Throwing Marshmallows

A friend just forwarded information about The Great Sunflower Project which looks like a lot of fun.

By watching and recording the bees at sunflowers in your garden, you can help us understand the challenges that bees are facing.

• It takes less than 30 minutes.
• It’s easy.
• Free Sunflower seeds for planting.
• No knowledge of bees required!

Enter your bee counts online or send us your paper form.

There is also lots of great information on bees and why they are collecting this data.

I had actually been thinking that I want to do a better job at growing things this summer…although I am going to start small. I think that we will do the sunflowers and try maybe some lettuce in pots on the deck down at the beach. I love the idea of having an actual garden, but never seem to get around to actually pulling it off. So I will be more realistic this year and maybe have some success!

Someone on the Living Math email list forwarded a link to Shapirolab.net, a fun website focusing on optical illusions and patterns. Lots of information about why the illusions work and many have options where you can play around and change the illusion to test different effects.

This came at a perfect time as it ties in with a fun Brain Awareness program that Jason did a couple of weeks ago at the National Museum of Health and Medicine Armed Forces Institute of Pathology (at Walter Reed). One of the aspects of the brain that had been covered was optical illusions so this is perfect (I love when that happens!)

Enjoy!

One of the advantages to living where we do is the wealth of museums, many of which offer homeschool classes.

One such class was the Geodesic Dome class that Jason took at the National Building Museum. This the second class that we took and it was a lot of fun. The class was for 5th-8th graders, so Kyle spent the day with his friends Sean and Ray. They ended up going to the Natural History Museum which, being a major animal-lover, Kyle simply ate up. (Did I mention we have tons of great museums around here?)

It was actually kind of fun to be one-on-one with Jason. We grabbed a bite to eat afterwards and drove through Chinatown.

The class was a lot of fun…the Building Museum has a great history. It was built in 1881 and served originally as the Pension Bureau. It was also used to host the many Inaugural Balls.

One of the things that always hits me when we visit Washington DC is that it was a good thing that many of the federal buildings were built a long time ago, because if they were being built today, I do not think that they would be any where near as grand.

I don’t think in this day and age you would be able to justify that kind of elaborateness for a federal building. The architecture of the buildings is just incredible. Even office buildings like the IRS (in my working days I used be an IT consultant and worked downtown in the IRS building) have grand exteriors, sweepingly wide hallways and tons of marble and pillars and gorgeous accents.

But I digress. The class started out with a bit of lecture about the history of the building as well as a discussion about different roof types and the pros and cons of each.

Some of the kids demonstrated a”dome ceiling”

Then came the fun part! Building a geodesic dome in the lobby of the museum.

The dome got higher…

And higher…

And definitely took a team effort.

Until finally…

The dome was complete!

A few more pushes to make sure it was stable (and to see how strong it became once all the pieces were in place)…

Finished up with a little bit of lecture (made more fun because it was in the dome). And we were done!

It definitely does not get more “hands on” than this. Jason really enjoyed himself as did I. I have even more pictures of the class up over at flickr if you want to check them out.

After the class we walked around a bit and I took more pictures of some neat buildings outside the museum. I hope to have time to work on them and get some up soon.

We went to a fun class on Bridges at the National Building Museum this morning. Definitely learned that we should take the metro next time (parking at some places downtown (in Washington DC) is fairly easy to find…not so for the NBM!) But we made it luckily. Jason really enjoyed it, Kyle was a bit bored until they got to the hands on building stuff. Which makes sense since it was Jason who was technically signed up for it (it was for older elementary age) but they let Kyle hang out since they had room.

They had models of different types of bridges that Jason enjoyed playing around with…you could, for example, take down the “ropes” of a suspension bridge and see how that affected stability. They also had lots of infomation about the pros and cons of each kind of bridge and the types of locations you might find the different types of bridges.

Then they (their group) were given a scenario from which they needed to determine the best type of bridge, design and build it using the recycled materials provided. They then had to present their bridge to the rest of the class and test how many bricks it could hold.

All in all a fun 2 hours (for a mere $5!). We had never been to the NBM and I have to say that it is a very impressive building…I had a lot of fun taking pictures.

The pillars were monsterous! The boys liked to look straight up them to see if the would get dizzy.

A definite perk to living where we do…a wealth of great homeschool activities. And on the way home we kept picking out the different types of bridges we saw (not hard leaving DC for Virginia!) We spotted many plank bridges, a couple of arch bridges and even a couple of truss bridges. I had never really paid that much attention and it was pretty neat to see how many were around us.

~Stephanie

In a comment on Finding Our Rhythm, JoVE asked:

Do you have more details about that science program? I’d be interested. Thanks.

The science program that we have started to use is called Real Science 4 Kids put out by Gravitas Publishing. We are doing Chemistry Pre-Level 1 (the Level 1 programs are supposed to be for 4th-7th grades, so I decided to start with the Pre-Level and do it with both Jason and Kyle. I think that it will give Jason a sound base before going on to Level 1. Kyle is probably still a bit on the young side, but he seems to be enjoying and it and following it). I am not a big curriculum person, but these materials looked really neat. I had heard about them on several email lists and my interest was peaked. Gravitas Publishing was at a homeschool conference that I happened to be at, so I checked them out and wound up buying the whole kit and kaboodle.

What I like about them is that the “textbook” is really well done and fun. The way that Chemistry is presented is easy for kids to understand…the text is big and easy to read. The graphics are great. The explanations are clear and connect things to my kids lives. And the science (from what I can tell and what I have researched) is good and not watered down or simplified. I was very impressed with how good the explanations were. I looked through the textbook and I could really see just reading this to the boys and them enjoying it. Basically I decided to get it because I really thought the boys would like it and find it interesting. And so far they have. One day Jason actually kept reading on his own after I stopped and kept saying “Mommy, did you know that…”.

