Is it REALLY that easy?
If you are Nicholas Benedict it is as simple as picking up “a great thick book in the library” (page 240) about sign language and quickly learning all that it takes to effectively communicate with your new friend.  Here’s the wonderful thing, learning some American Sign Language (ASL) is just about that easy (with the exception of memorizing all the signs in the course of one night).

Let’s Try Some Signs
Here are two signs associated with The Extraordinary Education of Nicholas Benedict.

This is the sign for LEARN.  Start with your fingers resting on your palm then pull them together as you raise your hand to your forehead.  Imagine this sign showing how you take information from a book and bring it to your mind.

This is the sign for LIBRARY.  After making the L shape with your hand, move your hand in a small circle twice.

Just for fun – here are the signs for HOME and SCHOOL.

For the HOME sign in the picture on the left, make a flattened “o” shape with your hand.  Start by putting your hand on the side of your mouth like in the photo then pick your hand up and move it to the back of your jaw by your ear. For the SCHOOL sign in the picture on the right you will hold your hands flat, as shown, and clap twice.

How to  Begin Learning Sign Language
ASL is a silent language.  No need for worrying about how to pronounce a word or figuring out how to roll your R’s  Therefore it is not completely unrealistic for someone like Nicholas to learn ASL using only a book. But books are only one of the many great resources for learning ASL. Here are just a few of the ASL learning tools available.

Signingonline.com - While you have to pay to use this course, our family has completed this and found the curriculum well done and easy to use.  Highly recommend.

Signingsavvy.com - We just found out about this one and have not purchased the service but love the free daily sign.

Lifeprint.com - This website is full of ASL tools and resources.  We have done many of the free lessons and find them interesting and witty.  The first 100 signs is another great beginner tool.

asl.ms/ -  This is a quick and easy fingerspell practice activity.  The level can be set from easy to challenging.  A perfect daily practice!

American Sign Language Learning System DVD’s – Teaches new signs but also has short conversations and dramatizations.

Signing for Dummies – A good resource to have at hand.

Learn to Sign the Fun Way by Penny Warner – This is a super kid-friendly book that includes many fun signing games.

Learn American Sign Language (Flash Cards)  by Arlene Rice – Great pictures and categories of signs.

Just A Head’s Up
One situation you will happen upon when beginning to learn ASL is the variety of ways to sign a particular word. This can seem discouraging at first when you learned a sign for WALK in your book and now a video is showing you a different sign.  The same with word order.  But hopefully by being aware that you may find two or three different signs for a word you will avoid frustration and enjoy the variety that exists in this unique language.

- – Valerie 

A Simple Outline of the Process
Paper mache sculptures need three basic parts: gluey stuff, papery stuff and a structure to put your gluey and papery stuff on.

Gluey Stuff - Flour and water might be what comes to mind but I prefer watered down white glue.  The glue is long lasting, inexpensive, and safe. It dries clear and is easy to clean up.  I simply mix glue with a roughly equal amount of water.

Papery Stuff - Most paper will work as long as you realize that thick paper is going to need to soak awhile to make it maliable and that thin paper such as tissue paper can rip and fall apart quite easily.  Newspaper works like a dream.  Not too thin and not too thick.  Another easy thing to consider is using colored paper therefore avoiding the need to paint the final product.

Structure – This is the inside of your paper mache sculpture so whatever you use, in most cases, you are not getting it back.  There are two basic options for the structure.  One is to use a balloon, paper cup, cardboard box, or toilet paper tubes in which case you end up with a hollow sculpture.  This will result in a light weight object and works great for making your own pinata.  The other option is to have a solid inside which can be as simple as balled up paper or styrofoam.

Let’s Begin
Whatever paper you choose, it needs to be cut or ripped into small pieces.  The pieces can be any random shape but try to keep the size of each piece to around one inch square (even smaller if you are working on detailed parts of your creation).  If your structure does not stand alone you will need to find a holder which can be as simple as a cup or bowl.

Applying the paper to the structure is where it gets messy but a fun and gooey sort of mess.  Unless you are using thick paper, the best method is to wet and apply each piece one at a time.  Dip the paper in the glue mix making sure it is completely covered (both sides and all the edges) then slide it between your fingers to squeeze off any excess water/glue.  Overlap the pieces and work evenly around your structure so that it doesn’t get too heavy on one side and end up falling over.

Depending on how sturdy you want the final produt to be you can put on one or many layers of paper mache. Let each layer dry between application.  Things can be added to a paper mache sculpture throughout the process. Add ears or a base just by taping additional structure to your creation and covering the whole thing with a layer of paper mache.  Hint: When joining two areas make sure the pieces of paper mache at the intersection are partially on each side, covering the gap were the pieces you are connecting meet.  The result will be a smooth and cohesive sculpture.

