Last week we went to a summer camp expo at Newcastle Elementary down in Virginia Beach. We were invited to come and play and dance and dress-up to support the promotion of the Art of Dance Princess Camp. Sadie wore a princess outfit, Benny wore his prince costume, and both kids played the violin and passed our brochures for Miss Monique. Cuteness:



The act that stole the show, however, was Mad Science. This showstopping pair of test-tube-clinkers drew the biggest crowd, wowed the most kids, and created the biggest dry-ice-related spectacle. They were bigger than the live rabbit, better than the peacock feathers -- I think they would have even outshined a free cupcake table. Benny was riveted:



I had never heard of Mad Science until I approached them as a sponsor for the G.U.E.S.S. Homeschool Science Fair. Before I met them, I wasn't sure what they did or why kids would be interested. After I saw their display and watched the children gather, it took about 30 seconds for me to start nodding my head -- I got it. All the children at the expo were gathered around, cheering for the experiments, wanting to get a "vapor shower" and hanging on every word of the pair in the lab coats.



Jen and Heath Marcus are funny, charming, and really knew their stuff. I can't imagine a child being immune to the draw of the oversized beakers, the interesting substances, and the spectacular visuals. So, wonder of wonders, joy of joys, I discovered this week that Mad Science is having a homeschool science class at the Kempsville Library. Of course, after investigating the schedule, I found it's during our ballet class, so we can't go! But you can!

To find out more about it, click here for the flier. This six week class is only $80 and meets on Thursdays from 10:30-11:30. If we weren't in ballet class, we would be there. We will definitely be checking out their offerings for fall and for chemistry summer camp and NASA summer camp. They also do science birthday parties.

Mad Science will be coming to our science fair to do a short demo of their show while the judges deliberate. I can't wait. I'm sure it will be a hoot.

Labels: guess sponsors, homeschool science, mad science, science

We had a great treat today during our weekly science club. Ben and Shira's Dad is a pathologist. He made a special trip home during work hours to teach the children how to make cultures. I haven't seen Marc in a teaching role before -- he was great! He has kind of a booming voice and a very energetic, expansive presence, and the kids *really* enjoyed learning about agars and the little wire thing that he fired and then cooled in water, and he took time with each of them to show them how to properly make the culture. Although some did not follow protocol. :D



They made cultures of their mouths or the insides of their noses. That is, spit or snot. So, given that there were children named Shira and Chloe, and then there were children named Ben, Benny, and Joshua... I will leave you to guess which ones chose which type of germs to culture.



Did you guess yet? Yes, the boys all chose snot and the girls both used the sterile swab to get a chaste and delicate spit sample. It's funny how they don't suprise you, you know? Heh. The most hilarious part of the experience was watching the boys digging for "really wet ones" as Marc was egging them on -- those looks of serious concentration all around the table as their fingers went waaaay up, and everyone's excitement when Benny announced he felt a cold coming on. Good germs! Whee!

Definitely good for a Dad to come in on this one and encourage the booger behavior. That way we moms could stand off to the side and make clucking noises while we took pictures. Shez got better pictures -- I await her blog on it. Secretly amused. Next week we will check in on how the kids' germs enjoyed the sheep's blood agar and oxygen.

UPDATE: I see that Shez has *already blogged* about this very important experience that we shared today, and she has included a picture of Benny digging away, up to the second knuckle, and me standing behind looking stern and disapproving. AS I SHOULD BE. *wink*

Labels: science

Great day. Good times. Lots of homeschoolers rocking the museum with awesome engineering. Here are some pictures and videos:

Benny and Sadie after their drops. Benny won second place in the two-egg parachute category at 114 grams with both eggs surviving the fall. He also won the prize for the most creative entry in that category:

Here's Sadie with her contraption, which failed to protect its egg. Video of her drop is below:

You can here somebody speculating that she's 18 months old. She was dressed up as a fairy and her egg was pink and sparkly and frilly, but darnit she's in PRESCHOOL! :)

My entry was "Egg Drop Soup" and it did not protect its egg and did not win anything.

I didn't get any pictures or video of Benny, partly because I pushed the wrong button during his drop and ended up filming my collarbone for like 5 minutes. So ironically the one in the family who built a successful contraption and won prizes did not get documented!

However, I do have video of our friends Zoe and Ben. Zoe won in her category for the lightest successful contraption! Very cool.

Here's Zoe's drop:



And Ben's drop:



So I did get *some* good video! Just not of my own children! :) :) I was proud of all the kids in our little group: Josh, Austin, Zoe, Phillip, Ben, Shira, Benny, and Sadie. We were all very good sports, supporting each other, cheering and hollering, and celebrating physics. It's such an awesome event, because little brainy smart kids get to receive hoots, cheers, and yodels just like the football players. I deeply enjoy myself every year at the Egg Drop contest. It is a great experience for the children and the adults alike.

