Yesterday the cable guy came by to fix out internet. The modem Comcast gave us went out, he said the cable was chewed up outside too and he replaced it. I saw the cable he threw in the trash though, it had one section that Maisy had obviously put teeth marks on, but it’s not like the entire wire was chewed to a thread. Dance went very well. Our teacher is having to dance in place of a girl that can’t continue. Her Dad died a few weeks ago and she has to work 2 jobs to help her family. It’s very sad for something like that to happen right before the holidays. Pray for her mom and whole family. I got my skirt yesterday and so did Hannah, they both fit. The circle skirts are so pretty when you twirl and they flow out around you (we wear bloomers underneath.) T minus 6 day till performance!

Today we did some extra school to catch up; we’re going to be off this next week when my Mom comes to visit. After lunch I had this craving for oatmeal cranberry cookies, like the ones we had at 4 mile this weekend. So I made some, good thing for my neighbors that I always make extra. I didn’t like the first batch though (so they get those….I threw in some later batch ones too, I’m not mean!) Anyway here’s the recipe (or receipt as Grandma Carberry would call it.)

Cranberry oatmeal cookies

1 C oleo (If you don’t know what that is Google it.)
¾ C white sugar
¾ C brown sugar
2 eggs
1 ½ tsp. vanilla
2 C flour
1 tsp salt
1 tsp soda
2 C oats
1 C cranberries

Cream oleo, sugars, eggs and vanilla. Stir in flour, salt, soda and oats. Mix well, and then add cranberries. Drop onto a greased baking sheet. Bake at 375 degrees for 10-12 minutes. Makes 3 dz.

They were good, craving gone!

I’m tracking my new camera on UPS.com too. I called because it was taking so long and the camera repair said that Kodak was mailing it to me directly (nice of them to notify me.) Then I called Kodak and they finally found my paperwork and said, oh it will be there today – here is a tracking number. Again, nice of you to notify me after you’ve had the camera since Nov. 11th. Hopefully this new camera will never break and I’ll never have to deal with Precision camera repair again, they suck.

OK, so we had a pretty good school day. Grace was reading her phonics book, Bethany wasn’t crying about division, and Joel was doing math. Now I have teacher books for every course, but I hate that in higher math they don’t show how they got the answer. It’s not enough if I know what the answer should be, if Joel gets it wrong I have to determine how to do the problem and then work it through with him to figure out where he went wrong. So sometimes I have to work backwards and figure it out, like today. It said draw 2 supplementary angles, the measure of one angle is 58 degrees greater than the measure of the other angle. So I knew they added up to 180 degrees, but you have to say x(x+58) = 180, solve, then plug in the number. But still, it would be easier if they showed the whole problem.

After lunch we wrote our Tea Tuesday letters and I remembered to put the tea in this time. So if you got a letter from last week and wondered where the tea was, I forgot. I buy Celestial seasonings tea (ok, herbal infusions) because it’s made in Boulder and I live in CO, so why not? But I ran out of the commercial tea bags that are in a package, so I was just sticking plain tea bags in the letters. Last week I wondered why the envelopes where so flat, but this week I remembered and stuck in blueberry tea. Sounds like it’s time for a trip to Boulder again.

Then I cleaned the den and by that I mean that I vacuumed the tops of everything, the ceiling and the curtain rod, moved the couches to vacuum underneath them and then moved the furniture around. Wow, that looks nice. I took all the fall stuff down off the mantel so I could put my snowmen up there and moved the dog’s cage (which comes up later.) We’re going to get our carpets cleaned soon, yay! 6 people tramping on the same beige carpets for 3 ys. 5 months, plus 2 cats and a dog = yuck!

