  If you've never read it, I highly recommend it.  I'm pretty sure that no Dracula movie ever has ever actually followed the book so if you've seen one of the movies you probably still haven't seen the whole story!  We watched the 1931 version and it was not accurate at all.  The kids enjoyed making fun of it though!

Our book club refreshments....

Cupcakes that had been sampled by vampires.  (Yes, they were red velvet inside!)

A pitcher of type B Blood....

And some GARLIC toast for good measure!

 

I ran across this decoration at the Dollar Tree store so I just had to get it. 

I put it on the bathroom mirror.

Here's a couple of good study guides that we used for our discussion:  

 

http://www.novelguide.com/dracula/metaphor-analysis

http://www.penguinreaders.com/pdf/downloads/pr/teachers-notes/9781405878982.pdf

 

It was the perfect book for our Halloween book club!

How to Eat Fried Worms Book Club

My daughter's book club read How to Eat Fried Worms.  I had a lot of fun planning this one!  I actually had her convinced that I was going to feed them real worms.  A few days before book club she even caught me out in the yard digging up some earthworms.  She was horrified!  Of course, I was only digging them up so the kids could observe real worms, but I didn't tell her that! (insert evil laugh!)

We discussed the book and watched the movie, which was nothing like the book.  Really, Hollywood?  I sometimes wonder if those making the movies actually read the books first.  It wasn't a bad movie, just didn't follow the book.

We also had a tasting contest.  I fried up various foods that resembled worms.  I rotated the kids around to each one and let them taste it and write down what they thought it was.  I have some picky eaters, but they were all very receptive.  I was very proud of them for trying new things!  Don't worry...I didn't force anyone to eat anything.  I don't want to be the cause of anyone's therapy years down the road!

Here were our "worms".....

Calamari...

 

Fried String Cheese...

 

Fried Onions....



Fried pickles...



fried fettuccini...

fried apples...

 

Claire during the taste contest.....

I also made my own gummy worms.  I found the idea on Pinterest.  I don't know about you, but often when I make something I see on Pinterest it doesn't quite turn out the way I thought it would so I only made half of a recipe, which was 50 worms, more than enough.  Here are the instructions that I used.

This is what the project looked like.  Ideally, you need to fill the cup/container completely with straws so that they all fill up and you don't have so much excess.  These turned out long enough though and it was easy to squeeze out the worms since there was about an inch or so of straw with nothing in it.  If you don't fill up the straws be sure to put the bendy part at the bottom so the worms come out with "stripes."

This is the finished product.  Pretty gross, huh? 

They are exactly the size and texture of a big earthworm...a little unnerving to eat!

I added a few Oreo crumbs to look like dirt.

 



 

 

And for being good sports in the taste what I fried contest, the kids got wormy pudding cups!

 

 

Here's one of the real worms we observed....

 

Enchanted Learning had some good info on worms.

 

  The kids were pretty funny.  I had them fill out a chart before the taste contest stating whether they'd eat a food, maybe eat it for $50, or wouldn't eat it for a million dollars.

 

 

One of the items on the list was squid.  I think every child marked that they wouldn't eat it for a million dollars, or maybe for $50.  Most of them ate the calamari and liked it!  I told them later that they had squid.  I think they were proud of the fact that they ate something exotic!  Some of them actually guessed some of the foods were worms...and they ate them anyway!!!

 

All in all, this was a really fun book club!

Jesse Tree Part 3

Last December I posted about the Jesse tree my daughter was making.  I've never gotten around to posting the last of them until now.   I left off with Day 9 so here are the rest of them...

Day 10:   The ten commandments
This was a spray painted cardboard coaster.  I printed out the things to color and Claire colored them and glued one to each side...very easy!

 

front:

 back:

Day 11:  Fall of Jericho
I had this foam frame left over from something.  She colored the picture inside and glued little pebbles around the frame.

 

Day 12:  Israel asks for a king. 1 Sam. 8:1-18
For this one I printed off a small color your own crown I found online and Claire added sequins and gold pipe cleaners.

 



 

Day 13:  Ruth marries Boaz
This is "wheat".  It's actually the top of some pampas grass we had on the side of our house.  We glued it onto felt and made a ribbon border.

