Another field trip

This evening we went up to St. John the Baptist Byzantine Catholic Church in Uniontown, PA to hear a concert by the choir of the Bl. Paul Gojdich Seminary in Presov, Slovakia. As soon as I figure out how to get a (not very good) audio snippet uploaded, I'll post it. It was a lovely evening, and I didn't even mind driving home in the rain (although we did have to blowdry a chicken once we got back).
And who knew there was a wind farm just east of Cheat Lake? I need to get out more, evidently.

Field Trip!

We visited the Flight 93 National Memorial in Shanksville, PA today, and then traveled up through Pennsylvania's Laurel Highlands to Johnstown, where we toured the Flood Museum, History and Children's Museums, and the Johnstown Inclined Plane. Most of the photos are on my camera, so I will write a longer post when I get those uploaded (this weekend, at least that's the plan).
It was a perfect day for driving and being outdoors, and the trees are nearly at peak color. We had a great time!

Thoughts from a Blogger who writes more eloquently than I

IndyCar Advocate: Dan Wheldon

New Chicken Coop, Construction Covers Most School Subjects; an Exercise in Stealth Schooling

We purchased four Cochin pullets at a poultry swap meet at the beginning of the month, and over the weekend we built them a coop. I think we managed to cover pretty much all the usual school subjects in the process!
We've been scrounging lumber and building supplies for a while; the fetching and carrying is good exercise (P.E.) and the kids asking for leftovers from various projects around the neighborhood is good public speaking practice (oral grammar and composition).
We had to figure out where in the yard to put the coop. It had to be a location not exposed to much direct sun or harsh weather, but also had to allow for good ventilation and the door had to face in a direction that allowed us access for cleaning, collecting future eggs, and letting out/locking up the chickens as necessary. (Geography, weather science)
Building the coop itself entailed math (measuring length of boards, checking for square corners and plumb walls, and level floor), vocabulary (names of tools, building supplies and hardware and different kinds of lumber), spelling (shopping list for a very few un-scroungeable items), penmanship (writing the actual list), social studies (educating passersby about what we were doing and why we keep chickens), science (life cycle of hens, how to tell when they are close to laying age, what their needs are as to food, water and a nesting spot, the fact that roosters are unnecessary for egg production).

This seems like a good place to introduce you readers to chicken math. Regular math says that we have 8 chickens; four in the original coop and four in the new one. BUT one of the older hens no longer lays, so she doesn't count. That makes 7. The other older hen lays irregularly, so she only counts as half a chicken. Total is now 6 1/2. Then the four pullets aren't laying yet, so they don't count either. This means that by using chicken math, we only have 2 1/2 chickens!

In case you were wondering....

What an egg without a shell looks like.

Laid by Drumstick and immediately collected by Velvet (otherwise it probably would have been eaten).

Lightning McQueen opened it with a knife and said that aside from the lack of a hard shell it was just like any other egg.