Normally I don’t rant about stuff here, but after we ate dinner we went over to Barnes and Noble to look around. We knew something was going on because there were jugglers and unicyclists outside the store. Inside there was a table that said free face painting and had a giant bowl of candy on it. Of course the girls waltzed over to the candy bowl and started pilfering. The lady handed me a paper and said sweetly, ‘Hi, here’s a voucher to use up front. If you buy anything tonight the store will give our school a percentage. Here’s the book lists, just pick the grade your kids are in.’ I said, ‘Oh, I home school, so we don’t use any of these.’ To which she responded, ‘Well, you probably don’t want that voucher then, I’ll take it back.’ I said I’d just keep it and walked off, but as is often the case, what I really wanted to say was…’Wait a minute. You’re making the parent’s buy the books for their kids at your school and then also getting money from the bookstore with every purchase? Yeah, of course I’m not going to buy anything with that voucher and give your school the money, I seem to think I already do that. What is that called…tanks….twitter….oh, yeah TAXES! Yes, I pay taxes so your school can buy books and here you are pushing it off on the parents, so what? So you can buy candy and hire unicyclists to entertain the kids? UGH!’ Maybe I conveyed all of that in my look to her, I don’t know.

Anyway we had a good time looking at books, meeting a few children’s book authors and then on the way out the kids gravitated to the candy bowl again. The lady, get this, put her hand over the bowl (but not before Hannah grabbed a piece of candy) and said, ‘I’m sorry, this candy is for High plains school children only.’ OMG, suddenly she is the candy-Nazi! Suddenly, I am not normal; I’m a wicked, evil HS’er?! I made Hannah put the candy back and we walked out with her boo-hooing, but again I really wish I would have said…..’Oh, before you offered us candy because you thought I was a parent of a kid that went to your school, but now that you know I’m a HS’er the candy is only for public school kids? Hmm., I think I’ll stand outside of your school with a big bowl of candy and ask kids as they come up, ‘are you a HS’er?’ And when they say no, I’ll just say, ‘sorry this candy is for HS’ers only’.’ OK rant over.

OK, lastly 2 funny things. Hannah found Bethany’s cat that is named Kitty 4,5,6 (don’t ask.) When she gave it to Bethany Hannah said ‘Here is kitty wour, wive, six, and I wound wishy (fishy) one, two, wee, too.’ So she can count to 6 just by naming Bethany’s stuffed animals. Too bad most numbers don’t start with a ‘t’ now that she can say it. The other thing had me laughing so hard I was crying. We let Maisy in last night and told her to go to bed (she sleeps in a crate and is trained to get in it when you say go to bed, which seems to make her pretty smart.) However, I had moved her cage to the other side of the room. Not a different room, just the other side of the room. I said ‘go to bed’ and she walked over to where her cage was and looked, and looked, looked at me, looked at the floor. In her mind I know she was thinking I was insane, what cage, where, I can’t see it! I kept saying ‘go to bed’ and she kept creeping over to the empty floor and then getting up and wandering around the room and coming back to the empty floor looking up sadly at me. I swear this went on for 10 minutes and I was laughing so hard I could barely say ‘go to bed’ anymore, I was on the floor gasping for air, and Maisy was still cowering over by the empty space looking around for the cage, all the while I’m pointing to it and Joel is telling her here it is, and finally we just dragged her over to the cage and….she jumped. Like it was a total surprise to her that the cage was over here. Oh my gosh, it…was….so…freaking…..funny. I can’t wait to see what she does tonight!

Well, we did absolutely nothing this weekend, except eat and go see Madagascar 2. (Save your money, go see it at the $1 theater, it wasn’t as funny as the first one and it had 2 gay references in it.) Today we did school and I had had dance (technically it was an off day, but our group decided to meet and practice.) Joel is reading ‘A separate peace’ and it’s holding his interest pretty well. Bethany was reading some short stories and a book that’s patterned after the diary of……books. It’s the diary of a girl who worked in the fields with Ruth, so it’s Bible based and so far she likes it. Grace took about 10 math tests, mostly adding up to 12 different ways and 1 subtraction one. Then she played with her phonics magnets and made some words. She was using the –ed magnet and made hed and ded, but I told her those need an ‘a’ in them to actually be that word. Bethany thought it was the end of the world during math (division.) She was crying as she divided numbers into other numbers and came up with the dividend, sigh. Joel did 3 sciences and I see that he wiggled out of math since I wasn’t noticing the board at the time.

