Rainy Day Fun - Building Giant Card Houses

It looks like rain today, so I'm hoping for an afternoon of finishing up our latest audio book (Swiss Family Robinson), and building card houses with the girls.  Not just any old card houses, though.  Not when we've got a deck of Monster Mega Playing Cards.

I picked up the cards, a while back, to have on hand for a birthday party.  They've turned out to be pretty nifty.  Something about their size (8.25'' x 11.75'') makes even the most mundane of card games - like for instance, Solitare...

...interesting and new.  They can be a little bit of a challenge to shuffle - I generally have to brace them between my feet while shuffling with my hands (no pictures of that, thankfully).  And, while they are glossy, and look like their smaller cousins, they aren't quite as sturdy as regular playing cards.  Though, they are still just sturdy enough to make basic card houses...

...as long as there is no trace of a breeze in the room, and you hold your breath while placing the cards.

We bought our deck of cards off of Amazon, but I understand they can sometimes be found at the Dollar Store as well.  And, I've been told that the Dollar Store variety are thicker and even more playing card-like, which would really make them great for giant card house building.

Our Top 10 Posts from 2015

1. Sewing Card String Art Heart Pattern - Valentine's Math Meets Art 

2. Building a Craft Stick and Tissue Paper Geodesic Dome Reading Cave

3. Simple Solar Projects for Kids - Solar Updraft Tower 

4. Newton's 2nd Law of Motion - Squeeze Bottle Strong Man Game 

5.Big Hero 6 Inspired  Vibrot Battle-Bots

6. McMinnion Math

7. Summer Writing for Tweens and Teens - Comic Fill-in-the-Blank

8. Engineering for Children -  Compression, Tension, and Toilet Paper Tubes

9. Valentine Math - Simple Steps into Multi-Step Problem Solving

10. Mad Scientist Candy Lab - Melting Gummy Worms 

With Tuppence for Paper and Strings

Oh, oh, oh!

Let's go fly a kite
Up to the highest height!

Let's go fly a kite and send it soaring 
Up through the atmosphere

Up where the air is clear 
Oh, let's go fly a kite!

I've had the song from Disney's Mary Poppins stuck in my head this whole windy weekend.  Now you can have it in your head, too.
 

No need to thank me, or anything.  It's my pleasure - really, truly.

Sunshine on a Stick

With spring "officially" approaching on the calendar, but rain and snow clouds still filling the sky with gloom, the younger girls have been growing restless.  We have a road trip ahead to Grandma's house, and sunnier west coast weather (we hope), but in the meantime, I found one of my favorite old public service announcements from the '70s to share with them.





There's nothing like a silly cartoon...

...and a batch of homemade popsicles...

...to brighten attitudes...

...lift spirits...

...and add a touch of sunshine...

...to a rainy afternoon.

Pass the Soma?

After a week of post-sickness lethargy, laying on the couch hopelessly binge watching whatever series happened to pop up first on Netflix, I opened my email this morning to find a somewhat convicting video word from John Stonestreet.

I'm not sure I agree entirely with the message, especially when it comes to citing fictional novels to warn of being "over-entertained" (after all, aren't novels just another form of entertainment?), but there is ring of familiar truth. 

How many times have I gone to click on a serious news headline, only to be distracted by some entertaining bit of fluff posted to the side of the page?

How often do I spend as much time as a chore would have taken, browsing through my audiobook library to find something to listen to while I work?

Is my desire to enrich the educational experience for the children with fun and activity,  really driven by an impulse for more entertainment in disguise?

And, while I'm not actually worried about a week or two of sickness induced sloth, I couldn't help but be reminded of other words I have read...

Behold, this was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy. They were haughty and did an abomination before me. So I removed them, when I saw it. Ezekiel 16: 49-50 (ESV)

or

You have lived on the earth in luxury and in self-indulgence. You have fattened your hearts in a day of slaughter. James 5:5 (ESV)

...and sadly (or maybe ironically) of a few I have heard...

I am heartily ashamed of myself...But don't despair, it'll pass; and no doubt more quickly than it should. - Mr. Bennett, Masterpiece Theater, Pride and Prejudice

Vacation - Unplugged

The Man of the House is on vacation for the entire week.  Fun family face time is calling.  Cells phones are off, Kindles set aside, and the computer is shutting down.

Have a great week.  See you on the other side, when we power back up, hopefully refreshed, and ready to go.

Mad Scientist Candy Lab - Melting Gummy Worms

This one really is just for fun.  I tagged it as a science project though, because if you really wanted to look hard, you could find some science - changes of matter, properties of polymers, and the like, along the way.  And, it all started with a Science Sunday post from Adventures in Mommydom, entitled "The Science Behind Jello".

Ticia's post was on my mind, when I was in the store, this week, looking for gummy hearts for the children. I was thinking through all her steps, and missteps in Jello making, and not finding any gummy candies at all, except for packages of gummy worms - which are not quite the same, when you want gummy hearts. Thinking about Ticia and her children mixing, and melting the gelatin, I started wondering if we could take the store bought gummy worms, melt them down, and remold them, ourselves, into hearts.

