snow and sky and botany and thank you cards

it snowed during the night, stopping by 8 am. it left the city a prettier place . . for a little while!

morgana has been reading from susan fenimore cooper's rural hours, and placed a quote in her botany book about ms. cooper's winter observations of the panther and of her local frozen lake.

our winter book today was a polar bear biologist at work, by dorothy hinshaw patent. chuck jonkel has studied the bears on the southwest coast of the hudson bay, canada. it's the southern most colony of polar bears. i think we were most fascinated by their seal fishing technique, and how they like to eat berries, mussels and kelp. their paws are huge and hairy (keeping them warm and helping them stay on top of the snow) and they have 2 to 4 inches of blubber under their thick fur. they prefer to eat the baby seals since there is more fat on the babies. the fat releases water, whereas they would need water to help them digest the meat. when killing an adult seal, they eat the fat and leave the meat for the arctic foxes.

after handwriting, italian and grammar, chanda worked on her thank you cards this evening, while morgana went off to a dance class.

we made chanda's thank you cards up from photographs i took of the gifts. she's adding a drawing and words inside.

and i ate my very last anton berg chocolate marzipan that christine brought me from denmark. it was so delicious! thank you, again, christine!