earth week

I apologize about the plethora of posts -- I've already posted here and here about the beginning of our week. This will be the last "catch up" post for today, but I have a couple more to do tomorrow as well. Bear with me!

Tuesday was Earth Day. In preparation, J and Zoo Boy baked "earth" cookies (sugar cookies dipped in green and blue sugars). The cookies were cute (and yummy!) and we shared them with Zoo Boy's homeschool preschool class on Monday (which was on the theme of Earth Day).

On Tuesday and Thursday, the boys participated in a 2-part class at the museum entitled "Earth Day, Every Day". On Tuesday, the topic was global warming and how it affects endangered species. Here the kids meet an endangered species -- a Box Turtle.

Ms. Sarah and the kids set up an experiment about the melting polar ice -- they made an iceberg (by floating an ice cube in water) and a glacier (a funnel between the ice and water, acting like the insulating properties of the earth's surface). By the end of the class, the iceberg was completely gone, the glacier was hardly melted at all. Which is bad news for Polar Bears, who depend on ice flows to catch their primary food source (seals).

At the end of the class, the kids donned painting smocks and painted reusable canvas lunch bags with fabric paints. (That's Zoo Boy in the front left corner and J in the front right.) They were pretty proud of their bags, and can't wait for an opportunity to take a picnic lunch somewhere in them.

On Thursday, the class resumed, the topic being recycling. The kids spent the bulk of the class making self-directed projects out of a vast selection of "garbage" materials. I was thrilled to see both of my guys dive into creativity with reckless abandon.