We are doing the experiements on Thursdays with my friend Kathi and her kids Zak and Kaiya. So far they have been having fun.

It is not without controversy though. In doing some research, I found out that the author advocates for the teaching of Intelligent Design in schools. However, the materials are secular and the biology book does not get into either ID or evolution. You can read more about this here and here.

What it came down to for me is that the materials are good and I could not see not using them just because I disagree with the politics of the author. We also tend to use curriculum more as a resource then a “one stop shopping” type of thing so I plan on pulling more materials and including things on evolution when we get around to biology (whenever that will be). But I know that everyone has their own opinion on this subject, so I figured that I would throw this info out in the interest of full disclosure.

Hope that this answers your questions!

~Stephanie

As promised here are some pictures from our trip to the Maryland Science Center yesterday.

Kyle loved playing with the “clouds”. He was really cute, doing karate chops and watching the clouds scatter and move.

Jason has a thing for contraptions and was in heaven trying to figure out how this one worked.

Kaiya helps Kyle pull himself up using pulleys.

This optical illusion had all the kids mesmerized.

Especially Kyle.

Lying on a bed of nails was a big hit. Kyle was really tense and would not move a muscle!

Jason was a bit more relaxed.

The Kids’ Playroom was a big hit. Especially the water table.

We have been having a blast birdwatching down here this year. it is something that I have been meaning to get into more since my MIL gave us Peterson’s Guide to Eastern Birds and my Mom gave us a great set of binoculars (how many years ago was that?). But I never seemed to be able to find them when we needed them.

Luckily down here it is incredibly easy. Our beach house backs onto a canal so we have a wonderful backdrop for seeing all kinds of birds, doing all kinds of things. My favorite time is just after dinner - it seems to be feeding time for the birds as well. It is fascinating to watch as they pick their target and swoop down to grab the fish or even a crab now and then. I even got to see one industrious seagull grab a crab and fly over to a driveway and let the poor crab fall to its death before feasting.

We have a plethora of seagulls of different types which we have yet to identify. And plenty of ducks and geese. But we also have many other more unusual birds as well.

The other day a very large, interesting bird perched himself on one of the pylons on our dock. He was very different from any of the other birds that we had seen. We grabbed the binoculars and bird book, hoping that he would not fly away. We knew that he was not a seagull and I thought that he might be a tern. The boys poured over the book and found a couple that were kinda close, but not quite right.

We continued to turn the pages and low and behold there he was a Black-crowned Night-heron (Nycticorax nycticorax). I had thought that all herons had long graceful necks, and some do, but not this one! We also learned that herons and egrets are in the same family (need to do some more reading on that one to figure out exactly what is the difference!). Our bird seemed to sense that we were curious about him - he sat on the pylon patiently while we spent quite a little while trying to figure out what he was. Then, almost as if he knew that we had figured it out, he flew off.

Now the boys want to figure out what kind of egrets we see flying around - and whether any of them have “golden slippers” like some of the ones in the book.

~Steph

  I keep driving by our local elementary school where they have posted that the Standards of Learning (SOL) tests are happening this week. This time of year makes me doubly glad that we are not in school. Jason would be in 3rd grade…which means that SOLs would have been a really big deal this year (I think that for some reason 3rd, 5th and 8th are important years leading up to high school where every year “counts”). I remember my friends’ daughter’s 3rd grade year…she took “SOL prep” classes 3 afternoons a week and her mom would swing by and pick her up at 5pm on her way home from work. Otherwise the daughter would not get home until 5:30 on the bus. I do sometimes feel like we have dodged a bullet! The emphasis put on standardized testing in schools nowadays drives me nuts.

But enough about school…this is what we got to do on Wednesday!

 

 Breezy Point is a regular field trip for a couple of the homeschool groups I belong to and is only about an hour away up in Maryland. This is the first year that we made it and I am so glad that we did! You could not ask for a nicer place…the first thing that Jason said after he got out of the car was “Mommy…it is so quiet here!”. And it was. Our group of 9 families were the only ones on the beach.

There is a great playground right off the beach, bathrooms, showers, and of course the beach and an enclosed swimming area on the bay. Oh, and did I mention the shark’s teeth? They are all over the beach! The kids (and moms!) had fun sifting through the sand to see what they could find. We found many, many sharks teeth (way cool!), lots of neat polished stones and even some sea glass.

Hanging out on the playground

Kyle pauses for a drink

  

 

 

 

~Steph

 I thought that I would post more pictures from our time at the Native Lands traveling show. We went last Wednesday with 2 other homeschool families. It was held at Bull Run National Park and gave the kids a chance to learn more about Native Indians, Birds of Prey and Animals of the Land.

The Birds of Prey demonstation was really interesting.

The biggest hit by far was the archery range.

They had some really neat animals there…including a Bison, a Zebra and a huge Brahma Bull

We hung around awhile afterwards so the kids could hang out a bit (amazing how quick the place cleared once the school buses left!). We got to talk with one of the animal guys and it was really interesting to hear about how they travel all over the country. Sure must be an interesting life!

~Steph

As I mentioned yesterday, the boys discovered a marble book and all of a sudden are into all things marbles. So today, Jason wanted to know how marbles are made. What would we do without Google! We found a neat article on how they are made as well as information on the different types of marbles. Who would have known that there is a whole marble subculture out there on the internet! The boys have decided that their favorites are the bloodies (scroll down a bit to see the red, white and brown marbles).

Kyle especially has been doing a lot with them. He seems to be a collector by nature, so he has been sorting, building (he used them to make his footprint, go figure), lining them up and deciding which ones are his favorites.

I have to admit they are rather soothing to run your hands through. Uh-oh. Just what I need…another collectible….they even have a newsletter….