One of the best things about the CM philosophy of education is learning from nature.  Yesterday (on the way to the library) I spotted two vultures eating an animal by the side of the road.  I turned the car around and pulled over near them to give S4 an impromptu lesson.  Well I know nothing about vultures, but what I said was that they are God's cleaning crew for animals that have died.  Then we tried to guess what animal they were eating.  S4 was the first to smell it....a skunk!

Now, since we were on our way to the library, I looked in the online catalog for the dewey decimal number for vultures (598.something), and headed to the juvenile non-fiction section.  Imagine my surprise when I noticed two books on vultures already pulled from the shelves!  Had someone else seen those vultures a few minutes earlier than us?

Well, we checked one out and found that one of the photos matched our vultures (Black Vulture) and read a few pages on scavengers and Old World vs New World vultures. 

Today, I used the word "janitor" which he asked me to define.  Then he said that vultures were like janitors.  I love watching how his mind makes connections...sometimes when they don't even exist, but somehow listening to him explain himself, they make perfect sense!