Labels: egg drop contest, homeschooling, science, vasc

Benny blogged about an experiment we did today with different types of paint and different sizes of papier mache forms.

Benny's Blog.

Here are some of his findings:



This is all in preparation for the egg drop contest this Saturday at VASC.

Labels: benny, egg drop contest, science

Grammy gave Benny a butterfly house for Christmas, and we sent away for the caterpillars to inhabit it. They arrived very tiny, and then grew very large, all without leaving their little food-filled jar. I'm not going to say it wasn't kind of gross to see them eating, pooping, and growing, all in a very small space. But it was also kind of amazing because at times we felt like we could almost see them getting bigger if we watched for 5 minutes straight. Now they are all chrysalides, and we will move them into their new mesh house, and wait for them to turn into monkeys.

Labels: caterpillars, science

Another song about physics for elementary school!

Here's a link to the song sheet as a PDF:

Here are the lyrics:

MY TRUE SCREW

A screw is a shaft with a helical groove
Or thread wound around it in a helical way
You use a screwdriver to make the screw move
Righty tighty, lefty loosey,” as Joshua would say

Chorus:
Screw Screw Screw!
Are you a true simple machine?Or are you just another helical inclined plane?

A screw translates torque into linear force
When you turn it, that’s torque but it doesn’t just spin
It also goes straight down — that’s linear of course
“What goes around goes down!” say the Silverberg twins

Chorus

The drive of the screw is the slot in its top
Where you put the screwdriver to turn it around
It might be a cross, a line, square, or teardrop
“A proper tool for every job,” as Benny has found.

Chorus

Have you heard of Archimedes
He perfected a wonderful screw
To lift water or an object up
Like a golf ball, or a hot turnip

A screw inside a pipe
Is a screw of a mechanical type
A screw with a point on one end
Is a fastener screw, my dearest friend

Note: There are specific names in the song, which obviously would have to be changed to your children's names. To replace "The Silverberg Twins" with one name (if you don't have twins in your group) just say "says Rudolph again" or whatever name you need.

And here's the video, in which I completely bargled the lyrics, but as long as I have children to jump on my head and correct me, who cares:

Labels: educational songs, learning with music, lego league, science, screws, songs

Preparing to teach Benny's Lego League team about levers, I realized that I myself knew nothing about levers. I vaguely recalled that a crowbar is one, and that force times distance equals knit one purl two Francis Bacon. Beyond that, I was in the dark. When I was 18, I took a class called University Physics, where these things were probably discussed. OR maybe not. The people in my class may have all been well beyond the study of simple machines. Maybe I was too, at the time.

What I chiefly remember about University Physics was that I was in the middle of trying to get my school to boycott table grapes and thereby save the world from injustice. I'm pretty sure I missed a few labs and maybe even the final. I got an A the first semester, a B the second semester, and from there things got really bad and I ended up an English major. I'm sure my physics professor wanted to crack my head like a nut on several occasions. I was a terrible student. Really terrible in an epic, timeless way. Rotten. At the time, calculus was giving me hives.

Anyway, now that I have two bright young students on my roster and am no longer so completely absorbed in electric guitars and oppressed peoples, I went to the library and learned about levers. And, because I am me, I wrote a song about it to teach this info to the children.

Here is a link to a PDF of the song sheet lyrics:

Here are the lyrics:

LEVER LA LA LA

In a first class lever, the fulcrum is between
The force and the mighty load
Which might be water or a kid named Jean
You use a first class lever to paddle a canoe
A seesaw or a scissors or the
Shoehorn in your shoe

Chorus:
LA LA LEVER
La-la-la-la-la-LEVER
Your load is so heavy and your fulcrum is fixed
But LA LA LEVER
La-la-la-la-la-LEVER
If I apply some force today
We can lever all your troubles away

That's not all the levers we've got
Let's give the second class lever a shot

In a second class lever the force is at one end
The fulcrum's at the other end
The load is in the middle but the bar won't bend
A door is a second class lever, and a wheelbarrow's one too
If you like to use a nutcracker
Try lever number two!

Chorus

That's not all the levers we've got
Let's give the third class lever a shot

In a third class lever it's the fulcrum, then the force
Then the load on the other side
Which might be an apple or a stick or a horse
Your arms are third class levers, your legs are levers too
And shovels, slings, and spoons
When you use them to fling food.

Chorus

And here is a video of the Legodiles (plus one extra little brother) singing the lever song:



Here's my chance to publicly apologize to Dr. Fulcher for being a rotten student. Homeschooling a seven-year-old is a perfect chance to start over on physics, and this time I'm paying attention.

Labels: educational songs, learning with music, levers, physics, science, songs, teaching

We couldn't stay away. We are supernerds.



