I watched part of a Power Rangers movie with Owen today in which one of the girls goes to "Archaeology" class where they dig through rock to find trilobites and other "artifacts". AGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHH! Ok, vent over. (Yes, I made sure to point it out to Owen) (please, in the name of all that is decent and good in this world, if you do nothing else, teach your kids the simple difference between paleontology and archaology. Thank you)

So it turns out the library has a kid's video biography section! Cool! It's only one shelf but still, we're having fun with it. We watched three new ones this week.

The first one wasn't a good fit for us. It's part of the Artists' Specials series by Devine Entertainment. Winslow Homer : An American Original. I disagree with the first Amazon review and think it's a good movie but I should have read the back cover first. Winslow Homer painted scenes from the Civil War and being there and seeing what he did affected him. As the movie starts he is in Maine, trying to get away from it all. In various scenes he has flashbacks from battles he witnessed and also meets two children whose families have been hurt because of the war. There's a lot of heavy stuff in this movie, a lot of flashbacks with no dialogue and sad poetry about war being read aloud. I enjoyed it but it didn't hold the interest of my 8 year old. If I had read the back of the case first I wouldn't have gotten it but maybe in a few years it will be better.

The next movie (also from the Artists' Specials series) was Mary Cassatt : American Impressionist. We really enjoyed this one! Mary, living on her own and (gasp!) unmarried gets saddled with her brother's three kids for what looks to be a few weeks (I'm not sure of the exact time frame). They try to set her up with Edgar Degas who is played by the same actor in the movie about him that we watched last week (Bridget thought that was cool!) . Over the course of the movie the kids end up inspiring her paintings instead of disrupting her work as she feared in the beginning. I also picked up a book called Mary Cassatt : Family Pictures in the Smart About Art series. It's a nice, light book with cartoons and lots of pictures of Cassatt's paintings. Just the type of thing we tend to like. I read it first and then Bridget read it, reading aloud bits of information she found interesting (like Mary Cassatt's temper - hmmmmm, can't imagine why she'd think that was interesting ;-D ) At the end of the book it mentioned that some of Cassatt's paintings are in the Met so she asked if we could go back there and check them out. It's been awhile, so we'll have to plan a trip. Maybe when the weather gets a little nicer (ie: not 10 degrees!).

If I didn't mention before (I should have!) the Artists' Specials series is fictionalized stories about real people. The stories here didn't actually happen, but they include many real facts about the artists (Devine has some other series' too that are a similar style but aren't limited to artists). They're a nice introduction to famous people in history. Heck, even if we never read another thing, I now know more about Winslow Homer than I did before and I learned how to correctly pronounce Cassat and Degas, LOL!

The last video this week was a cartoon biography of Marie Curie from the Animated Hero Classics. Let me just say quickly that in trying to google this video I found out the Animated Hero Classics was a Christian series. I didn't find anything religious in this video and don't think it would be a problem for anyone who isn't Christian (which would be us). I picked up Marie Curie because of one of Bridget's computer games. I can't remember which one it was (Pajamma Sam?) but someone made a joke about Marie Curie glowing in the dark and Bridget asked me why they said that. Being the well educated, know-it-all homeschooling mom that I am I said "Um, I don't know, I think she had something to do with X-rays.". So I picked up this video when I saw it. We really enjoyed this one too! For most of the show, Curie's husband makes a case for why Marie Curie should be made a professor despite her being (oh the horror!) a woman. It was an interesting introduction to her life. I also found out that Devine has a video on Marie Curie too. My library doesn't have it so I'll have to ask them to special order it.

We seem to be watching a lot of videos lately. Thank goodness for the library or we'd be broke! Owen just put on the Marie Curie video to watch (he says "it's funny" ooooooooooooooo K). Bridget is watching (on her computer) Scooby Doo 2 : Monsters Unleashed, in Spanish with English subtitles. It also helps she's seen the movie (in English) at least a half dozen times (two of those times in the past few days).