After lunch I left Joel in charge and went to dance. We practiced for 2 hours, ouch. Next week I need to wear my skirt so I can see how to get on one knee and then get up again without ripping the skirt off. We also heard that the recessional is going to be done to ‘The carol of the bells’, so that will be pretty. They need 3 tall adults from our group to carry the banners, so I’ll probably do that. Recital is in TWO weeks, yikes! But, it’s looking very nice and we know all the moves and can concentrate on using the dance for worship rather than learning the moves, which is good.

James and Joel are off to CAP tonight. Joel really needed a hair cut; I’ll have to get him one before next week. He’s been reading ‘Job interviewing for dummies’, wonder what’s up with that? We had talked about him asking the airfield if they needed help or the pilot’s shop, but he hasn’t said he wanted to do it yet. I know he has his whole life to work, but it would be nice if he could get in good with the airfield since he wants to pursue work in that area. The funniest thing I heard today was Hannah telling me that I was ‘too young to eat a corn dog.’ I said don’t you mean too old? She said, ‘Yeah, you’re too old to eat a corn dog!’

Tomorrow is Tea Tuesday and Wednesday is our HS groups’ field trip to the Brown place hotel, posh!

Wow, this could become a habit. Here are some really simple experiments to do with a soda pop bottle (small or large.)

Into thin air:
Fit a balloon over the bottle’s mouth
Fill a saucepan with hot tap water (works best if the water is almost boiling)
Fill another saucepan with cold water
Place the bottle in the hot water pan and watch what happens
Remove the bottle from the hot water and put in the cold water pan.

What’s going on? Heat gives air molecules energy and as they sped up and moved faster they took up more room and filled up the balloon. Cold makes air molecules slow down. As the molecules lost energy and became more densely packed in the bottle the balloon sagged.

Color show:
Measure 1 Tbsp of oil into a jar with a lid
Drop different food colorings into the jar (2 or 3 drops for each color)
Put the cover on the jar and shake it up
Fill your pop bottle almost full of tap water
Pour your oil color mixture on top and watch the color show

What’s going on?
Water is denser than oil. If the two are mixed together, the will always separate. Food coloring is mostly water so the drops sink through the oil and down into the water level. When the bubbles sink, their oil coating rises back to the surface. The tiny color drops seem to disappear because each drop of coloring isn’t strong enough to change the color of the water. Over time all the drops will sink and the water color will change.

Ride the water:
Fill your pop bottle with water
Sprinkle black pepper on the surface of the water. What does the pepper do?

What’s going on? If you look at the water just right you’ll see dimples around each pepper grain. This is because the pepper isn’t actually floating; it’s riding the water’s surface tension. Water’s clinging power is strongest on the surface because nothing is pulling the water molecules upwards. In fact, the surface is pressed downward by air pressure.

Magic finger:
Using the pepper water from above -
Touch the middle of the water with your finger, what happened? Nothing!
Now rub a little soap on your fingertip and touch the middle of the water on the surface with your finger. What happens to the pepper now?

What’s going on? It may seem that the pepper was changed by the soap, but actually the soap changed the waters surface tension. Soap molecules have the power to mix with water molecules and make water molecules less clingy with one another (soap does the same with dirt and stains.) As the water molecules relaxed their grip on one another the surface relaxed and pushed outwards. In the experiment the pepper rode to the sides of the bottle away from your finger.