On the NASA tour bus:


Viewing the launchpad, currently all full of shuttle:


The shuttle crawls down this road from the Vehicle Assembly Building to the launch pad at 1 mph. The whole thing is so heavy it "pulverizes" the road every time, and every time they have to rebuild the road.



Saturn V Rocket. Model below, real thing above:


Benny as Jupiter in the "Mad Mission to Mars" show:

Labels: field trips, kennedy space center, NASA, science, space

Here are some pictures from the Kennedy Space Center.

The Space Shuttle Simulator:





Satellite of Love (inside the old Atlantis):



IMAX in 3D:



Benny and a guy in an astronaut suit:



The children in an Apollo crew capsule:



Exercising our Latin:



Pretend lunar rover:

Labels: field trips, kennedy space center, NASA, science, space

Yesterday the NASA Research Center at Langley threw open its hangar doors and welcomed the public to celebrate 90 years of knitted brows, furiously scribbling pencils, and AHA! moments. Even though it as a gloomy, rainy day, we went to see NASA, because, you know, they aren't exactly known for being hospitable and they probably won't do this for another 10 years.

I'm not really sure what the children absorbed. They are 7 and 3, and not really up on composites and air traffic control and 1000 mph winds. Benny loved following the map around and interacting with everyone and asking questions, and Sadie enjoyed the balloon animals and picking up the titanium models of space shuttles and sitting in cockpits. Since they're so young and this was such a dense experience, this trip gets filed with the stuff we do to give them background information when they revisit the subject later. Now they've stood directly under the mechanism used by the Apollo guys to practice docking. Here's Benny standing under it:

I however am old enough (theoretically) to absorb this kind of information, so here's a list of the things I learned:

1. Electron Beam Welding is strange. One guy at one table was telling us that buy building the piece by melting down a wire with a computer, layer by layer, they avoid wasting the metal that would have to be hollowed out and discarded or scraped off and discarded. Another guy at another table was telling us how they scrape off and eliminate everything that doesn't go in the piece, and it gets flushed away because it's all submerged in water. So, huh? Either way, the models were cool. I held titanium! Have I ever held titanium before?

2. They keep NASA brains in big tanks.

3. I have to learn to do balloon animals. The girl that was doing the NASA balloon animals was doing such awesome, incredible, ridiculous, huge, life-altering hats that I was eaten up with envy at her ability. I have to learn to do this, it will definitely improve my parenting, my homeschooling, my entire world. The pictures of that are on my camera, I didn't take any with my phone, but man. You have to take my word for it. She was phenomenal.

4. NASA needs more funding. The word we heard most often from the locals was "budget." This was not said in a hostile, irritated way as in, "Why don't we have a budget?!?!" but in kind of a sweet, sad, nostalgic way like, "I remember when we had a budget..." and then the person would wipe away a tiny tear. All over the facility, we saw scientists trying hard to bend their research to something commercially viable, to make the whole thing profitable, but I just got the feeling that what they really want to do is crunch numbers, try new things, speculate, and be pure scientists.

I suppose this is a conflict which has been going on since the beginning of time, but I just wanted a little less sadness and a little more glee. The next time I talk to a candidate, I'm going to ask not only how they feel about homeschool laws, but also how they feel about NASA. NASA needs buckets of money. And I haven't even started on the appearance of the place -- it looks like a community college, built in the 50s, which has never been improved or expanded, except to add giant wind tunnels. There are rusty pieces of equipment lying around that have just been dragged out and shot, there are containers from trucks rusting behind buildings, the whole place needs a facelift. I know that when there's not enough money for pure science, there's not enough money for cosmetic updates, but still.

I hope that if there are any NASA scientists reading this right now, they don't take this as a criticism. Maybe if there are any NASA scientists reading this right now, they're just glad I got the message in terms of the political significance. I got it.

5. NASA scientists are awesome to talk to. We had a lot of really interesting, informative talks with people who had most certainly given that same talk or explanation, or answered that same question, maybe 200 times already that day. Not ONE person was irritated, not one sounded bored or tired of the repetition, nobody cut off the children's questions or our questions. Every single person was totally nice and kind and smart and helpful. And that's saying something.

6. There is a whole lab devoted to breaking stuff! There are huge, interesting, insane-looking machines designed and used for ripping things apart. According to science, you have to break something to see how strong it is. That makes sense metaphysically too. I liked the breaking machines.

7. Composites are made by combining fibers with a matrix. I have nothing to add to that statement, because that is the total sum of my learning on that topic.

8. I like the show "Big Bang Theory" on TV. Do you watch it?

9. I must not have been paying attention. What is wrong with me that I didn't learn 10 things at NASA? I feel like I should be able to say something about flight simulators or acoustics or heat shields, but you know I would just be googling it after the fact, and that would be cheating.