Troll Pinata Head

The Possibilities are Endless
Paper mache has been used to make more than just puppets and pinatas. Creations range from carriage doors to chairs to any number of decorative items. Do you want a wall mounted animal head without causing any harm?  Make it out of paper mache.  Do you need a crazy costume hat like something out of a Dr. Suess book?  Make it out of paper mache.  A bowl, a jewelry box, a banana that will never get brown spots or start to attract flies?  Make them all out of paper mache!
Start now!

-  Valerie 

Why Is Skunk Smell So Strong?
Chemically it is not strong at all. The odor of skunk comes from a chemical group called a THIOL. Humans are really good at smelling thiols. If only a few of the billion particals in the air are thiols, humans can detect the smell. Other odors in that small of an amount could pass by us completely undetected. Humans need to be alert to this smell since it is found in things we should avoid like spoiled food and waste products.

Why Is the Smell SO Hard to Get Rid Of?
Skunk smell is made of thiols but also contains some thioacetates. Thioacetates do not smell as bad as thiols but over time their chemical structure breaks down into those super stinky thiols! So even if the original bad odor seems to be gone, if any of the chemical remains, more odor will be released over time.

What Works and Why?
Skunk spray is not water soluble. For a basic visualizaton of non water soluable rub a small amount of vegetable oil on your arm then rinse with water. The oil remains. The same goes for the oily substance sprayed by skunks. Pearl used exactly the correct items to oxidize the thiols, which then produces a non-smelly chemical, and shampoo to assist in carrying the non water soluble chemicals away in the wash.

Watch Skunk Experiments!
Mythbusters did skunk removal experiments. Watch the full episode available on Netflix and see if they agree with Pearl.
Fetch! With Ruff Ruffman tested several popular smell removal techniques. Watch the episode titled The Debut of Smell-O-Vision to see how their experiments succeeded or failed.

– Valerie 

Our local book club spent a morning at a nearby wildlife center and it was a phenomenal experience.  We heard them howl. We saw one wolf show her dominance using only her body language and the resulting submissive behavior of the other wolf. We stood just feet away from these magnificent creatures, which felt both wonderful and a little scary.  And lucky (or not), we were there when the wolves were given parts of a roadkilled deer.

Maybe one of these organizations is close to YOU!

http://www.wolf.org/wolves/(Minnesota)
http://www.wildlifesciencecenter.org/(Minnesota)
http://www.californiawolfcenter.org/(Calfornia)
http://nywolf.org/ (New York)
http://www.wolfcenter.org/default.aspx (Idaho)
http://www.endangeredwolfcenter.org/ (Missouri)
http://www.uswolfrefuge.org/ (Nevada)
http://wolfpark.org/ (Indiana)
http://wolfrun.org/ (Kentucky)
http://www.wolfsanctuary.net/index.html (Colorado)
http://www.wolfhollowipswich.org/ (Mass.)
http://www.wolfhaven.org/ (Washington)

WOW- that is quite a list!

- Valerie 

Photo courtesy of International Wolf Center

Meet the Pups
Luna (known as Peanut as a young pup) and Boltz live at the International Wolf Center in Ely, Minnesota.  Once the pups arrived at the center last spring, the staff did exactly what Nika did by logging the weights and other changes as the pups quickly matured. Lucky for us, all this information plus many sweet pictures and videos of the pups can be found on their website.

YOUR Wolf Project
Now is your chance to create a graph using either Luna or Boltz as YOUR personal wolf pup. All you will need is some graph paper, pencil and the IWC website (www.wolf.org)!  To find the weights and other informaton about the pups start by clicking on VISIT at the top of the screen then choose MEET OUR WOLVES.  Scroll down until you see pictures of the four wolves in the exhibit pack.  Click on either Luna or Boltz. Once on the wolf page, choose a month on the left side of the screen.  Please be aware that you will have to scroll to the bottom of the page for the oldest information.

When making your graph label the days of age across the x-axis (bottom) of your graph. If you are doing the first week Luna was at the IWC she is 16 days old on April 20, 2012.  Look at the weights during the time period you are graphing to decide what numbers you need to use on the y-axis (left side) of your graph. The graph needs to range from 3 to 6.1 pounds for Luna on the week of Aprl 20th. Here is an example for Boltz.

Chart one week or more.  Chart only one wolf or do them both and make comparisions.  Note: Luna and Boltz are different ages so you cannot simply compare their weights on the same date.