Quicksand:
Measure ½ c of water
Add food coloring to the water
Pour ½ lb of cornstarch into your pop bottle. Slowly add the dyed water and stir the mixture carefully. Once all the starch has been mixed conduct some tests. Stir the quicksand. The faster you stir the harder the quicksand becomes. The slower your stir the runnier it becomes.
Is it a solid or a liquid?

What’s going on? Quicksand may sometimes act like a solid, but it doesn’t keep a regular shape, so it’s a liquid. Your quicksand is a special kind of liquid that becomes thicker rather than thinner when stirred. (Like the cornstarch suspension experiment, which is much neater! 2 C cornstarch, 1 C water. Mix and play.)

I knew that science book I picked up at the library would come in handy (Gizmos and Gadgets by Jill Hauser.) We made this today to study Newton’s 1st law of motion. To make inertia zoom ball you get 2 bottles (soda, water, quart, liter, etc.) and cut them in half. Attach the 2 ends together and tape. Pull two 12 ft. lengths of string through the neck of one bottle and out the other neck of the other bottle. We didn’t have 6 pack plastic holders so I taped together 4 rings from the bottle ends and then tied the string onto them.

Now stand with the string tight and pull your hands apart to send the bottle flying to your partner, like this (click on the pic to see the video.)

From newton

This is Newton’s 1st law of motion; without force like a push or a pull an object won’t budge. Once it’s going it won’t stop moving in a straight line unless it’s forced to change its movement by another push or pull.

For the 2nd law of motion (the greater the force of an object, the greater the change in motion) we made a paper airplane and threw it across the room. Then we used a rubber band and chopstick piece to launch the airplane across the room. It went further with the force of the rubber band because the rubber band gave greater force to the thrust of the plane. The 2nd part of the 2nd law of motion says that the greater the mass of an object, the greater the force needed to change its motion. We placed a rock and a bracelet on the table and pushed each one. The necklace was lighter and so with the same force of push, it went further. We had to push harder to get the rock to go the same distance as the necklace. I didn’t have a straw for the next experiment so we taped pony beads to a popsicle stick and then threaded the string through the beads. We taped the string in two spots and blew up a balloon (we used to do this out side all the time.) As the balloon let out its air it traveled down the string to the other end. This proves Newton’s 3rd law of motion which states that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. When we place our rubber band racer near the cat, the action of the can traveling towards the cat makes him provide the reaction of leaving the area!

(No animals were harmed in this picture, just slightly annoyed.)

Our last experiment had nothing to do with laws of motion (although they are still present), energy buildup and release was the object. Poke a hole in the bottom and top of a coffee can, if you have 2 unused cd’s attach them to the ends of the can (although it will work without the cd’s.) Thread a rubber band through and attach a paper clip to it on the bottom of the can. Thread it through the top lid (and cd if you have that) and a washer and attach it to a pencil or chopstick.

Wind the pencil and then let it go on the floor (ours is going kind of slow, we need a thicker rubber band.)

From newton

The energy from the rubber band comes out through the pencil and rolls the can. Improve the design; try a plastic bottle, toilet paper tube, oatmeal box. Use plastic wheel, cd’s, or no wheels at all. Try a pencil, chopstick or knitting needle. Use a thicker rubber band, a double rubber band or a few rubber bands looped tighter to maximize the power of the spin. Use a washer or rub soap on the place where the arm rubs to reduce friction. This experiment show potential energy that is stored and ready to use and kinetic energy which is moving energy (like Maisy right after this picture.)

Here are 2 sculptures that the girls made with our foam board pieces we cut up. Note to self, start the cutting by using an exact-o knife; it’s much easier that way.

The neat thing about these pieces is that they can be reused, moved around and as you build with them you can get a sense of balance as you put pieces in different areas.

It might be nice to paint the back of the boards so they aren’t just white too.

First, here are our finished pieces that we are going to cut up for our Calder-like sculpture.

Hannah finally got it when I said I wanted the pieces to be torn and then glued.

It’s almost a shame to cut them into pieces, they look so neat.