10. Dan now thinks I know lots of people. I ran into blogging friends, and playground friends, and karate friends, and all kinds of friends. You might conclude that I am such a social butterfly that the percentage of the population of Southeast Virginia that attended NASA's Open House, when applied to my number of acquaintances, produced a large number of attendees that I knew. OR, you could assume that the type of person I know is the type of person most likely to go to NASA's Open House. And that would be good research. Here are some blogging buddies we ran into outside the Journey to Tomorrow exhibit, where the kids saw a live moon rock:

Thank you, NASA, for a very interesting Saturday. If I didn't learn enough, it's not because you didn't try, and there's always Dan, who absorbed and processed more information than the rest of us put together. We are nerds, we are superfans, we are technology dorks; of course we had a good time. NASA, we love you. Just tell us who to vote for!

Labels: field trips, langley research center, NASA, open house, science, space

Last week our Lego League team learned about pulleys. Pulleys are apparently simple machines that you use to make things lighter, so your little scale hickamajig reads THREE instead of SIX. Getting the scale thingy down to three is exciting and means that you win the game of pulleys! The three moms in our Lego League are open-minded but basically clueless when it comes to machinery. Fortunately we can read and are staying a lesson ahead of our six-and-seven-year-olds. Also fortunately, our six-and-seven-year-olds are happy to inform us of every little thing that we don't already know, six or seven times each.

Here's Benny stretching his pulley cord thingy around his pulley wheelie thingies:



They tell me that if you want the pulley wheels to go opposite directions, like gears do, you have to twist the cord between them. Or something. Is it tiresome when I go on and on about "thingies" and "whatsits"? I'm not being coy, I promise you. I genuinely am that blunt-headed about physics. It all takes me back to that classroom during my last semester as a chemistry major, when I was taking something called "University Physics," an honors class with all the smarty math people that I was trying to hang with at the time. Shortly thereafter, I switched over to hanging with the smarty literature people, and felt much better. The math people always kind of looked at me in a vague, kind, lordly way. Well, here I am with physics again. Celebrating another day of living.

I like to build dog houses with my Legos. Is there any important principle to be learned from constructing a red and blue dog house with a front and back door?

Here's Ben demonstrating his lifting device:



Ben and Benny building away:



Here's the other half of the team, heads bowed over their pulley projects:



This week's assignment was to build a fishing pole, which Benny did this evening with Dan. They made one with one pulley, two pulleys, three pulleys, and you know, the darn Lego fish weight got lighter and lighter to wind up with each additional pulley. It was amazing.

So, does this mean that if I make myself a pulley necklace, I will see some results on the scale? I bet I could fit twenty five Lego pulleys onto a stylish choker. A few sequins, a dangling brick or two, who's with me? Let's accessorize our way to glamorous supermodel status. It's only a Lego (pulley) away.

Meanwhile, Benny will now demonstrate the more practical uses of pulleys: feeding worms to the fish in Broad Bay.

Labels: benny, lego league, pulleys, science

Today was one of two "Homeschoolers Take Over" events at the Norfolk Botanical Gardens this fall. We missed the last one because I procrastinated about registering and it filled up, but this one we got to attend, even though it was almost practically sort of gently raining, and the kids had a lot of fun.



Here come the homeschoolers! Look out, deciduous holly tree collection!

We were divided into three groups, and each group travelled with its own "garden teacher" through different stations where we learned things and filled out the little workbook we'd received at the visitor's center. Here we are learning about the caterpillars. This was very relevant to Benny, given his recent interest in the topic.





Benny urgently asked to see the milkweeds and monarchs. Eventually he located them himself. This isn't technically milkweed, but it's something else that is similar enough that the caterpillars like it. The garden teacher couldn't tell us very much about monarchs, but fortunately we were with a throng of overly informed homeschoolers. All through the tour, they educated the garden teacher on the ways of the Sioux Indians, the eating habits of monarchs, uses of papaya, etc. I love homeschooled kids. They're so awesome and insane.



Finding these caterpillars prompted Benny to say, "AT LAST I FOUND A MONARCH CATERPILLAR! IT HAS ALWAYS BEEN MY DREAM TO FIND ONE! AND NOW I HAVE!"

Here he is examining the caterpillars with his magnifying glass:





Here they are in the rose garden, making bath salts with rosemary, epsom salts, and a baby food jar. Very cool. Sadie accidentally dropped hers onto the stone floor of this little gazebo, smashed it, and caused an international incident. Brooms were called in by radio, literally. For some reason, I got the feeling that our particular garden teacher was a little fed up with my particular children by the end of the day. Of course, it could have been that she was tired of getting corrected on horticultural fine points by 10-year-olds .