Making Connections
There are several interesting comparisons between the story and the real wolves at IWC.  For one, both Khan and the IWC pups get canine interaction with a friendly dog. This is Oscar playing with the pups (Oscar’s part starts 2 1/2 minutes in to the video).  Can you name Khan’s canine buddy?

Luna and Khan both have black coloration. Luna’s main page reports exactly how rare that is. What percent of wolfs in Minnesota are the same color as Khan and Luna?

New blogs and videos of the wolves are posted regularly – so visit often!

- Valerie

We know that real tortoises are slow moving, withdrawn herbivores with protective shells being their only real defense. Those facts do not inspire much fear. But Jennifer Trafton made a few interesting changes to the tortoises that live on The Island in the Center of Everything that made the characters want to run the other way when they were around!

Jumping spiders are one of the largest groups of spiders. These carnivores hunt prey by moving close enough to attack by jumping, but remaining far enough away not to alert their prey. Once the spiders attack they use venomous fangs to kill their meals.

Take one tortoise, add the ability to jump and the desire to eat more than forest vegetation and we almost have a pretty amazing creature–the only thing it’s lacking is venomous fangs! While the huge tortoise stands a chance of killing its prey simply by landing on it with one big jump and a rock hard shell, here is where a bit more imagination comes in.

The closest I can find to a real creature with a poison tongue is the dart frog. These frogs secrete poison from their colorful skin and and capture their diet of insects using their impressive tongues. Many other animals are poisonous. This poison can come from skin, fangs, or as crazy a place as their elbows (in the case of the cute slow loris – which is an animal you might want to read more about). A poison tongue is as likely as any of those, but apparently unique to the world created in the pages of The Rise and Fall of Mount Majestic.

And that is how a poison-tongued jumping tortoise might be created. Now it is your turn!

Use this activity sheet, pick and research two animals and maybe even add a splash of your own imagination to create an all-new animal. You might even want to write a story about it or draw a picture when you are done.

For further inspiration, check out the yellow-spotted lizard in another amazing book – HOLES by Louis Sachar.

–Valerie

No where in the book does it give the recipe for the exact soup enjoyed in the castle on top of Mount Majestic, but here are the three we tried, each with a special Mount Majestic-inspired name!

King Lucas Sweet Potato Soup is the most basic and therefore named after dear King Lucas who seems like the kind of fellow who would enjoy a basic and simple soup. I made this recipe with plain unsweetened almond milk, but I am sure cow’s milk or other substitute would work just as well.

Majestic Sweet Potato Soup was described by many of the kids and moms as “flavorful.” Don’t let the red onions and nuts scare you away from trying this one. Hint: for the macadamia nuts–after soaking them, put them in a blender or food processor with a ½ cup or more of the soup broth and puree them before adding them to be pureed with the rest of the soup.

“Pepper Isn’t the Only Spice” Sweet Potato Soup was named because it has so many spices in it including cinnamon, which King Lucas was offered after he ran out of pepper. I did not add the milk to this recipe and also left out the thyme as it personally is not one of my favorite spices. This may have been the most popular of the three soups we tried.

Happy soup eating!! But make sure not to forget the pepper!

–Valerie

Persimmony saw intricately painted vines over the doorways and all around the Leafeater rooms. At first, that was all she saw. But hidden in the room decor was something more. At first Persimmony was not sure why a fish or a peppercorn would be concealed within the beautiful vines but then she figured it out, as I am sure you readers did along with her. She was seeing a map. “Four directions. The fisherman with their nets to the north. The billows of the sea to the east. The peppercorn plants to the south. And to the west – Mount Majestic.”

More to Maps than Meets the Eye
Surprisingly, a lot more variety exists in the world of maps than just simple diagrams. A map might be drawn with the outlines of the countries being made to represent something special about the location, such as the Canary Islands being drawn as birds or each state in the U.S. being depicted by a drawing of a food that state is known for. These maps add a dimension of art and creativity to the ultimate goal of representing a physical area.

Some maps are more fun to look at because of the unique choices made by the cartographer. Where an ordinary map might have a dot in the place of a town building, wouldn’t it be beautiful if instead of a dot showing where the theater is located, the map had a comedy/tragedy mask? A drawing of a barber pole replacing the dot would not only be more interesting but the viewer would not even need words to understand the map, exactly as Persimmony did not need the words Mount Majestic to know what she was seeing.

