Stone Mountain Field Trip

Ari's taking a Georgia history class this year at our local homeschool center, and the class includes lots and lots of field trips (to which parents and siblings are invited). He's actually off on one right now, but the rest of us are having to miss that one owing to some snotty miserableness in certain small members of our family. (I feel like I am doing some very strange and unnecessarily complicated things with prepositions in this post thus far. I will try to stop that).

But last week, we went to Stone Mountain, and no one was sick, so we all got to go. You can do lots of things at Stone Mountain like hike up the mountain or ride a terrifying tram up, or ride bikes around the bottom, or take a train ride, or watch a laser show....but we didn't do any of those things. We need to go back and do them soon, though. We're only 45 minutes away from Stone Mountain, and I remember going there fairly regularly as a kid, but my kids had never been before. For shame.

Anyway, this was the first field trip for the Georgia history class, so it focused on really old history....like the part with all the rocks. We visited the new Discovering Stone Mountain Museum and the quarry exhibit.

We met up outside, where kids climbed on rocks for awhile (I am, incidentally, keeping my pictures to my kids and the kids of people I know are okay with me posting them. If you were on the Stone Mountain field trip and you're reading this, that's why I didn't put in any pictures of your kid. Not because your kid isn't adorable. Exception being that one up at the top. All the kids are in that (or at least most), but they're so far away you can't make anyone out. I hope this is all appropriate blogging etiquette. I try.):

Then we went inside and learned about Stone Mountain's history:

The exhibit is, I understand, pretty new, and it's really nicely done. I learned a lot about rocks. I think maybe the kids did, too.

Stone Mountain when it was just a baby!!! Squee!

Also there was a tunnel to run through. I don't think that's what it was FOR, really, but that's what the kids did with it.

We learned that Stone Mountain is a monadnock. Which is fun to say and means "a hill or mountain of erosion-resisting rock rising above the surrounding countryside."

Since we didn't go up the mountain, this picture of a picture is the best thing I have for you to show you what Stone Mountain actually looks like. Rocky.

Abe was there, too.

Well, here: this is what the bottom of the mountain looks like. If you're going to walk up it, you start here.

On to the quarry exhibit! I was surprised to learn that they kept taking granite from the mountain right up until the 70's. I'm surprised they haven't started up again with all the money to be made these days selling counter tops.

I was also surprised to learn that granite is really heavy:

Also we learned that working in a quarry sucked. But I think we already knew that.

Looking forward to more field trips to force us to get off our butts and out of the house! Also for the education and stuff.

Homeschool Stuff: Science Edition

Every time I sit down to write this post, I.....don't do it. I have no idea why. It may be because it requires pulling pictures off of my phone, and I hate doing that. But not for any particular reason. So anyway, if you're reading this, I actually managed to write the whole thing this time. Yay!

The thing about procrastinating is that I now have WAY MORE STUFF to write about than I did back when I first thought about writing it. We keep doing science-y things. So this is just a collection of resources we've enjoyed/things the kids have done/etc. 

1. Radiolab: We all love Radiolab. It's a radio show (but we have the app and listen to episodes from there, not actually on the radio); in each episode there's a theme and then a bunch of stories related to that theme. Like This American Life only science-y-er. Usually. Sometimes not very sciencey.  The website says, "Radiolab is a show about curiosity. Where sound illuminates ideas, and the boundaries blur between science, philosophy, and human experience.

" Doesn't that sound fun? It was in an episode of Radiolab--the one about Speed--that we learned about #2.

2. Pitch Drop Experiment: Radiolab told us about one of the longest running science experiments in the world:

The first Professor of Physics at the University of Queensland, Professor Thomas Parnell, began an experiment in 1927 to illustrate that everyday materials can exhibit quite surprising properties. The experiment demonstrates the fluidity and high viscosity of pitch, a derivative of tar once used for waterproofing boats. At room temperature pitch feels solid - even brittle - and can easily be shattered with a blow from a hammer. It's quite amazing then, to see that pitch at room temperature is actually fluid!

In 1927 Professor Parnell heated a sample of pitch and poured it into a glass funnel with a sealed stem. Three years were allowed for the pitch to settle, and in 1930 the sealed stem was cut. From that date on the pitch has slowly dripped out of the funnel - so slowly that now, 83 years later, the ninth drop is only just forming.