The $1 store had these foam boards (that were $5 at US toy.) We used the leftover scrapbook paper and 3 bottles of glue (they weren’t all full.) I got everybody ready for soccer (awards day) and then we had to pick up James. We were driving him to court to pay a ticket when they called and said be there at 8am tomorrow (it was already after 8am today.) So, we ate breakfast with him and drove him back to the office.

We went by the party store so I could buy a medal for Hannah, she was her own team, but she did play a few times (and since I knew Grace was getting an award I thought Hannah might get jealous.) At the park we watched as Heather handed out certificates and medals to everyone.

Then she said, ‘We have a special player, who was on her own team otter and she’s getting a medal too.’ As soon as Hannah heard team otter she was running up to Heather to claim her prize.

Wow! A real medal just like sissy’s! How awesome!

Hannah was very excited, she couldn’t wait to show Daddy (she even wore it to dance.) After playing for a bit we went home to grab lunch. Joel had not only finished his school work without my help (even math, which he had a question on but figured it out) he had also taken in the trash cans from the street, cool!

We ate and dashed out for dance. Hannah and I looked over some books on science things you can make and math stuff while waiting on Grace. We picked up Grace and dropped off Bethany, then picked up Bethany and dropped off Hannah. I went to my class were everyone was practicing before our teacher came in. We went out into the church foyer to practice this time (it’s bigger.) She gave us a compliment! She said it’s starting to look like a dance (before we all looked like individual dancers, I think she meant it’s looking cohesive.) We added on the last verse and now we’re almost done. Only 3 weeks left before recital, so even though we have the 17th off we’re still meeting to go over the dance.

We picked up Joel and James and went to eat at Texas roadhouse, our favorite place. They skipped CAP tonight, shame on them, but we had time at home to go over the ballot for tomorrow. I love the way they write up the amendments and referendums. You really have to read it over and over and ask ‘Am I voting no or yes to this?’ Which I guess is good, except that I think most people aren’t doing that.

Vote tomorrow – or don’t complain about America!

Or, should school be fun for a 14 year old? I just said today on our HS group’s chat board that sometimes it isn’t easy making school ‘fun’ as kids get older. I mean c’mon, sometimes learning is boring and there is stuff you think you don’t need to know, but probably should know and maybe it’s boring. I’m not a miracle worker; some stuff is just going to be boring.

So, after regular schoolwork today we broke out our bag of marshmallows and went outside to do some fun stuff. How can I make modeling chemical reactions fun?

I had Joel balance a few equations on the sidewalk and then he had to model them with marshmallows and balance them. (It’s NH3 + CuO = N2 + Cu + H2O, balanced it’s 2NH3 + 3CuO = N2 + 3 Cu + 3 H2O.)

I think the marshmallows worked better than chalk, you can see where an H disappears in the first one and then is balanced out in the second equation.

Outside we used the marshmallows to discover force and what happens to things that aren’t strapped in (like we didn’t already know that!) It’s called ‘crashmallow’, sorry the ‘c’ got clipped off in the pic.

We put a marshmallow on a toy car (we had to try 3 cars to get it to work) and then pushed it down the hill colliding it with a ruler. The marshmallow was thrown from the car varying lengths according to how much force we used. Bethany threw hers 3 feet, but it kind of rolled down the hill too, so I’m not sure that was such a great measurement.

Bethany had a quick review of place value; I had her hop on the ones, tens or hundreds box when I stepped on a number.

Grace was hopping on letters spelling out words; she added a few letters to make other words.

Hannah thought that would be fun too, so I had her go to a letter when I said it.

She found A, H and T and spelled hat. Back inside the marshmallows were being used to make 3-d space figures and Hannah made a colored pattern without any help!

What else can you do with a bag of colored marshmallows?