The roses are just coming on now for their second big bloom of the year:



Here's Benny making his rosemary bath salts:



Here's Sadie reading one of the signs. She kept insisting that she had to read all the little labels on everything, and she "read" each of the as very detailed instructions on how to look at and enjoy the plants. I said, at one point, "You know Sadie if you want to learn to read, we can work harder on your letters and sounds so you can read those for real." She gave me a withering glare and said, "I can wead them for weal now." Well okay.



According to Sadie, this one says, "Please look right at this flower and love it forever."



Here we're learning about the uses of tropical plants.



Benny specifically asked me to take this picture. Later, riding the shuttle tour around the garden, I asked Benny what was his favorite part. He said seeing a "real coconut" was his favorite thing, because that had always been his "dream." So many dreams, so little time. Fortunately, we don't have to waste any of that time at school, so we can look at caterpillars and coconuts all day.



Benny asked me to title this post, "Benny in the World of the Rain Forest" but I hardly think I'm going to take advice from someone whose lifelong dream is to see a coconut. :) After all, he has his own blog.

Labels: field trips, norfolk botanical gardens, science

Oobleck is cornstarch and water. Under pressure, it's a solid. Without pressure, it's a liquid. You can pour it and break it. You can yank on a spoon in a bowl full of Oobleck and pick up the whole bowl. Or you can pull gently on the spoon and let the Oobleck dribble off it like pudding. It's amazing. Everybody makes Oobleck at some point in their lives. Friday was our day for Oobleck, and we did not shy away from our destiny. We made Oobleck, and we made it pink. And orange. You know, we did not skimp on the orange.







Apparently, Oobleck makes you have strange facial expressions too. As well as being awesome.

The way you make Oobleck is simple. Cornstarch plus water, in about equal parts, maybe a little more cornstarch than water. Mix, get messy, be amazed. Whack it, dribble it, I guarantee you will be calling in your family from the other room. "Look at this stuff!" you will say. "You have to try this!" I was an Oobleck skeptic, I have to admit, but I am skeptical no more. Neither are the children. This was technically my preschool science lesson for the day, but when the second graders were done with their Latin, they had to come out and have a play with it:



For a proper explanation of Oobleck, including a thoughtful discussion of non-Newtonian fluids, try this web site: The Instructables. Their Oobleck page will also deliver the priceless gift of a YouTube movie showing people running across Oobleck. Then you could check out BARTHOLEMEW AND THE OOBLECK for the full Oobleck experience.

Labels: oobleck, phi bensa zoe, science

This summer at Phi Bensa Zoe Academy (our homeschooling mini-co-op that we engage in with one other family and their similarly aged children) the senior class (first grade students) have been studying cell biology. We learned the parts of a bacteria cell, the parts of plant and animal cells, and now we're learning about cell division. Here are two of our projects:

We found our first cell model project at a Library Thinkquest site. You make a cell model out of a Ziploc baggie, Karo syrup, and candies. Splendid. We used a plastic easter egg for the nucleus with yarn inside to represent the DNA. We used small balloons for the vacuoles, making the plant cells have big ones, the animal cells smaller ones. We made our bacteria cells with only ribosomes and yarn.

Letting the kids make their own choices as to what candies to use for what organelles was very interesting. Also, we had our first lesson with the saying, "No model is perfect; every model should be useful" since all our model cells were squares and obviously, ribosomes aren't lemon drops.



Here are our plant cells:



The next models we made were of clay. We used Das clay, which I love, although it does make more of a mess than Crayola Model Magic or other "kid" clays. Das really feels like clay, to me, and the fact that it leaves a little clay on your hands is a benefit. Not a benefit to the pipes under the sink, Dan will be happy to remind me.

We made our plant, animal, and bacteria cell shapes, then added the clay organelles. Then we painted the cells, hot-glued them to a very glamorous and impressive gold plaque (spraypainted in the yard on the now-gold grass) and spray varnished the whole thing. Now the grass is gold *and* shiny! Dan will recall that he never liked the grass anyway.

Benny's project:



Zoe's project:



You'll notice that Zoe, who has declared her major as shepherding at the tender age of 7, has included the "lamb" cell, along with the other three. Excellent.

We've learned three songs to go with our study of cells, and I'll include one of them here. The others will have to wait until our next recording session, yo!



Cells are composed of organelles
Kept inside a membrane, given shape by vacuoles!
All living things are made of these
Building blocks of life; they're bio-legos if you please!

That's what makes a cell
All the organelles
Work together well
That's what makes a cell

Plant cells can photosynthesize
Using chlorophyll to turn the sunlight into french fries
Chloroplasts make plant cells green inside
They make food from water, light, and sweet carbon dioxide

(Chorus)

When it is time to reproduce
Centrioles divide the nucleus into a deuce
Chromosomes, made up of DNA,
Line up to be pulled apart, to make two cells today.