Okay, so they have this stuff, and once a decade or so another drop of it falls. Exciting! But it sort of is, because you can go watch the livecam on their website! And, if you're lucky, you'll be staring at it when the pitch drops, which everyone expects to be ANY DAY NOW! (This is why putting this entry off so long has been so dangerous. The pitch might drop while I'm typing). We check on the pitch a lot.

Pitch Drop!

This guy has been watching the pitch for DECADES, but he's always missed seeing it drop. We're rooting for him this time.

3. Apple Pop Up Museum: We went here a few weeks ago. It was only open for the weekend, but now the website is saying it's going to be open again May 18 and June 8. So if you're anywhere near Roswell, Ga, you can go check it out. I'm not exactly sure what the deal is with it--I'm assuming they're hoping it will be a traveling exhibit in the future. We kind of stumbled across it on some homeschool list or other the day before it opened and decided to check it out.

We were impressed; it was really well done. The museum is all about the history of Apple, with different rooms explaining different aspects of/phases of its history. And then, once you got through the museum, there was a Vintage Computer Festival going on (I'm guessing that won't be happening for the additional dates), where people had displays of old computer stuff (hello Vic20! It's been so long!), there were speakers throughout the day, an ongoing soldering workshop that the kids did, AND....you could play really old video games, like Pitfall and Pong. Ari played Pitfall for a long time. 

Here are pictures:

 Dave explaining floppy disks

 Pitfall!

Soldering!

4. Ari and Lula's Presentation: Ari and his friend Lula (and some other kids) take a class on the history of science at our local homeschool center. For the final class next week, they had to come up with some kind of demonstration or experiment related to something they've studied this year. The experiment they decided on is pretty simple: basically, they set up a cup with a playing card and coin on top of it, then yank the playing card out. The coin falls in the cup, and that demonstrates inertia (Isaac Newton!)

But then they also wrote a script for themselves, explaining the experiment, and it's HILARIOUS. So I thought I would share (it's color coded; Ari says the parts in red and Lula says the parts in blue. Purple is for both):

Hello.

Science is weird.

Inertia is science.

Inertia is weird.

Inertia was discovered by Isaac Newton. Inertia basically means that stuff likes to stay where it is and keeps going if it already is. Here, children, is an example.

(I'm guessing this is where they actually do the demonstration)

Why does that happen?

INERTIA!!!

So, the coin's like, "I wanna stay here." And the creepy card's like, "I'mago, bye coin." And the coin's all, "Oh, wait. That's cool dude. I'll just stay right here." And then gravity's like "Come down and join the club." And the coin's like "Yeah, 'k. I'ma gonna go down now. B-bye card!" And then it like, goes down. Cause gravity. So, basically inertia made the coin stay there, and gravity made it go like, down. So, yeah. Inertia!

I think that this might demonstrate (even more clearly than in demonstrates inertia) that my kid (and Lula, too, apparently) cares more about humor than the history of science. But, hey, I'll take it. How often do you get to combine history, science, AND comedy writing?

So there you have it: a post many weeks in the making for some reason. 

Homeschool Wednesday: Georgia Aquarium

We're not really doing school this week. We're still on Christmas break. But my sister-in-law, Amy, her husband, Craig, and their kids, Benjamin and Louis, are in town from California for a few days, so we decided to go to the Georgia Aquarium--the aquarium that was, when it was built, the largest in the world! It doesn't sound so impressive when you have to say it that way. Apparently they just opened a new world's largest aquarium in Singapore in November. I don't think we'll make it to that one any time soon, though.

We live about half an hour away from the aquarium, but we haven't been there for years--not since Gus was very small--so he didn't remember it at all, and the other kids didn't remember it very well. Winter break is not the best time to go. We got there around 11:30, and it wasn't TOO bad then, but within a couple of hours it had gotten crowded enough that it almost wasn't worth being there any more. When we got to the penguins, they had a woman standing outside telling everyone to "enjoy your time, but don't take your time" while watching them. It's awfully expensive to go to the aquarium, and I really feel like I should be able to look at penguins for as long as I want to for that kind of money. So next time I think we'll go when other kids are in school. And when I'm not 38 weeks pregnant.

We touched aquatic animals

Ari pretended to be very excited about this replica of a gray whale jaw bone.

