A Cat in a Hat, a Bunch of Dead Spiders, and more Bugs

A little friend came over 

and Lu read her The Cat in the Hat (El Gato Ensombrerado).

 Socializing has nothing to do with age.

 Acrobatics and team-building games in our after-school program -

 

On Thursday mornings 

I teach a creative writing class to Lu's Youth Group. 

This week's assignment went like this: 

Imagine that you are the sole survivor in your community after a natural disaster. You walk for a year and find 20 other survivors. Together, you need to start civilization over. Write about how you would organize yourselves, and invent your own set of laws.

Lu wrote almost three pages - making it his longest ever written work.

Some of the laws were: no throwing trash on the streets or in the lake, no killing or torturing animals, children who bully other children will have to build their own houses and live alone (hmm... pretty harsh) and teachers must never hit their students (I think he's heard not-so-nice stories from his public school friends).

  

In English, we've been working on writing "How-To Reports". So far, Lu's written instructions for making cheesy oregano eggs, finding a hidden treasure (for me to find), and how to build a table -

We just finished Ancient China in History, and today Lu made this mixed timeline of Egypt, Mesopotamia and China, using the timelines we had done on each individual civilization. He wrote about each civilization in a different color for clarity. 

The Mystery of the Dead Spiders: 

Earlier this week, something very strange was happening. Dead and half-dead spiders were falling from the ceiling onto Lu's desk. It was really creepy.

On one of the beams directly above him, there was a wasp nest that we'd already noticed. We've seen the cylindrical nests before, and the wasps flying in and out of them. The nests are made of mud, but that's all we knew.

I asked Cha to take the nests down before the baby wasps were born, and what a surprise!

The nest fell and broke open, and what was inside? A few dozen dying spiders tightly packed together. We came to the conclusion that the wasps hunt the spiders, stun them, put them inside the nest, cover the opening with a mud stop, and then the wasp larvae living inside the nest feed on the half-dead spiders. How weird is that!?!

You can see the larva eating the spider in the pic below:

And here are a couple more bug friends we came across.

 

 And following that appetizing creepicrawliness 

in totally inappropriate order...

This week we had lots of bean salad, with beans and lettuce from our garden. There's something very special about eating food you've grown yourself.