Learn about ratios and proportions, estimate, model figures, do some geometry (make line segment OY – orange, yellow), use them as math counters, spell words by making them into letters, make a tabletop trebuchet and use them as cannonballs (nope, we haven’t made our trebuchet yet), blow them up in the microwave and talk about the reaction that just took place, feed them to the dog (not that I would advise that), eat them!

OK, so I tried to make chemistry more fun and Joel does have a better understanding of the balancing of an equation, but I still insist that not everything needs to be fun (I’m off to make a model of the Eiffel tower out of marshmallows….)

James thought that meant we were going to see stem cells, no. It stands for Science, Technology, Engineering and Math. I heard that the Friday one was really packed with lots of school kids. So, I knew that Saturday would be better. The school kids wouldn’t voluntarily come on a non-school day! I was right!

We got in and answered some space questions to win star markers and a model of a satellite (which is going to take awhile to put together, lots of tabs.) Bethany had to say the planets (she asked them if they wanted Pluto as an answer or not, we’re fond of Pluto, so we haven’t dismissed it as a planet.) Joel had to say which planet has the most moons (Jupiter), Grace had to say how long it takes for the earth to go around the sun (from 1 birthday to the next.) Then we went over to the electricity booth.

There we shocked each other silly and magnetized a piece of PVC pipe by rubbing it with a cloth to move it’s electrons around. We played with magnets there too, here’s a game where you push 1 magnet and it hits 3 others and then knocks down a piece of wood.

Hannah thought it was cool.

We wandered through aerospace booths, saw robots running around and saw a working trebuchet (which gave us an idea….we’re going to make one.) Then we headed over to the DNA extraction booth. The guy there said it would take about 30 minutes to do the experiment and looked at the girls. Yeah, we can sit for 30 minutes (he had 50 school kids at a time the day before overwhelming him and not sitting still.) First we were given a vial of Gatorade to swish in our mouths and then spit in a cup (Hannah looked at me like, what? Spit it out, but it’s my favorite drink!) We did that and then put it back in the vial. We added soap to it, swished it around and then placed it under our arms for 15 minutes (this was the sit still part.) We had to heat up the solution so the soap could break down our cheek cells. Hannah just had fun using the pipette to transfer soap and Gatorade back and forth from the cup to the vial.

After 15 minutes we slowly added ethanol into the vial and then after a few minutes we could see a globby white substance start to form, this was our DNA. I tried to hook mine out, but ended up using the pipette to suck it out and transfer it to a vial we could wear around our neck. Grace’s DNA never formed (probably because she was eating mints right before), Bethany’s and mine came out good, Joel’s was not very formed, but I manage to suck out a few particles.

The guy helping us praised the kids for being so patient and Joel tried to swipe some more vials to play with at home (no dice.) We wondered if you could use alcohol to separate the DNA instead of ethanol. We also found out you could get more than human DNA (say if you ate a burger before doing this) in your sample. But still, that was pretty cool.

Here is a cool experiment we saw. You stick some eggs in 3 solutions: corn syrup, water and salt water. If the mixture is Hypertonic then water molecules diffuse out of the cell (egg.) If the mix is Hypotonic it’s got more water coming into the cell. And if it’s Isotonic it’s the same flowing in and out of the cell. I think I’ll get jars with a lid though! (Corn syrup is hypertonic, salt water is hypotonic.)

We wandered around some more, through the star lab, by the zoo booth and saw a prairie dog.

It’s not that we can’t see them at home, but they sure are cute up close. We went by this science supply booth where Bethany won a magnifying glass and calipers.

We got to see a lot of science equipment up close and play some games. We went by the shadow puppet booth and the make a movie booth where Bethany made a you tube video of her dance from last Christmas. We went by the math estimating booth where Grace was right on for 2 of the guesses (how many balls in a jar.) At a college booth Joel asked if he could solve the rubix cubes, the guy said yes so Joel did all 3 of them in a few minutes. The guy asked for Joel’s name so that when he was ready for college he could recruit him. Joel knows there is math involved in the formula to solve the cube, but really he just memorized the whole thing. We saw earth science booths, rocks, space stuff, engineering, chemistry and machines, awesome!