This is a lionfish, and it's really cool looking, but don't be fooled. It's an invasive species AND it causes "excruciating pain" if it stings you.

We saw many pretty fish. There were pops of orange everywhere. It was kind of like the nursery.

You know what's awesome? Jelly fish.

I wanted a nice picture where all my kids were standing in front of fish, looking normal and happy. I did not get one. I'm also not sure why they're all wearing black for their big aquarium trip. I did not select those clothes.

And then we ended the day with the dolphin show. There are dolphins in the dolphin show, and they are awesome because they are dolphins. But then there's also this guy in a light up cape singing songs and a bizarre story line about stars and sea monsters, and Gus was NOT HAPPY about that part. I looked back at him during the show, and he looked disgusted (this picture is from before the show, before all of our dolphin show hopes and dreams were dashed).  "I thought it was going to be about dolphins," he said afterwards, "It was a giant rip off. It was just for that guy to sing songs." I'm with Gus, I have to say. I'd be all for a show where dolphins do flips while their trainers tell you all about how great dolphins are and how they get them to do flips and stuff. Although I'm fine with it if the trainers want to wear light up capes while they talk. Anyway, Gus is considering writing a letter voicing his dissatisfaction.

So kind of a bummer of a way to end the trip, at least for Gus. But all in all, a fun day. With many fish. Also beluga whales. And otters. Otters are the BEST.

Coasters for Christmas!

I know that there are approximately 80 gazillion tutorials out there for how to make your very own coasters out of 16 cent tiles from Lowes....but I think maybe the reason for this is that coasters are actually pretty useful (like, if I had any, I wouldn't always have to grab a random scrap of paper to put my glass on on my dining room table), and even if you have some it's always okay to have more because they don't take up much space, and these are super easy and cheap to make, and if the person you give them to doesn't like them it's really easy for them to stick them in a drawer somewhere and only pull them out when you come over! Yay!

So I decided awhile back that coasters would be the perfect present for the kids to make for assorted friends and relatives this Christmas. And when I saw that the theme of week 3 of the Dare to DIY challenge would be "give handmade," it gave me an extra kick in the butt to get going with that already.

So here is the coaster tutorial to end nicely complement all other coaster tutorials! But how many of them have OWLS?! Maybe a few; I don't know. If you are reading this and you think you might be the person receiving owl coasters, just put that thought right out of your head. You are WRONG!

So first you go to Hobby Lobby, your new favorite store, and you purchase:

scrapbook paper
Mod Podge (I got matte, but you can get the shiny stuff if you want. It's up to you!)
clear acrylic spray sealer (again, I went with matte)
sponge brushes
a glue gun, if you are new to craftiness and don't already have one
a roll of thin cork (according to the other tutorials, you can also use dots of felt)

Then you go to Lowes and get a bunch of white "biscuit" tile for 16 cents a square. This might get more expensive when your kids see the Gatorade and want some. Especially if one of them is getting over strep. He'll insist he NEEDS one because he's SICK. And then you'll spend more on Gatorade than on tile, but that's okay. Because you love your children and want them to be quiet happy.

Trace around the tiles on the back of the scrapbook paper and cut out a square. I found out after this that, even if you don't want a border for aesthetic reasons, it's best not to go all the way to the edges or you'll wind up with paper overhanging that's hard to get all sealed in with the Mod Podge and whatnot.

Put a layer of Mod Podge on the tile, and then put the scrapbook paper on and quickly get it just how you want it. Then put another layer of Mod Podge on top. The Mod Podging is a great job for your almost 7 year old!

Wait 10 minutes or so for the first layer to dry, then put another layer on (waiting for things to dry is the primary time suck in this project).  It will look like this at first, but don't worry: it dries clear!

Like this!

Then go to work with your acrylic sealer (outside). I did 3 coats, and you're supposed to do them, according to the label, 2 minutes apart. Which is too long for impatient people like me to just stand there, but too short to actually do something else. I might not have made it to two whole minutes. Then you're supposed to let it dry for 24 hours before handling, but that's ridiculous. I'll bet NOBODY waits that long!

Next you whip out your new $2.99 glue gun, cut out a square of cork (the cork I bought was self adhesive, but I didn't trust the built in adhesion to do the job by itself), and glue that sucker down. Another fun job for kids. Hot glue! What could be more fun?!