(Chorus)

Ribosomes put together proteins
Golgi bodies package up the proteins
Lysosomes get rid of the garbage
They all use the endoplasmic reticulum highway!

(Chorus)

Cells, mon!

***
Interested in more Little Blue Ideas? Try the Idea Box for homeschooling ideas and more.

Labels: biology, cells, educational songs, learning with music, lessons, phi bensa zoe, science

The other day we were out testing our wheels. Benny got rollerblades from the Easter bunny, and Sadie has gotten big enough to ride the scooter. So there we were, rolling along.



After a few turns and a few falls, a few things sniffed enthusiastically by the dog that turned out to be pine cones, Benny found a caterpillar. Being Benny, he picked it up immediately, pronounced it "adorable" and began to "snuggle" it. Poor caterpillar. He hinted broadly that he'd like to keep it, and I, positive that it was already dead from all the affection, agreed. With total confidence that the bug was dead, and encouraged by all the "loves" that he was giving it on the slow way home, I got out the old hermit crab house (I killed them -- long story) and we furnished it with sticks and leaves.

The caterpillar was lying on its side, completely obviously dead. I pointed this out, and he said, "He's lying on his side so he doesn't cough!" Uh, ok. The next morning, he had moved, enough to turn halfway around on a leaf. We left for our day's activities -- ballet, Ahno's house, homeschool park day, karate.

When we got home, we rushed over to the caterpillar's lair and he had begun doing this:



Maybe you can't see (hey, I can't see, and I took the picture) but he is actually swathing himself in spitty cotton. When we went to bed, he was still at it, looking like he was wrapping himself in spiderweb.

In the morning, not only was he not dead, but he was COCCOONED. He was completely wrapped up in this yellowish cottony stuff, and we couldn't see him anymore. This led to much googling and asking of how to spell chrysalis, and at the end of the very intense learning experience, we discovered that he is... a tent worm.

He is a tent worm. One of those awful things that makes a giant next in a fruit tree and kills the tree. People LOATHE tent worms, people exterminate tent worms, people hurl vile invectives at tent worms. People do not, for example, nurture tent worms in beautiful little terrariums and call them "adorable" and "snuggle" them. Except that WE DO. And in three weeks, he's going to emerge, not as a beautiful colorful butterfly or an elegant moth but as this awful, bull-headed creature the color of phlegm who will probably immediately start demanding a pear tree to annhilate.

But I bet the children will love him!

Labels: caterpillars, lessons, science

Eggs drop. Contraptions smashed. Yolks splattered. And at the end of the day there was a small pile of eggs that survived the fall. Amazing!

The concept of an egg drop is simple. Create a contraption that will stop an egg from cracking when dropped from a balcony onto a target. The lightest contraption that hits closest to the target and protects the egg wins. Yesterday we all participated in an egg drop at the Virginia Air and Space Center in Hampton. Benny won his category -- it was very exciting! And Dan and I even got in on the action.

It started over a month ago, when Benny's first contraption idea was to wrap the egg in a bunch of layers of scotch tape. I was determined to stay out of his creative/scientific process, so I quietly let him work away on his tape egg, then we hurled it off our second floor porch, and it smashed on the sidewalk. From these drippy, yolky, messy beginnings came the journey that would lead him to a successful drop on the day of the contest. I'm happy to say I resisted the urge to make his project for him. It was a strong urge, but I let him struggle on, through five designs that failed miserably, to the one that worked. We provided the materials, asked that he write down his plan for each design and also his results, and let him do the rest.

Here's one of his design plans:



Here's one of his test runs:



Here are a couple of videos that map the process a bit:





Finally a successful design. And egg drop day arrived. When we got to VASC we realized there were bazillions of homeschoolers there. This was awesome. We watched the parachute category, and as each kid was announced as a homeschooler, Benny cheered rambunctiously. When a kid from an elementary school was introduced, Benny would shake his head and say something sorrowful, like, "Oh, brace yourselves. Another schooled child." At first I thought I should correct this behavior... but then I thought, no. Kids in school are encouraged to have "school spirit" so why shouldn't homeschoolers have "unschool spirit"? As long as he wasn't being unkind or obnoxious, I decided to let him root for his homeschool team. Anyway, he has lots of friends who go to school and he doesn't recoil from them as if they're lepers or anything. As long as I don't see him crossing the street to avoid a kid from school, I think he'll be alright.

As it turned out, Benny won the two-egg category. His was the only contraption that kept both his eggs safe. Here's a video of the drop itself, and the award ceremony:





Here are a few pictures from the event:





Here's Benny (holding my egg-dropping contraption) with another child and her mother. They called their contraption Chicken Little and had thematic outfits -- we love it!