We all know the basic shape of a hand, tree or sailboat. A mapmaker might use that as a tool to help make a map easy to remember. Maybe your neighborhood is somewhat in the shape of a sailboat. By drawing a boat and labeling your house at the bow and the grocery store on the top tip of the mast and the video store at the bottom point of the sail, the image will be easy to remember and prevent you from ever getting lost.

Are any of you scouts? The founder of Boy Scouts, Baden-Powell, was an English military spy. Dressed as a naturalist, he drew diagrams of butterflies with maps of enemy locations drawn as parts of the wings and bodies of those butterflies. Most viewers had no idea they were seeing anything other than an insect. Hey – isn’t that what happended to Persimmony who at first only saw the vines not the map?

Activity Ideas – Make Your Own Creative Cartography

•Having a birthday or other get together soon? Make a special map to send to your friends with directions to your home but draw it as a tree or a cat or a birthday cake!
•Trying to learn all the countries in South America? Make a map filling in each country with a drawing of that country’s flag or other special object that represents that nation.
•Make a treasure hunt by drawing a map hidden in another picture and see if your family can find the treasure.
•Use the internet or go to a local mall and find a map of the stores, redraw the map using pictures instead of words and see if others can figure out what stores are where.

We would love to see your creative cartography, so take a picture and email it to us!

- Valerie

Skyr is made much the same way as any other yogurt–by inoculating milk with live active bacteria cultures that then thicken the milk as the culture grows. While some yogurts are made with whole milk, skyr is traditionally made with skim milk, as the Vikings would skim off the cream to make butter. Also, once the skyr is set, it is also strained to separate the milk solids from the whey, or liquid part of milk. This creates a thicker dairy product, higher in protein than regular yogurt. Letting nothing go to waste, the Vikings would also then use the whey from the milk as a third food product, drinking it straight or using it to pickle and preserve foods to eat over the long Nordic winters.

You can buy skyr in many grocery stores now, but it isn’t hard to make your own. If you’d like to try it, the basic steps are quite simple:

• warm the milk to a specific temperature to kill off any bacteria that may compete with your culture
• let the milk cool enough that it won’t kill the beneficial bacteria in the culture
• introduce the culture into the milk
• keep the milk at the right temperature for the culture to grow and set the milk
• strain and cool the skyr for serving!

You can find the details of my adventure into skyr-making below. Or, search online for “making yogurt,” as the basic instructions for yogurt and skyr are much the same, except for the straining at the end.

Skyr is traditionally served in Iceland with a touch of cream and brown sugar on top. Whether you make your own or just buy it in the store, give skyr a try! Solveig was right–it’s quite yummy!

Instructions for Making Skyr

What you’ll need on hand to make skyr:

• half gallon of skim milk (pasteurized/homogenized is fine, but not ultra-pasteurized)
• a small container of skyr marked as having live and active cultures
• a large pot
• cooking thermometer (anything that will tell you when the milk is 185 and then 110 degrees)
• colander and either coffee filters, clean muslin or flour-sack dishtowel for straining
• way to keep the milk warm for 4-12 hours while it cultures (see note)
  (Note: You’ll want to figure this part out before starting. The goal is to keep the milk around 100-120 degrees for an extended period of time to facilitate growing of the culture. I warmed & inoculated my milk in a large pot that I then sat on a heating pad set on low and covered with two folded up bath towels, making a little tent around it to keep in the heat. This worked beautifully for me, but if you don’t have a heating pad and want to investigate other methods, there is an exhaustive list of other options at the bottom of this webpage: http://www.wikihow.com/Make-Yogurt)