Mod Podging!

Hot glue!

We still have a bunch more sets to make, but here are the first two, all finished!

Let's call this the homeschool post for the week, too. Multi-tasking!

Sharing at the Dare to DIY party hosted by: Decor and the Dog, Maybe Matilda, Newly Woodwards, and TwoTwentyOne

And also with: Tuesday's Treasures at My Uncommon Slice of Suburbia, Hookin' Up With House of Hepworths, Somewhat Simple, Chic on a Shoestring Decorating's Flaunt It Friday, The Shabby Nest's Frugal Friday

Homeschool....Thursday!

*house stuff has been slow going this week and last. Eventually we will FINALLY have some finished steps to post about, though. They are finished enough now that dogs (who don't need a hand rail) can go down them, and that makes me happy)

In 2008, we read tons of books about presidents and elections and super hyped everything enough that, by the time Election Day actually arrived, the kids were convinced it was a holiday on par with Christmas.

This year our pre-election hyping was considerably more low key, but, the good news is, my geeky children are easy to excite at the last minute; all it takes is promises of sugar cookies and staying up late to color maps red and blue.

I made my first attempt at my own gluten free flour mix with the cookies (I mean, not really; I mix gluten free flours together all the time, but this time I kind of read up on it and pre-made a mix before I added it to the recipe). I guess I did okay, because the dough rolled out beautifully, and the cookies tasted like sugar cookies (even though I used erythritol/stevia in them instead of real sugar, since I wanted to be able to eat some, too). I used about half rice flour, and then a random blend of coconut flour, tapioca starch, potato starch, and peanut flour for the rest (along with a teaspoon on xanthan gum).

Here's the recipe I modified beyond recognition (heh--not really; other than subbing for the sugar and using my own gluten free blend, I followed it pretty closely): http://www.landolakes.com/recipe/1527/star-cut-out-cookies-gluten-free-recipe

I bought a set of elephant, donkey, and US map cookie cutters back in 2008; I can't remember where (apologies to members of various third parties; you guys need to get animal mascots). Complicating matters was the fact that Tuesday is our CRAZY day, so all the festivities and preparation had to be squeezed in between Spanish tutoring, Gus' tap class, Gus' rehearsal, and, of course, actually voting (I had begged out of lego robotics for the week to make time for this, and it turned out to be a good thing, as I waited in line for over an hour. Fortunately, the kids were at a friend's house while that was going on, so it seemed almost relaxing). So the pictures are not the best, since it all happened after dark, and I was just kind of wildly grabbing the camera to take a few shots before we hurried on to the next thing.

The dough had been in the refrigerator for several hours, and I was really impressed with how easy it was to roll out without making a mess. The odd thing was these cookies took FOREVER to cook in the oven; way longer than the directions said.

We offset the use of fake sugar by sprinkling them VERY liberally with red and blue sugar.

Ari indulged us by sprinkling some of the cookies, even though he is so mature.

I think we used up all the ink in all of our red and blue markers.

The kids did not really stay up until the polls closed in Alaska or anything. They went up before 10, and  then finished (well, except for that pesky Florida) the next morning.

Sorry, Florida, you don't get to be colored in because you count too slow. Ari found some kind of app for the Kindle to do his high tech version of map coloring.

Homeschool.....Friday!

Back before I bailed on the old homeschool blog, I announced big plans for a post about all the not-at-our-house stuff we do this year. There is...a lot. Here's what that schedule looks like right now:

Monday: classes at LEO in the morning. Ari's taking a logic class, and Milo and Gus are taking science.

Tuesday: Spanish in the morning (tutor comes here to do a class with my kids plus our friends who live nearby). Milo and Gus have lego robotics at a friend's house in the afternoons. Every other week, Ari has physics at LEO. Gus has tap from 4-5. And until next month, Gus has rehearsals for A Christmas Carol (he's Tiny Tim!) in the evenings. Tuesdays are....busy.

Wednesday: Ari has a Manga class in the afternoon, and the other boys hang out at the playground with friends while that's going on. Fiesta has obedience class in the evenings, and a kid generally comes with me to that.

Thursday: Milo and Gus have a boy's club they go to every other week. Milo has guitar in the late afternoons. Gus has rehearsal again. And Ari is blissfully unscheduled all day!

Friday: a bit in flux right now. We often get together with friends.

