Zenschooling Academy

Tonight at about 10:00 I got a text from a friend that said “I remember The Squirrel went through a planets phase a few months ago, I thought you might want to know tonight Jupiter is super bright and right by the moon.  Go check it out.”

The kids were still awake when I poked my head in their room so we hopped outside and looked (one of the joys of living in the desert is you can go outside barefoot in the middle of the night in January).  The Squirrel thought it was awesome… Baby Pterodactyl babbled and tried to a eat a piece of chalk.

The Squirrel wanted to get the planet books out again so we read all about Jupiter and it’s moons (Jupiter has 67 natural satellites!), then because they said they wanted a snack we whipped up some Jupiter pancakes.  We dyed them red like Jupiter is, and made The Great Red Spot, Jupiter’s massive storm that’s three times as big as the planet earth, with an extra drop of food coloring once they were in the pan.  Talking the whole time about what we’d learned, about how cool Jupiter looked outside, and why it looks so small from our backyard even though it’s really so so huge.

If she was going to preschool or kindergarten tomorrow we never would have been able to have this fabulous late night astronomy lesson.  I love our life.