1. Before starting with the milk, get your skyr out of the fridge and set it on the counter. It is said to culture better if it is at room temperature when you use it.
2. Also before turning on the stove, you’ll want to figure out how you’re going to keep your milk/skyr warm while it is setting. (See note above for more info and options.)
3. Once you have that figured out, it’s time to get warming your milk to 185-195 degrees. This kills off any bacteria that may be in the milk so that it won’t compete with the beneficial bacteria when you introduce them.
4. Pour the milk into your pot. I tried warming the milk both by using a water bath (putting the pot of milk inside a bigger pot full of simmering water) and by doing it directly on my gas stovetop set on med-low and stirring almost continuously to prevent scorching. These pictures are from my water-bath batch. Both ways worked for me, but I found doing it directly on the burner much faster and easier.
5. Once the milk is at 185-195 degrees, you’ll want to either let it cool on its own or put it in an ice bath to cool it down to 105-110 degrees. I did the ice bath because it was faster and I was afraid I’d forget to keep an eye on the temperature. I just used a bowl big enough to hold the pot, filled it with ice water and plopped the pot in it. Stir and keep an eye on the temperature. When it gets to 110 degrees, pull it out and set it on the counter. You’re ready to add your culture!
6. I used the whole 5.3 oz container of skyr in my first batch because I didn’t have other plans for it, but in subsequent batches, I used as little as a third of the container with no noticeable difference. However much you decide to put in, you’ll want to put it in a bowl and mix a bit of the 100-110 degree milk in a little at a time until it is liquidy and will stir and combine well into the rest of the milk. You need to distribute those millions of bacteria! Stir it all together in your pot with a very clean spoon.
7. At this point, some transfer the milk to other jars or containers to set. Like I said above, I left it all in that big pot, put the lid on it and set it right on my heating pad on the counter. I covered it with some towels to keep the heat in and left it set. Mine was consistently set by 4-6 hours, but it could take longer depending on the temperature it’s kept at and the amount of skyr you put in to culture your milk. If you do it the way I did, you can peek under the lid and jiggle the pot a little to see how it’s coming along after a few hours.
8. Once it is set, it’ll be jiggly, but solid if you push on it with a spoon, and you’ll see a yellowish liquid floating on top and around the side–that’s the whey! Now, turn off your heating pad, find a colander or strainer that will hold the amount of skyr you made and set it into the top of a big bowl so it can drain. Line your colander or strainer with your coffee filters, muslin or dish towel and pour in your skyr. Cover and put the whole set-up into the fridge.
9. It will need to strain for a few hours in the fridge…
10. The final consistency is thick, somewhere between regular plain yogurt and cream cheese. You can scoop your skyr out of the strainer and place it in a bowl. If it is too thick for your taste, simply stir back in some of the whey.
11. Enjoy your skyr plain, or add brown sugar and cream, fruit or honey. Yummy and good for you!

You’ll have a lot of whey leftover. A quick internet search for “uses of whey” will give you a lot of good ideas for ways to use it–from drinking it straight down, using it in baked goods or applying it as a facial astringent. You could also use it to pickle veggies, if you’re feeling adventurous (like a Viking!!)

–Michelle

Glaciers Move?
All glaciers move in two ways: sliding and creeping. Sliding is the result of a thin layer of water along the very bottom of the glacier, while creeping is a movement between the actual layers of ice crystals. Some glaciers move only a few inches a year; others move hundreds of feet a day! Solveig’s glacier won’t be in the same spot if they return next winter. The movement of glaciers is hard to visualize. Here is a moving glacier you will never forget.

Landscape Designers?
The movement of glaciers can create big changes in the landscape of the ground they cover. Obviously a huge, heavy block of ice can move and break things in its path! But a glacier’s effects on the land are not all that apparent. Frozen in the ice are rocks of all sizes making the bottom of the glacier into a giant frozen type of sandpaper. In some cases, this scrapes lines into the land, forms smooth rolling mounds or digs holes that later fill with water.

Glaciers not only pick up rocks that become embedded in the ice. They also drop off rocks as they move along. These are called glacial erratics.  How did that big rock get in the middle of an area of land without other such rocks? The glacier picked it up in one place and dropped it off in another is the answer!

How the Glacier Saved the Day (spoiler alert!)
We know the glacier in ICEFALL moves and groans like real glaciers, but could an actual glacier ever release a trapped flood of water? Yes! Glaciers sitting atop volcanos or other warm areas will periodically have internal areas that melt and break open, causing flooding. The Icelandic word “jokulhlaup” refers to this meltwater that accumulates inside the glacier and is released.  This is just one more amazing fact about glaciers.  Want to know more?

Where is the Earth’s Freshwater?
Raise your hand if you think that the glaciers found currently in places like Alaska, Norway or Greenland are made of the exact same ice that they were formed from thousands of years ago… That would’ve been my guess. But, no!

A big hunk of ice forms, probably during an ice age, and there it sits. Kind of makes sense. But that’s not the end of the story. The water contained in the glaciers is actually part of the earth’s water cycle. The snow that falls on top of the glacier gets compacted, changing those light flakes of snow into tightly packed crystals of ice. A glacier exists because it has lost less or the same amount of water from melting and evaporation then it has gained over time.  So, while some of the glacier is made of frozen water particles that have been there for an extremely long time, most water contained in glaciers has been there less than 100 years! The water that makes up the glaciers is a slow but important part of our world’s water cycle.

Activity! Measure the Earth’s Water Distribution Yourself

Using these statistics from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) website, do some water measuring yourself! Print off the worksheet below for instructions on this simple but interesting activity demonstrating where we find fresh water on our planet, and how much is held in Earth’s glaciers.

Where’s the Water? worksheet and key

–Valerie