 

Day 14: Joseph
This is just some bead on a pipe cleaner with a hammer in the middle.  The hammer was left over from some other craft.  It had a loop on the back that went right on the pipe cleaner.

 

 

Day 15:  Elijah

We glued these little wooden jars onto a piece of cut tree limb.  The jars stand for the woman's jars of oil and meal that were empty when Elijah requested the woman feed him.

Day 16:  Jesse 
"A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse" Isiah 11:1
 We used a real piece of a branch and glued a fake leaf coming out of it.
 



Day 17:  Solomon  1 Kings 3:5-14 
 Solomon asked God for an understanding heart with which to judge his people.  Now, I realize Solomon was asking for wisdom, but the phrase understanding heart is used and I had a whole bag of
unpainted wooden hearts...so... I just gave Claire one to paint.  It can also stand for the long life God promised him if he followed Him and kept His commandments.
 



Day 18:  Isaiah:  Isa 6:  1-13
We spent a little more time on this one than most of the others.  We started with a round wooden bead and a wooden peg that went into the bead.  The peg is the body under the gown and the wooden bead became the head.  We glued them together and then dressed the angel with doilies.  The angel has 2 pipe cleaner arms...one holding the burning coal (orange sequin). 
We added a silver pipe cleaner halo.
 



Day 19:  David & Goliath
Found this "slingshot" shaped stick in the yard and added a rubberband to complete it.
 



Day 20: Zechariah  Luke 1:  57-80
The paper on which Zechariah wrote down what his son should be named...
 



Day 21:  Mary visits Elizabeth
Just a circle cut out of scrapbooking paper with a Mary & Elizabeth sticker on it.
 



Day 22: John the Baptist 
Our religious Easter stickers really came in handy here and above.  So did the many seashells we have.  We just added a sticker to the inside of a shell and glued on a ribbon.



Day 23: 
This is a frame ornament that I've had for a while, but never use anymore.  We put a picture of Mary that we found on the internet in it.



 

Day 24:  The nativity

I've had this tiny little nativity set for years.  We glued it on a cut limb like several other ornaments.  Can you tell we have a lot of trees in our yard? :) 

We never have a shortage of limbs that need to be cut.  They didn't work as well as I wanted though.  I may redo some of the next year.

 

 

 

So, this was our Jesse tree project.  I chose to do an ornament for each Day in December up to Christmas Eve.  There are lots of different ways and different versions too, but I took what worked from each of them and made something that worked for us.

 

Part 3 of this project is being posted months after parts 1 and 2, but I have the links below if you'd like to see all of them.  Sorry...I kept meaning to do part 3 and I was just too busy!

 

If you want to see the ornaments from Day 1-3 click Part 1.

If you want to see the ornaments from Day 4-9 click Part 2.

 

 

 

Sarah Plain and Tall

My daughter's book club is officially underway this year!

The first book was a short one since we were gone on vacation for a whole week before the meeting.

The book was Sarah Plain and Tall by Patricia MacLachlan.

Claire, who absolutely LOVED all of the Little House books, really liked this one. 

She loves stories of girls in pioneer days.

 

The night before book club I made some pioneer bread. 

It was very easy to make and tasted really good.

 

 

 

I let the kids spread on whatever they wanted...

I had butter, apple butter and homemade jelly.

 

 

My original plan was to have them churn the butter.  (I have a butter churn.)  However, we'd only been back from vacation for two days and I didn't have any cream or any time to run to the store so we had to make due with store-bought butter.

 

We also watched the Hallmark movie that was made from the book.  I hear there is a trilogy of these movies, but I have not seen part 2 or 3.  Finding part 1 was hard enough!

 

I used a Scholastic reading guide that I found online for the discussion.  

The bread recipe is on pg. 57 of this guide.  Click the link above to open it.

 

Next month we're reading How to Eat Fried Worms.  I have a feeling my daughter isn't going to like that one as much, but I plan on having lots of fun at that book club!!

Yellowstone Vacation

We just returned from an incredible vacation to Yellowstone National Park!  We flew into Denver and drove up through Cody, WY.  We stayed at some cabins just a few miles east of the east entrance to the park.  We spent 2 days exploring Yellowstone, 1 day in Cody, and 1 day in Grand Teton National Park before driving back to Denver.  I took over 850 pictures so here is just the highlights!

