I Might Be Slightly Neurotic

Merriam Webster says:

neu·ro·sis

noun \nu̇-ˈrō-səs, nyu̇-\

medical : an emotional illness in which a person experiences strong feelings of fear or worry

Is that me? I think it might just be. Oh, great. Now I'm rhyming.

We're getting ready for a trip - a trip of a lifetime. Though maybe not to my ideal destination, it still has the potential to be an amazing time.

So what am I doing to prepare? Cleaning. Every single thing in my house. I need to go away with a closed door on a clean house. Then I will be able to sleep while I'm away. And I will be able to come home to a house that is not screaming at me about all the things that need to be done.

I'm also packing. And cleaning some more.  And making lists. More lists. Maybe even lists about lists.

Yesterday was kind of my breaking point in the mess I was creating for myself. Stress was overtaking me. I went for a run with some worship music and had an amazing time with my Lord.

And today? In my weakness, I went back to the stress. But as I was making soup for our supper, one song kept popping in my mind:

I am free. I am a child of the one true king, and I am so much more than lists or a clean house or baggage left by my past.

"Through you my heart screams 'I am free!'"

He has overcome the world and no lies can change that. I am free to enjoy this time with my family. I am free to tell the Enemy he has no claim over me.

I am not neurotic. I am free.

Tree Study

Our science this year is a loose study of biology. In the elementary school years, I feel it's important for kids to explore the world and learn about it through their hands first and with books second. We have found that a textbook approach just doesn't work for us at this stage.

Two years ago, we did a study of the ocean, mostly using Janice Van Cleave's Oceans for Every Kid book. We also threw in studies of ocean animals including projects, lapbooks, and many books from the library. We had such a great time that year, and I felt like we all learned so much.

Last year, we attempted to use one of the science textbooks from a popular Christian publisher. It didn't work for us at all. I felt like the text was too dry; my kids weren't at all excited by science, and it was painful for all of us. We abandoned that text and sort of floundered our way through the rest of the year.

This year, I knew we needed to go back to what we love. Studying science through exploration. Our topic is biology, so we are studying animals, plants, and the human body. So far this year, we have studied the platypus, earthworms, and owls. We're learning about the animal kingdom and classification within our studies. We've had a lot of fun with dissections, diagramming, and lapbooks plus a number of books we've checked out of the library. Next on our list is alligators and crocs.

We are taking a break from the animal kingdom at the moment, though, to take advantage of the fall. We are starting a study of trees and leaves. 

We have two great resources we are using to start: Fun With Science: Trees and Leaves by Rosie Harlow and Gareth Morgan and Common Trees of Pennsylvania by DCNR, a free resource we picked up at our local fair.

The first book has some great experiments in it to learn how trees work. Today we made posters about one of the trees in our backyard. We measured it to find out how old the tree is (one inch = approximately one year), made bark rubbings, identified the tree by its leaves and bark, measured the height of the tree, and learned to measure the area of the crown. We listened to the sounds of the tree and talked about the ways in which it is good for our environment. We compared this tree to another, older, slightly different variety in our yard. We even found a mourning dove and its nest in the tree. The dove sat and watched us while we worked and watched it in return. 

It's too big!

He just discovered the tree is older than his granddad.

Can you see the mourning dove and nest?

The kids loved this science class, and we had a beautiful day for it. We have a great deal more to do with the trees in our yard, and I am hoping to do some work with other trees in our town. I am planning to graph the trees in our town, continuing to identify what we find with the help of our common trees book, and learn more about why trees lose their leaves, etc. I am very excited for this project and am looking forward to it with the kids!

What kind of science do you do in your class? Do you have any fun tree ideas for us?

Bad Hair Day

This kid has some hair. 

People ask me all the time: Where did he get those curls from? Papa and I have vaguely wavy hair, if you're being generous. I think they are implying the curls must have come from the mailman.

The truth is that I can't think of anyone on either side of the family, as far back as I can remember and as far out as I can think, who has or had curly hair. Not like this.

I did a little research into it a couple of years ago (to have a way to convince people he does not belong to the mailman), and here's what I found:

There are two versions of the hair type gene, curly (C) and straight (s). Hair type is an interesting case of something called incomplete dominance. What this means is that with hair type, if you have one of each version of the gene, you get a mix of the two or wavy hair. So for hair type, CC gives curly, Cs gives wavy and ss gives straight hair. (http://genetics.thetech.org/ask/ask45)

So... Papa gave him a C, and I gave him a C, and he gets: CC.

And here's just what that looks like. 

This is what his hair looked like for Awana last night.  

The sweet, elderly gentlemen who listens to his verses complimented him on this hair style. He asked: What did you do to it? Did you do something different?

His response? Nah, I haven't washed it or combed it for two days.

Oy.

Whitaker Center

Hurricanes, movie production, airplanes, and more all in one afternoon! Only at a science museum.

Our little family has a big thing for science museums, and we have visited a number of them over the past few years. We are fortunate enough to have a decent-sized one close to home, and we took a field trip there last week.

There are actually about four of them within 30 minutes of our house, of varying sizes, themes, and budgets. One has a planetarium, another focuses on engineering, and another is three floors. We chose to go to the Whitaker Center for Science and the Arts because we have an annual pass for entry.

The first floor has some small exhibits with bubbles, sound, and the like, but its main feature is the large area for small children. They can act, build, shop, dress up, and play with water. We have spent many hours in this one area of the museum, but this time we opted to skip it.