Saturday: Ari and Milo have archery practice in the mornings, although that's about to go on hiatus until after New Year's.

Sunday: Gus has rehearsal in the afternoon, and Ari has math club (at our house, coached by Dave).

Phew! Uhh....it makes appreciate our time at home more? Well, it does. I know that it is fashionable to wax philosophical about whether kids are overscheduled these days and should be spending more time building fairy houses in the woods instead and all that. This is just sort of how our year has shaped up, free of philosophy-based planning. The kids seem completely fine with it; I would like more of our evenings back....but I'm the one who went and scheduled Fiesta's obedience class smack in between Christmas Carol rehearsals.

August's theater career takes up more of the week than anything else, and he's our token extrovert, so he handles it well. He did a drama camp the summer he was five and fell completely in love with acting. So he's been involved in one play or another more often than not since then.

A Christmas Carol is the first play he's done that's not strictly children's theater. The cast is a mix of kids and adults, and he's the youngest one (though not the smallest; he makes for a rather tall Tiny Tim). He did another wintry-themed play last year at the same time, and I'm kind of loving how going to see Gus in a seasonal play is becoming a thing we do for Christmas. A Christmas Carol opens the day after Thanksgiving this year, so Dave's parents will be in town and able to see him on stage for the first time.

Here are some cruddy iphone pictures from the day they took publicity photos (hoping I'll be able to get some copies of the ones that were taken with a real camera and from a better angle).

With the carollers (he's on the front row, second from the right):

And with the whole cast (bottom right) (with the photographer's arm in the foreground):

Homeschool Tuesday

I have a homeschooling blog that I did a pretty good job of updating for a pretty long time. But last year, what with all the house selling and moving and all that, things kind of fell apart. We're also kind of at the point in our homeschooling where we've been doing it for awhile, and we're pretty happy with all the stuff we're using/doing, and writing a weekly report like I used to do started to get pretty....boring. So I'm going to try some blog consolidation. I'm aiming for one homeschool/kid activity post a week. I'm calling it Homeschool Tuesday because today is Tuesday, but I may well move the day. Or give up on having a specific day and just do it whenever. This way, I don't feel like I need to write repetitive weekly reports AND I don't have to come up with a new header for the old blog (we changed names when we moved, from Dogwood Forest Creek School to Boxy Colonial Academy, so I needed to update the name of the old blog. But see how well the school name fits in with the existing blog name here? Exciting!)

Here we go!

Last weekend we decided to make a point NOT to spend the whole weekend on regular activities and house stuff. We still did plenty of that stuff, too, but before our Saturday Ikea trip we went to the Chattahoochee Nature Center for Creepy Critter Day. My sister-in-law, Rebecca, works at the nature center and she and my brother gave us a membership for Christmas last year. But, umm, we didn't get around to activating it until Saturday (moving! selling house! so busy!) But we love the nature center, and now we live much closer to it, so we will definitely be trying very hard to get over there more regularly.

They have a  nature exchange there that we've been hoarding stuff for for a long time. So we started off there. Gus showed off the giant pinecone he found in California last spring and some sand from Cape Cod (uhh, two summers ago). He used some of his points to get a piece of quartz and Milo used the points he had from a long time ago to get a piece of obsidian (which is awesome, I understand, because of Minecraft. Somehow or another).

Then we went to see the main event of Creepy Critter Day....the bat presentation! The bat lady sure could talk for a long time about bats. She warned us at the beginning about how much she loved bats and how long she could talk about them. My kids mostly enjoyed it (there were slides!), but I felt kind of bad for the people who had toddlers and preschoolers in there.

The payoff for listening to all the talk about microbats and megabats and which bats live in Georgia and all that came at the end, when the bat lady brought out:

Isn't he cute? For a bat? He's an Egyptian fruit bat, if I remember right. Gus was excited about the bat's cuteness:

After learning about bats, we went outside and started to listen to another presentation, this one about snakes. But the kids were a little restless after bat hour, so we decided to go for a short hike on the boardwalk by the river instead.

Then we went to Ikea. But we'll be back soon. We're hoping to go to Halloween Hikes there. And Gus is thinking of having his birthday party there this year. And they have homeschool days one Monday a month....we haven't been able to get there yet this year because we had classes, but we've rearranged things now, so we might be able to make it next time!