We left with lots of stuff, posters, handouts, information from colleges, DNA and of course calipers. On the way home we stopped off to buy some test tubes (we want to do the DNA extraction again) Joel didn’t find any beakers so we have to get those. We are going to do another DNA extraction, build a trebuchet and use marshmallows to model chemical reactions I’m sure I’ll finds a use for those calipers too.

The topic was comedy this month. Bethany did a report about the Colbert Report. She gave us a short bio of him (we didn’t know he had 10 brothers and sister and wanted to be a marine biologist when he was a kid.) Then we did a sketch of ‘The Word’, it was Truthiness (yes, we know that’s not really a word.) It’s funnier on TV.

Joel did a monologue of rhetorical questions such as:
Is it true that cannibals don’t eat clowns because they taste funny?
If 7-11 is open 24 hours a day, every day of the year…why is there a lock on the door?
If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done?
Is it good if a vacuum really sucks?
How do you know when you’re out of invisible ink?

Grace made up some whale jokes, mostly based on stuff she’s heard and just putting the word whale in it, but still some of them are pretty funny:
What’s invisible and smells like krill? Whale farts!
Knock, knock. Who’s there? Whale. Whale who? Whale you come swimming with me?
How many whales does it take to change a light bulb? None! There aren’t any light bulbs in the ocean!

The other kids did very well, especially 2 that haven’t been there in awhile. They spoke up, looked at the audience and we could hear them! Yeah!

After p-club we went to the park to play with our friends and then trekked home. It was a beautiful day, about 70, sunny…….I don’t know where my snow is, but I have faith that it’s coming.

We went to the park by us and helped a friend who missed our bridging ceremony to bridge to the next GS level.

R started off on the brownie side with Grace, crossed the bridge and got her junior vest from Bethany.

Hmmm….maybe we should use this park next year, decorate the bridge and have it on a Saturday so Dad’s can come. The only problem would be lighting the candles, I’m sure they’d never stay lit in the wind. While there I finished my furry yarn hat, here’s Bethany modeling it.

None of the girls liked it though, so later I gave it to a friend. It’s very 50’s. I think they’d sell like hotcakes at the headless chicken festival. We stayed until the weather got colder and then went home to get Joel. BTW, here is my hat made from the wool that I spun on my drop spindle (which I learned to do at a class from the library.)

It’s pretty good, the yarn is big in some areas and smaller in others, I think it gives it character!

We had Megan from the DMNS at the library to talk to us about brains.

She did a helmet safety talk and Joel was her mannequin.

We saw some brains from animals other than us, a rabbit, a turtle, and a fish (they have really small brains.) But, it’s not the size of your brain that matters, it’s the wrinkles. Einstein had 3 times more wrinkles on his brain than the average Joe, interesting. The wrinkles are called gyri. We did an activity where we hopped on one foot and then the other, which was to demonstrate the cerebellum and what it does for our body. She passed around a gel brain (it’s not real) and the kids got to touch it.

We talked about different areas of the brain that control sight, taste, smell, thinking, etc. We talked about right/left brain areas and what they do.

She said if you’re having a hard day cross your legs and your arms to get the 2 halves of the brain to talk to each other.

Then we did the sheep brain dissection. Megan was cool; she sat on the floor so everyone could see.

She cut off the brain stem and the cerebellum and then cut the cerebrum in half.

Lastly, we got to make a brain hat; Megan was impressed with our hat from home (even if the foam peanuts shrunk.) We glued on smell, taste, sight, hearing, and movement sections in their correct spots and then stuck the hat together. Here’s Hannah with hers.

I’m sad that the dissections are over; we could have made a lot more stuff. Oh, that reminds me we need to put a chicken bone in vinegar so it can get all floppy (just because.)