The second floor has the Carnival of Health. It's exactly what it sounds like: carnival themed activities to teach kids about their bodies. You can feed Gorgo the correct amount of colored basketballs to represent the food groups, race on bikes to see who can burn calories faster, see what you might look like at age 70, and play whack-a-germ, just to name a few. The kids love this section of the museum, although the smaller two are a little afraid of some of the exhibits. It can get pretty noisy in there, and the germ game sneezes very loudly on the loser. It can be a little disconcerting the first time!

Seriously, how gross is that clown?

Also on this floor is a section called Move It! Kids can build and race cars, build and fly paper airplanes, use a variety of methods, including vacuuming, to move small particles throughout a large machine, build a bridge and test it, and find their home or famous landmarks and locations using Google earth. We found our old house, complete with our van in the driveway! It was a little creepy, to be honest.

The final floor has a  number of displays about our planet, including weather forces. Activities include making tornadoes, earthquakes, and floods, as well as trying to catch a cloud. Our favorite exhibit here is the hurricane chamber. 

Do you see me clutching him for dear life? Like those 65 pounds are going to save me in hurricane winds. He is, however, doing his best Harry Potter/Daniel Radcliffe.

In the rear of this floor is a behind the scenes look at movie production. We got stuck here for a really long time. Visitors can change the lighting, create some digital graffiti, experiment with music, and, our favorite, stop-motion animation. Oh, my, was this fun! I never dreamed I would have as much fun as the kids! We created a ton of movies and emailed them home to view later. 

 

This was my first attempt at the animation. Don't blink, or you might miss it! Next up is Little Bear's. Please don't ask me what it's about. I'm sure it has no point. When you get to trash can, I'm sure you'll agree!

And below is one of Curly's.

The best part of our visit was that it was a Friday afternoon in early October - too early for school field trips. We were five out of maybe 20 people in the entire museum! We practically had our own tour guide! An amazing museum employee named Jim enhanced our visit by showing us the ropes and explaining some of the concepts to us. We owe a lot of our fun to him!

This was our first field trip of the year, and we all loved it. I can't wait to take more!

Where do you like to go for field trips or family days?

Letterboxing

Our family started a new hobby this weekend.  Letterboxing!

Putting the stamp in our journal.

We've heard about it from some friends recently and thought that with our increased focus on hiking and family time, this seemed like a perfect fit.

Here's how it works.

You need: notebook, stamp to represent your family or group, ink pad, and clues.

You can go one of several letterboxing websites (try this one or this one) and find boxes in your area. Or if you are traveling, you can plug in that location and find some there.

We picked four semi-local sites to start. Two were right in our town. The first one was the library, which we needed to visit anyway, so we searched there. However, due to some construction in the past few years, this box was missing. We were a little disappointed since it was our first try, but we knew this was a possibility. The next box was listed as being five blocks from the library, so we headed on down the street.

We had success at the next stop, and although the chocolate shop was closed so we couldn't buy any candy, we loved the chocolate stamp!

Our family stamp: an oak leaf. We put our stamp into the notebook at the location.

The box with supplies: ink pad, stamp, and notebook.

It was hidden under a bush in a camouflage sack.

We needed to drive to another town for the next one. The clues on this one were much more vague. We actually had to Google pieces of the clue to find the general location. Maybe we would have known it if we lived in the town, but it was a neighborhood with a pond. The name of the neighborhood was hidden in the clue, and we had never heard of it. Once we found the neighborhood, the clues guided us right to our destination.

Can you see it hiding under there?

Our Beatrix Potter lover loved this one - it was Miss Moppet.

Everyone needs a little sass on an adventure.

And our third site was a short drive from there.

Jemima and The Gentleman for our BP lover.

Hand carved stamp.

Certainly, we liked the adventure. Having clues and an unknown destination is very appealing to us. I felt like we were on The Amazing Race, and the kids pretended to be a variety of explorers. But what sealed the deal for me was when I realized we were finding out about new places in our area that we wouldn't otherwise know.

Our third stop was in a nature preserve in a town where I've never spent any time. We had no idea it was there and would never have taken the time to look for it. It's fantastic getting to see new places in your local area. I think it would also be great to do on trips, to see some things off the beaten path, or if you find yourself moving to a new area. What better way to find out all your area has to offer?

Letterboxing was a huge hit in our family. It's definitely a keeper. We can make a whole day out of finding many, or we can just do one at a time.

What hobbies do you do as a family?

Cooking Class #3: Stuffed Mushrooms and Chocolate Cake

Curly is really enjoying his time in the kitchen. I mean, he doesn't always want to stop reading or playing to get in the kitchen, but once he's in there... it's pretty smooth sailing.

This time our task was stuffed mushrooms and a warm chocolate cake.

I'm not sure where either recipe is from originally. My mom gave me the stuffed mushrooms, and an old friend gave me the cake. Both are pretty simple and very tasty. Neither falls into the healthy category, either, but have I mentioned they are tasty?

We started with the mushrooms. I had to help him with the stems because the mushrooms were pretty fragile. But otherwise, he was on his own again. He learned the importance of softening the cream cheese, how to cream ingredients together, measuring, and drizzling with butter. He struggled a little more with this recipe because you really need to get your hands dirty to make these. He has a very hard time with messy hands, so a lot of the steps were "disgusting" in his words. He did enjoy the end result, though!

Then we moved on to the cake. This is ridiculously simple. You just need a chocolate cake mix, cook-and-serve chocolate pudding mix, milk, and mini chocolate chips. Make the pudding according to the directions on the package, then stir in the cake mix. Once it's all mixed together, put it into a greased 9x13 and sprinkle generously with the chips. Bake 30 minutes at 350 and serve warm. 

It does take constant stirring, which wore his skinny, little arm out, but it was a good lesson in stirring so something doesn't burn.

Once again, we all really enjoyed the fruits of his labor!