Sports at the Park

Along with science activities, we played many different sports at the park. We played soccer tag, catch, graces, horseshoes, croquet, and had a kick contest to see who could kick the soccer ball the furthest.

Sense of smell and taste

I had a bunch of leftover science kits from previous years of science curriculum. We planned a science experiment day so what better time to try and use these kits up. After looking through them all, there were only a few that the younger kids could participate in and understand fully what we were doing. So we set out to test their sense of smell and taste. The sample packs that came with the kit all smelled like pepper so we headed to the pantry for a better selection. Samples included: peppermint, cumin, orange, pepper, coffee, ginger and cocoa powder. C did excellent and got all but one. The little ones had very creative responses. The best was W saying the orange was soap cleaning stuff. I didn't have as many willing volunteers for the tasting of salt, lemon, cocoa powder and powdered sugar. PF made some awesome faces and then W took each cup and sipped and then proceeded to spit back into each cup. That might account for the lack of participation.

Solar Power Science

Monday, we had a beautiful sunny day which is exactly what we needed for our science day. I found a couple fun science activities from http://www.stevespanglerscience.com/ that I thought the kids would have a lot of fun with.

 The first was a solar bag. You fill it with air and then watch it rise as the sun heats the air inside the bag.

 We did one of the activities that came with it. The one we choose was to measure the height of the bag at one minute increments. The wind in CA made this a little difficult but we just recorded where it was even though the numbers went up and down.

 The second activity had the kids finding bits of nature and making a collage on solar paper.

 The designs left on the paper after it was exposed to direct sunlight turned out really cool.

 The last activity, I got mainly for the boys. We built a solar powered toy car. It was fragile but really a lot of fun. I only got one not knowing how well it would work but after seeing it go, I wish I had a few more. 9 kids sharing 1 car was interesting but they all got a turn.

We are currently working on Astronomy for science so these activities demonstrated just a few more amazing things our sun can do.

Gull Wings Children's Museum Take 2

After church and lunch on Sunday, we headed over to the children's museum again.

 Our wonderful group of kiddos.

 Everyone had a buddy to explore the museum with.

 Dragonfly was my buddy. We checked out the microscope area. She loved seeing her finger enlarger on the screen.

 Their model of the cell was very cool.

 The boys had a blast in the model shuttle. When I found them they were pretending to take off into space.

 Taking on the rock climbing wall. Ladybug was determined to make it all the way across. After three tries, she got it!

When it was time to go, we got everyone to head outside by passing out lollipops. We didn't stay too long because the museum was so hot but the good thing about a small museum is that you can see it all in a very short time.

Diving into a Good Book

On Saturday, we headed to the local library. I was so impressed by how big it was. I loved our library in MD and was constantly checking out stacks of books. Our NC library is much smaller and we use it a lot less. I really enjoyed walking into a huge library again....packed with SOOOO many books. They had a great children's section. The kids all grabbed books and sat in the window seats to read. I was able to head upstairs to check out the adult selection. After making soap the other day, I wanted to see if they had books on herbs and gardening. I was not disappointed. I found some other interesting books as well.

The girls found books on cats...possible selected all the books on cats the library had. We checked out so many books that my friend had to use more than one library card. The kids have been curling up on bean bags and reading the books they checked out. PF has even written a report on cats without even being asked. I love that my kids enjoy reading so much!