Here's Benny with Dr. Byles from VASC, and Tom Finley, one of the adult winners. Benny has two medals because he also won for the most creative design in his category.



The egg drop contest was a lot of fun. I really appreciate the people who set it up, made it happen, and cleaned up all those smashed eggs.

I have many more pictures of the event in my Flickr set from the egg drop. I highly encourage anyone with a gadget-minded child to seek out an egg drop and get to dropping. It was an excellent learning experience for Benny, and a good time for the whole family.

Labels: egg drop contest, events, science

Here's a run-down of our homeschool day, including a test for you, written by Benny, on a very important topic: Walruses.

The first thing we did was the walrus test.

The children have been avidly reading all about walruses. This was an area of inquiry that was prompted by Benny's memorization of "The Walrus and the Carpenter," by Lewis Carroll. We still haven't found a decent book about oysters.

Anyway, here is the walrus test, for your enjoyment, with Benny's spellings intact. I still can't grasp why he misspells things that are spelled correctly in a book right in front of him. I gather it'll be one of those things over which I have no control, which end up working out fine, like when he used to refuse to write lower case, and now he does it just fine. See how you do -- this test was delivered to us as Benny wrote it, and I have to tell you that he set his parents against each other in walrus-trivia cometition. I won. But I think Dan threw it.

1. Do Walruses Kill Humens?
2. Dose a Walrus (symbol for male) have pups?
3. Dose a Walres Have Wiskers?
4. Can Walruses Dive?
5. Can A Walus Hunt?
*at this point we had a conversation about yes-or-no questions and how it would be more challenging to have other kinds of questions too*
6. How Meny pups are there?
7. What are Walruses Like?
8. Waht are these:(picture of two bananas hanging from a hairy shelf)?
9. Do Walruses live in the North or Soth?
10. Is a (symbol for female) Walrus a cow or Bull?

After walrus class, we made muffins. Benny did almost all of it himself, but he did let Sadie help. Then Benny practiced his violin, and Sadie surprised us all by picking up his instrument (which is WAY too big for her) and managing to play Tuka-Tuka-Stop-Stop on the A string. Astonishing. And we all thought she was still under the weather today!

After lunch, we went to Ahno's house for a while. Benny did a poem show for Ahno and made it *almost* all the way through "The Walrus and the Carpenter" without any prompts. I'd say I gave him about 3 words, but really, that is the best yet.

When we got back home Benny practiced his multiplication using his "Garfield's Third Grade Math" software, and then finished his curriculum for the day by doing a few Rosetta Stone lessons.

Labels: lessons, poetry, science, walruses

We were there! On Wallops Island! Watching the rocket go up! It was cool. The kids loved it.

Yes, you can see pictures up close on the front page of the paper, but we (and our dog) actually got up at 3:30, drove up to the NASA Flight Facility on Wallops Island, and stood at the edge of the marsh when the rocket climbed into space. We and all the other nerdypants people freezing our bottoms off got to hear the roar, see the fireball, and watch it disappear. It was so cool. The exciting part took about a minute and a half, but it was worth it.

Here's our home video:



A few observations:

1. The sunrise was almost as beautiful as the launch itself. I've never seen the sun rising off the marsh like that -- it was photoriffic. Getting up super-early wasn't that big of a deal. The kids kind of loved it. We were tired later in the day, but we survived. With two small children, I don't count sleep as a necessity anymore.



2. Rocket launches are cooler than NASCAR races. You can bring your dog. And you hear the word "telemetry," which is something outside our every day experience. We stood by the NASA facility's visitor center to watch, and they were broadcasting the chatter between the technicians, and also the countdown, from loudspeakers.

3. Because the rocket spins as it rises, the exhaust trail looks curly. As it rose up through the different striations of cloud and light, it turned different colors of gold and pink. Doing a bit of research on the spinning, after we got home, we learned that the word "gimball" is actually a word that means "The rocket normally wiggles around and goes off course." Apparently, this is why they spin it. I thought Lewis Carroll made that word up.



4. The kids now need a countdown every time they click the switch to light up the Christmas tree lights.

5. Homeschooling is awesome for the adults involved too. In the interest of providing an enriched environment for our homeschooled kids, we've given ourselves a lot of cool experiences we probably wouldn't have bothered with if the kids were in school. This is one of them.

There are more launches planned for next year. I highly recommend going up to get a closer look!

Labels: field trips, NASA, rockets, science

HELP! It's a giant herd of homeschoolers! Actually, the Virginia Air and Space Center looked a lot like it probably looks on any busy day -- a few more moms in denim jumpers and a few more kids who already knew how lasers work, but -- pretty much the same.

