happiness...

...is a warm pile of lambs:

density

We started exploring density with our Science Fridays group. For this demonstration, we filled one glass with hot water and dyed it red (with food coloring), then put cool water into another glass and dyed it blue.



An index card was placed over the hot water glass...









...and then the glass was inverted. (Be sure to overfill the glass with the water in order for this to work properly and avoid spilling dyed water all over your table and floor!)




We placed the glass on top of the glass with the cool blue water, then removed the index card so that the waters could mix. The kids expected a whole lot of purple water would be the result.




But look! The red and blue waters stayed separate. But why?

When you heat water (or really, any liquid), you cause the molecules to move further apart from each other, making the water less dense. So the hot water floats on top of the cool water.






To prove that, we set up a control, using hot water for both the glass with the blue dye and the glass with the red dye.

Voila -- when the index card separating the two sides was removed, the water instantly all mixed to turn purple.

We'll be doing more experiments with density in the coming weeks.

crystal wrap-up

Finishing up our little unit on growing crystals, one of our Science Fridays families grew a couple more kinds of crystals for the kids to examine with the magnifying glasses and under the microscope. The crystals to the left are Baking Soda.

I forgot to take photos of our last Science Fridays meeting (dopey me) where the kids examined the sugar crystals they grew over the previous several weeks, first with a magnifying glass, then with a hand-held microscope (which the host mom was able to connect to their TV, so the kids got a GREAT view of the crystal structure). The kids drew sketches of the crystals in their notebooks. And then they all ate them.

Here's some Epsom salt crystals, also grown by the same family.

The kids also took home crystal paper models to cut out and construct (which we STILL haven't gotten around to doing yet....)

the fox and the rooster

In "The Fox and the Rooster," yet another Scottish Trickster Tale, the Fox tricks the rooster into closing his eyes, then he grabs him. But as he's running off with him, the Rooster tricks the Fox into talking with the Farmer's Wife, thus dropping him, and the Rooster escaped. Above is J's story work, below is Zoo Boy's. I love J's attention to detail. And I love everything about Zoo Boy's drawing and summary -- he's really coming into his own with this work!

a note about rhythms

Just going to jot down a few notes about our current daily/weekly rhythm, while you enjoy a photo of the boys and their bunnies, hanging out in bed and watching 'Scooby Doo'.

Our daily rhythm is pretty much the same as it has been all year -- wake, breakfast, dress, exercise/movement (including a cultural dance and a fold-and-spin exercise), story work, snack, practice work, read aloud (story for next day's story work), play, lunch, rest, afternoon adventures (vary by the day per our weekly rhythm), dance (for J), supper (sometimes before dance, sometimes afterwards, depending on the day), bed prep, and bed. Mondays the story work is replaced by journals (and we don't do any handwriting practice work, because there's plenty of writing involved already). Tuesdays the entire day is replaced with our therapy sessions (Speech for Zoo Boy, Social Thinking Group for J), J's piano and guitar (and now voice) lessons, and then some playtime with his teacher's homeschooled kid(s). Fridays instead of reading a new story from our curriculum, the boys are reading independent articles and answering brief comprehension questions about them from these workbooks. (They love workbooks and quizzes, this is my way of feeding that desire.)

For weekly rhythms, on Mondays we have co-op classes (will be local town history and Spanish this coming session) and Jazz. Tuesdays are therapy and music lesson days (see above) and Ballet. Wednesdays are our "at home" day -- no dance (gasp!). In theory that's the day I have students, so the kids do independent reading and projects in the afternoon while I'm working. Thursdays are generally a day to run errands, and J has a Ballet class and a Modern class that evening. And Fridays we have our fun, somewhat informal Science Fridays co-op, followed by Ballet and more rehearsals.

As for the weekend, we adhere to much less structured a rhythm to leave room for things like sleeping late(ish), doing projects around the farm/house that need doing, visits with relatives, and pursuing spontaneous options that arise. However, J does dance Tap on Saturday mornings (and often has rehearsals of one sort or another in the afternoons) while Zoo Boy has a play date with a friend, and J has chorus rehearsal on Sunday evenings (which we've sort of turned into a family event, with us all going and hanging out while J rehearses, sometimes on our way from some adventure or another, and dining before or after).

You're probably wondering where in all that we have time to clean the house. Well, I'm wondering the same thing, honestly. (You wouldn't wonder if you saw this place -- CLEARLY housekeeping has fallen by the wayside of our busy schedule.) I'm also unsure how I'm going to be able to incorporate our daily walks into this schedule once the weather gets nice enough for that sort of thing, so that's another challenge (which I'll most likely meet successfully long before I actually find time to clean my house....).

So anyway, if you're wondering why you never get invited over here, wonder no longer. The place is a disaster. It's on the to-do list to do something about that....

the fox outwitted

In the Scottish Trickster Tale "The Fox Outwitted," the Fox caught the Goose, but then the Goose tricked her into letting him go. Above is J's story work, below is Zoo Boy's.

We've definitely moved past whatever resistance barrier Zoo Boy had felt up against in terms of his story work -- he's now drawing and writing without any resistance whatsoever, and seems to be taking as much pleasure in his work as J does. Wish I had the magic answer so I could pass it on to others that come up against this, but I really don't know what it was that "fixed" the problem. Maybe just time itself.

the fox and the wrens

We've started our Scottish Trickster Tales. The first is the story of "The Fox and the Wrens," in which the fox tries to trick the wrens into pointing out which one is the father (with the thought that if she caught the father, the sons would be without leadership and easy to catch). But those wary wrens were too smart, and they tricked the fox into letting them all go instead. Above is J's story work, below is Zoo Boy's.