25 January 2025 – What Squirrels do in Winter, How Many Miles is a League, How Much of Spain had been Conquered, the Butchering Bird

My son asked me why there were squirrels everywhere despite the frigid temperatures. “Don’t they hibernate?” He’d seen it on SpongeBob so it must be so. We found out that some squirrels do hibernate, but many don’t. Which is why they spend all summer hiding food away. So that it can be eaten all winter.

During Math one day, I was asked how many miles were in a league. It’s a bit complicated, but a league is about 3 miles or how far an 18th century cannon could shoot.

We were learning about Spain and I’d known that part of their country had been conquered by Muslims but I had no clue it was almost all of it! (Pictured here in green). By the 700s, that little gray sliver was all that was left of Spain (it’s a mountainous region called the Asturias). It took them 770 years, but Spain came back from behind and reconquered itself! It’s an amazing underdog story with a leader that held just enough ground to start the reconquering (Pelayo), the chaste King who wouldn’t give up (King Alfonso), the brave nobleman who remained faithful to his country despite the fact that he’d been betrayed by the king (El Cid) and the courageous and brilliant queen and her husband that would finally unite Spain and finish the Reconquista (Isabel and Ferdinand). It was such an incredible story! Afternoons like these are definitely one of my favorite things about homeschooling.

I was looking for a word that rhymed with “like” and came across the word “shrike”. Not knowing what it was, I looked up its definition. It’s a kind of bird. It looked like a cute little song bird. So we watched a documentary on it, as we often do when we find out about a new kind of bird. We found out it is not a cute little song bird, but a butcher! And it skewers its prey on sharp things such as thorns and barbed wire! One kid ran back to his room crying! WTH Mother Nature?! Why did you create a tiny, feathered, innocent looking Hannibal Lector of the bird world? Why was that necessary?