Making Volcanoes!

Grace and Jack have been learning about volcanoes this week. They ended their volcano week by making their very own volcanoes! Grace and Jack covered two glass jars with a dough mixture to make volcano shapes. They measured and mixed together the following ingredients: 6 cups of flour, 2 cups of salt, 4 tablespoons of cooking oil and 2 cups of warm water.

Grace and Jack LOVED mixing the dough mixture together with their hands until it was a smooth consistency. I love this picture of them working together with their heads and hands touching!

Here are Grace and Jack's finished volcanoes. There will be big eruptions at our house early next week. Look out for some explosive pictures. :)

We're Singing and Dancing In The Rain!

We headed outside to play yesterday despite the heavy rain that was falling outside. Grace and Jack found every big and little rain puddle to splash in and enjoyed every rain drop that fell on them. Grace and Jack are such a joy to watch together as they always make the most of every experience - even rainy days!

Baking

Today it has been raining all day long. We haven't had a rainy day since early spring so we filled our time inside this morning by baking muffins. Grace and Jack worked together to make whole wheat pumpkin bread muffins. They did a wonderful job scooping, measuring and pouring the ingredients and following steps of the recipe. Grace and Jack made such a cute little baking team!

This has always been one of my favorite sites -- seeing Grace and Jack standing side-by-side on their learning tower together at the sink. After making their muffins Grace and Jack had just as much fun cleaning up at the sink. After the big clean up we enjoyed going outside and playing in the rain as the pumpkin muffins were cooling.

It's a...

We are all so happy and couldn't be more excited!!!!

We're Back

We are back and full of lots of BIG baby and BIG house news! I'll let everyone know this evening in my post whether we will be expecting a baby girl or a baby boy in January! :)

Cornstarch + Water = An Afternoon Full of Fun!

...and cleaning up is just as fun!

Glue Dough!

Grace and Jack worked together today to make glue dough! Here is the recipe:

Materials:

1/4 cup white glue

1/4 cup water

3/4 cup flour

3/4 cup cornstarch

10-15 drops of food coloring

Procedure:

• Mix white glue, water and food coloring in a small bowl
• In a separate bowl, combine the flour and cornstarch
• Add the flour & cornstarch to the water & glue mixture and mix really well

I love when Grace and Jack make mixtures like this one because it provides them with lots of opportunities to practice measuring. I recently read an article written by a high school science teacher that said many middle and high school students are unable to measure accurately and it is this lack of skill that causes difficulties for them in school. Grace and Jack had the best time playing with this sticky dough. In addition to practicing measuring, the glue dough was a terrific sensory activity too!

Science Experiment: Lava Lamp Reactions!

Grace and Jack each filled an empty water bottle 3/4 full of vegetable oil. Next, they added water to fill up the rest of their bottles. It was a fun learning experience for Grace and Jack to see what happened once the water was added -- the water and oil did not mix together. Grace and Jack then added about 10-15 drops of food coloring to their oil and water mixture. They each chose their favorite color, purple for Grace and green for Jack. This step of the process was also very fun to observe. Finally, Grace and Jack were given Alka-Seltzer tablets, which I broke into several tiny pieces. They each dropped the Alka-Seltzer pieces into their bottles and were amazed with the reaction...and what a reaction it was! Grace and Jack absolutely loved this science experiment. They ended up using an entire box of Alka-Seltzer tablets. This is definitely an experiment we will be doing over and over again! How did this work? Here is how I described the experiment to Grace and Jack to help them understand the process:

Oil and water do not mix. The molecules of water do not like to mix with the molecules of oil. Even if you try to shake up the bottle, the oil breaks up into small little drops, but the oil doesn’t mix with the water. Also, food coloring only mixes with water. It does not color the oil. When you pour the water into the bottle with the oil, the water sinks to the bottom and the oil floats to the top. Oil floats on the surface because water is heavier than oil. The Alka-Seltzer tablet reacts with the water to make tiny bubbles of carbon dioxide gas. These bubbles attach themselves to the blobs of colored water and cause them to float to the surface. When the bubbles pop, the color blobs sink back to the bottom of the bottle!

Back To Pineland Farms!

Memere came to visit us this weekend so we took her to one of our very favorite places on Saturday -- Pineland Farms. Grace and Jack loved showing Memere all around the farm. We had such a lovely day there together. Thank you, Memere, for all of the fun times we shared together this weekend!

Grace & Memere

Jack & Memere

An Update!

We have been VERY busy over the past few weeks. Our house went on the market this week and we have started the process of looking for a new home for our growing family!

We will be finding out whether our sweet third baby Leger will be a boy or girl on Monday, August 23. We can't wait!

Grace is very, very excited to become a "bigger" sister and I can't believe Jack is going to be a BIG brother! Grace has come up with a list of names for her new baby brother or sister. I LOVE Grace's list and how creative and very unique each name is! I wanted to post her name choices on our blog so we can share some of her names with everyone, so Grace can look back at her list a few years from now and so we can share the list with our new baby once he or she gets older too! Here are just a few of Grace's name choices in alphabetical order....I guarantee this is like no other baby naming list that you have ever seen before! :)

Baby girl names: Appoh, Block, Blueberry, Cream-vah, Even, Faf, Fursack, Furtee, Gem, House, Jenny Rebecca, Kels, Peas, Plummer, Purse, Sap, Seagull, Setta, She-kur, Shurtle, Sur, Tall, Ursul, Vinna, Window, Z, Zcheemba, Zick, Zimble


Baby boy names: Boy, Boy-keys, Bulldozer, Cement mixer, Daddy, Dozer, Far, Fee, Feel, Feelar, Feelsir, Field, Front Loader, Gravel Pit, Keelsir, Seven, Talter, Zap

Blackberries

We have been spending most of our week outside going on long walks in search of blackberries! Grace and Jack have become expert blackberry finders and pickers. We just can't seem to get enough of these delicious little purple berries. In addition to eating lots & lots of blackberries, the time we have spent together on our blackberry walks has been priceless and it is a summer memory I will always treasure.

Messy Art!!!

I love "messy" art projects. I feel "messy" art gives Grace and Jack a sense of freedom, control and endless creativity. Today, Grace and Jack got to explore gravity when plops of paint landed on their toes, they had a great sensory experience by painting their hands and feet (and eventually their faces, legs and arms too!) and discovered color theory by sheer trial and error! This kind of joyful, messy, and limitless play allows children to grow and develop by integrating the whole child; mind, body, and spirit. Furthermore, the best part of "messy" outdoor art is that you can just wash it all away with a hose and sprinkler, which only adds to the fun!!!

Dr. Grace & Engineer Jack

Our Day at Pineland Farms