Character practice

Your character is reflected in your characters. This is the translation of the back of the Vietnamese writing books my daughter has been practicing. If you look at the history of writing in Asia, character writing was very important and considered an art form. Our heritage writing is based on Chinese characters, and being able to write required discipline and diligent practice. Now the Vietnamese no longer use Chinese based characters, but romanized characters with some extra diacritics to mark the various tones.

I've learned that the main writing style taught in Vietnam is cursive, from the very beginning of school. Everyone I've seen has very nice handwriting, probably due to the constant and consistent practice. How well can you do something if you learn one style for a few years, then are taught another style for a few months, then practice neither consistently? So we spend a fair amount of time practicing handwriting in cursive. She already knows how to print, although I never specifically worked on that with her, she picked it up herself from books we had. The cursive style used in Vietnam is based on French writing, so I was able to find a very similar font to use for various materials.

One for tracing is Maternellecolor_creuse
Another for just text is Cursif. A lined version of it is also available.

Science Volcanos

So here's the standard volcano model. It's kind of fun to see the reaction of the kid.

Traded chickens

We found a new home for the roosters, and she actually gave us some hens in trade, plus the option to get some babies when the other chickens start laying eggs since I really wanted cochins. These are supposedly Buff Orpingtons.

Police incidents can be too close for comfort!

Today, as I was leaving to pick up big brother, I saw the end of our road blocked off by police. They were there until about 10 pm. The people who live past the end of our road had a hard time getting home, and a few ended up parking in front of our house.

After this picture was taken they set up a pop up shelter, I guess for a command center. She was curious and went to talk to the cops.

Chickens are grown up!

The chickens are starting to crow. It's not a good thing. I think both are roosters. We have to find them a new home...

We have these curly tailed lizards all over the place. Too bad they're too big for the chickens, they're invasive exotics.

Knight Anole

Found this Knight Anole at the data center. It's so cool and pretty big, too bad they're invasive exotics.

Fully feathered chickens

The cutest chicks are now fully feathered! They are cochins, not silkies. Still not sure whether they're boys or girls.