The younger girls thought it sounded like fun, and happily separated the worms by color, while I pulled out our candy molds (recycled from out Christmas advent calendars), heat resistant squeeze bottles, a large bowl, and the electric kettle.

The girls had the worms all divided up about the time the water started to boil.  They placed all of the pinkish-clear worm segments into one of the bottles, added the cap, left open...

 ...and I poured the water over the bottle for them...

...and they held it in the water for 10 minutes, watching an episode of Phineas and Ferb to pass the time (10 minutes can seem really long)...

...until the candy pieces were completely melted...

...and they could squeeze the goo out into a couple of the heart shaped squares of in our candy molds.

When we make homemade gummy candies, the gelatin sets up pretty quickly, and the candy always pops right out of the mold.  This candy stuck to our mold, even after it had spent about a half an hour in the freezer, and didn't want to come out.

The hearts looked pretty on the plate - much nicer than worms...

...but they were really...

...really...

...gooey.

It wasn't quite what I had in mind, but the children thought their gooey gummy hearts were fabulous, and just about perfect. So, we're counting it as a mad, candy lab, success.

School Cancelled on Account of Sunshine and Unseasonably High Temperatures

While the news has been reporting record snowfall, and winter storm warnings for the east coast...

...northern Montana has been experiencing a burst of spring-like, warm weather.  With plummeting temperatures, and more snow in the forecast for the days ahead...

...we decided to drop everything, and head outside to enjoy the warm winds...

...and sunshine.

We'll be back inside and ready to go this weekend, when winter returns.

Our First High School Graduate

T (age 17) received "the" letter, yesterday. 

The one from the college of his choice, full of phrases like, "Welcome!" and "You have been accepted." 

And of course, it was an email, and not a letter at all, because that's how things are done now. 

Knowing the "letter" was pending, I've been secretly preparing for the moment when it would arrive.  The local homeschool association holds a graduation ceremony in the spring.  But, being new to town, the teens thought something like that might be awkward, and wanted to celebrate quietly at home, instead.

We all agreed that our high school graduations will take place  on the day the student in question is accepted into college (used interchangeably here for university), or for those who might opt not to pursue higher education - when they successfully obtain a high school equivalency degree.

T opted for college, and so, yesterday was his graduation day.

Once the email was opened and read, his father and the grandparents called, I whipped out the gown, and hat I had purchased ahead, for it's first wearing.  T posed for a few snapshots, while "Pomp and Circumstance" played on the computer.  I, personally, think the sock feet make the picture.

We demanded (but did not receive) a speech from the class valedictorian.  Instead, I offered up a stirring commencement address, full of good advice such as, "The future stands as an open door before you.  Go out and change the world!"  That may, or may not have been the entire speech.

Then, the robe was back into the closet, and we were off to meet the Man of the House, after work, at the movies, before dinner out.  Somewhere in the middle of the festivities, a cake was baked, but we were all too full after dinner to eat it, and so it sits waiting to be eaten.

All in all it had the feeling of a Bee Movie graduation...

 ...with just enough excitement and silliness to make the teens roll their eyes, but also with enough substance to remembered and repeated, as a new family tradition.

It's great to be a homeschooler.  One down, five to go!

Summer Fun 2014 - Road Trip

Montana...

...a river still runs through it, but the road's...

...another story.

Cold Weather Classics - Snowy Day Science, Snacks and Literary Tie-ins for Children

If you're in a part of the country where the temperatures are plummeting this week, don't miss out on these winter weather must-dos (thanks to Annette from The Simple Home for inspiration - we're glad to finally have some winter weather to play in, too).

Watching soap bubbles freeze.

For best results wait for a windless moment.  Blow into the bubble wand with your mouth a little away from the soap, so the bubble won't fill with hot air, and rise too quickly away from you.  It's easiest to view the bubbles freezing if you catch them on the wand...

...or view them on the ground.  But, it's fun to watch them pop in the air too, because they fly apart like little sheets of plastic.

Let the heat from your hand melt an icicle so you can watch it drip.

It's not very scientific, but children find it fascinating.  You can't really save icicles (or snowballs) in a frost-free type freezer, though - the process that eliminates frost, will also do in your frozen treasures.


Collect pans full of clean snow for making molasses snow candy (recipe here) like the Ingalls in Little House in the Big Woods.

It's a lot of fun to make...

...and a good chance to brush up on thermometer skills...

...while you discuss the meaning of the idiom "slow as molasses"...

...but honestly, it doesn't taste very good.  You can try to suspend reality, and imagine you've been living in the "olden days", out in the woods, and haven't had any real candy...but even then, it's a stretch.

Or, you can save your pans of clean snow and make yummy snow ice cream (recipe here), or lemon snow ice (find our post on that, here) like in...

...Andrea Cheng's The Lemon Sisters (have a box of tissues handy, if you decide to read the picture book to your children).

And of course, if the thermometer is dipping down well below zero, you don't want to miss turning boiling water into instant snow (though you might want to check out our tip for that one first).

It's great to be a homeschooler.