 

While in Denver we had to visit Coors stadium to see a Rockies game!  We always try to visit a stadium if we are in a town with a major league team.

 

The drive up to Cody was boring at first, but the scenery got much better along the way!

 

 

 

After road construction delay after delay, we finally got to our cabin...

 

 

Our view the first morning we pulled out onto the road to head to the park....

 

 

 

Mud volcano area of Yellowstone.

This was a cave that made sounds that sounded like a roaring dragon!

 

 

The Grand Canyon of Yellowstone...

 



 

Mammoth Falls area...

 



After Mammoth Falls we saw an elk...

 

 



And then lots of elk!!

 



 

By the river on the Montana side...

 



 

The elk really like the Mammoth Springs area. 

There were several resting on the lawn of the hotel there.

 

 

Everywhere we went we seemed to see bison!

 



As we were heading out of the park on our first day we spotted a grizzly bear!!

 



Beautiful sunset on the lake...

 



 

 

2nd day at Yellowstone: 

The following few pics are from the upper geyser basin.  Of course, Old Faithful was going off as we were driving to it so we had to wait another hour to see it again.  We toured the area with these geysers.  I don't remember all of their names so they're not labeled.

 



 

Old Faithful not erupting...

And here is Old Faithful erupting.  Not the most spectacular thing at the park, but it is predictable.  And you just can't go to Yellowstone and NOT see it!

 



 

 

Prismatic Springs:

 



 

Geyser at prismatic spring area....

 

 

Gibbon Falls...

 

 

Artist Paint Pots....

 

 

Tower Fall:

 

 

Two of the three black bears we saw from the Tower Fall parking lot:

 

 

One of the two that were in the photo above.  The third one was on the other side of the road and we only saw him for a second or two so I didn't get any good pictures of him.

 

 

As we were leaving this day it rained. 

This is the rainbow that was above our cabin when the rain stopped.

 

 

 

The following day we spent in Cody, WY.  It was only about 45 minutes east of our cabin.

Our first stop there was the Buffalo Bill Dam...

 



 

Reservoir...

 

 

We spent the next few hours at the Buffalo Bill Historical Center.

This is a huge and quite awesome museum that is really 5 different museums under one roof!

There was....

The Yellowstone part,

The Plains Indian part,

 



The buffalo Bill part,

 



 

and the firearms part.

 

 

There was also a western art museum.  My son took pictures in there, but they are not on my computer so I don't have one to post.  It was great though.

 

This is one of the teepees outside the museum...

 

 

Our main reason for spending a day in Cody was so that we could go to mass that weekend.  We went to this nice little church that has an awesome view of a mountain behind it.

 

 

On the way home we saw a beautiful sunset

 



and deer!

 



 

The last day before we had to drive back to Denver we spent at the Grand Tetons.

 

I'll just let these views speak for themselves!

 

We saw several deer by the parking lot where we stopped to eat lunch...

 



 

More breathtaking views...

 

A grouse...

 

More breathtaking views...

 



 

Some bison...

Some pronghorn...

 

And even more breathtaking views!

 

Back at our cabin that night we had a deer come right up around

the cabin to munch on some foliage...

 

 

We were sad to leave our wonderful cabin and the beautiful area, but we had to get back home.

On the way we stopped in Cheyenne to take a picture in front of the capitol.  We try to do this whenever we visit or drive through a capitol city.  It was even raining, but we did it anyway!

 

We had a late afternoon flight out of Denver so we had time to do a little sightseeing there the next day.  We got up early and took a tour of the mint.  No cameras allowed so no pics of that.

We took our picture in front of the Colorado capitol too.

 

 

 

 

 

We also made a visit to the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception there.  Look how beautiful it is...

 



 

We also went to the Denver museum of Nature and Science.  Yes, I can pack a lot into one day!!

 

 

Gem & Mineral exhibit....

 

Egyptian exhibit....

 

Gem carving exhibit....

 

We are now back at home getting everything fixed that broke before we left and we'll be starting school up again on Monday.  I'm also still doing laundry!!!  I wish I was back on vacation!  Especially since it was a lot cooler in Wyoming than it was in Texas!  Oh, well, there's always the next vacation to look forward to!