We had never been to the Virginia Air and Space Center, in Hampton, because I thought it was a little over the head of my six-year-old, and definitely beyond the reach of my two-year-old. However, when some fabulous person organized a Homeschool Open House for Thursday, we decided to go, i only to let the kids run around with other homeschoolers. It was such a good time! We went with our friends Veronica, Zoe, and Phillip.

Veronica is another mom who shares my philosophy that children should be let experience museums and such on their own terms -- we are equally unconcerned that they use the exhibits in the manner they were intended, or that we see *everything*, or that they fully understand each one. This makes it fun to go to places with her, since as long as the kids are happy, interested, and not bring rude to anyone, we are both content to let them explore. I will say, though, that navigating a museum with four children under the age of six, who all have definite ideas of what they want to see, was a challenge. :D

We started out in the medical/anatomy/biology part of the center, which included a giant "Operation" game, a cryogenic surgery chamber, a mock operating room, and all kinds of cool interactive stuff. Here are Benny and Zoe practicing endoscopic surgery with a plastic cube and a block, which they have to navigate through a maze by poking the little sticks through holes in the cube. This was a big hit for all the older kids, including the three-year-old, Phillip:



Here's Benny at the helm of a commercial airliner -- a good moment for him. Benny and Sadie both play Microsoft Flight Simulator with their father quite a lot, so this was meaningful for them:



Inside another plane, we had a bit of a shock. I guess I just climbed into it, thinking it was just a plane you could look inside of, but there was a movie playing in the front of the plane, and seats to fold down on the sides. Before I knew it, we were doing a bombing run, the plane was shaking, and we were being shot at. My two-year-old was shrieking, "MOMMY! DEY SHOOTING! DEY SHOOTING!" Yes, that was a little tense. But we survived:



The Center also has a play area with soft things to climb and swing on, airplane-themed, for the kids to use to blow off steam and run around. Here are Benny and Zoe operating the hot air balloon:



Yes, my child wore his Buzz Lightyear costume. No, he wouldn't take it off, even to go to the bathroom. Yes, that is strange.

Finally, we went to see the IMAX movie, The Human Body, which was a nice coincidence given our recent study of this subject. The footage in the movie was incredible. Incredible. Seeing that fifty-foot heart valve pumping, endlessly, 80 beats per minute, hour after hour, year after year, made me feel EXHAUSTED on behalf of my heart. Also seeing inside the lungs, with the little red blood cells rushing by, was very cool on that huge screen. And we had a happy homeschool moment when Benny shouted out, "OH, so THAT'S how the red blood cells exchange carbon dioxide for oxygen. WOW!" *beam*

There was a little more sperm and egg and puberty than my child was prepared for, but I'll answer his questions truthfully, if he has any. It's not like we didn't study the reproductive system, but seeing the sperm swimming up the tube, with the soundtrack playing "One of These Nights" by the Eagles... was different. But okay! :D The movie was fantastic, if only for the giant pictures of our interiors. Here we are watching the movie:



A great day at the Virginia Air and Space Center. I think the one who appreciated it the most was my two-year-old daughter, who loves airplanes to distraction, and was in a constant state of ecstasy, just to be in that huge room with so many "aircranes" at once.

For another homeschooler's interesting adventure with small children at his local air and space center, try this.

Labels: field trips, science

The first thing you should do is sit down and write down all the bones you know, and draw a picture of the skeleton. You'll need to think about scale when you're making your meringue bones.


Now it's time to make your skeleton! You will need:

1. A good meringue recipe and this probably involves a mixer, unless you have a robotic superarm capable of creating "stiff peaks" in egg whites. You be the judge. Little confectioner's sugar, little egg white, around and around, and bam you have meringue.



2. Large ziploc baggy. You'll need to cut a small hole in the very tip so you can squeeeeeeze out your meringue onto the cookie sheets.



3. A lot of cookie baking sheets and parchment paper. You can get parchment paper to line your cookie sheets in the baking section at the grocery store.



4. A large space to set out your skeleton when the pieces have finished baking!



A couple of hints:

If you do this on a humid day (like we did) your bones will soon be sticky (like ours were). This can work to your benefit if you want to connect them, but it can also get all over your fingers. You have been warned. They'll come out of the oven nice and crispy, and then gradually they'll start to kinda sweat. This of course will not bother the children at all.

Baked meringue is brittle, so make your bones thicker than you may think you need to make them. If you have leftover meringue, go back over the piece you've already made and thicken them up. For tiny bones like the phalanges and metacarpals and whatnot, it's easier to not make each individual bone, but rather make a little web with all the bones touching.

When you are removing the meringue from the parchment, pick it up and peel the paper off the bones, rather than trying to lift the bones off the flat paper. Some will break, and that's okay! When you lay them out, just lay the pieces together.

This skeleton is FAT FREE, in more ways than one. Enjoy!

***
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Labels: lessons, projects, science