Making Play Dough...Sort of.

I have made play dough a lot and have always used the same recipe. It involves heating the flour, salt, water, oil & creme of tartar mixture over the stove top. I didn't have creme of tartar this time so we made a 'no cook' recipe that i found. It was fun. Lola measured out all the ingredients herself & the girls did all the mixing themselves.
The end result was so much like a bread dough, that I thought it would be fun to bake them just to get them really hard & let the girls paint their creations.

Static Electricity

Today we talked about static electricity. We tried an experiment that we had read about once & then expanded upon it.
We sprinkled some salt & pepper on a piece of paper, then rubbed a plastic spoon on a wool sock. Lola held the spoon about a 1/2 inch from the salt & pepper sprinklings and watched the pepper jump onto the spoon while the salt did nothing.
While the wool rub gave the spoon a negative charge, the salt & pepper were both positive, but only the pepper was light enough to be attracted to the spoon.
Lola was quick to answer (correctly!) why just the pepper jumped & not the salt. Lola's uncle, who was visiting at the time, observed our project and wondered out loud why the directions for the experiment would call for a plastic spoon. He thought metal would be a better conductor so we tried the metal spoon too. Nothing happened. I didn't really know what to say!
Then we had some fun and tried rubbing the spoons on the sock & putting them near our hair to get our hair standing on end. It didn't really work, so we rubbed balloons on our head instead!

A Puppet Show in the Making

Lola's school handles the core subjects of Math and Language Arts, I like to encourage these subjects here at home too.
Today, Lola and I played a writing game (an idea I got from a book!). It's called the "Silent" game...I passed a note to Lola that said I wanted to play a game with her but the rule was "NO TALKING!". We exchanged the note back and forth, responding to each other. Through the course of the dialogue, we got the idea to make puppets so we abandoned our note soon after to get to work. We have done the game several times since then, though. Lola's face lights up every time I surprise her with a written note!

Here are the puppets we made. Later on, we made a story for them.

Dia del los Muertos, part dos

No Dia de los Muertos experience would be complete without Pan de Muerto! It's a sweet bread, flavored with anise and decorated with "bones" made from the dough and colored sugar on top!

Dia de los Muertos!

Today, I took Lola to a historical park where decorated alters were all around for Dia de los Muertos. Lola has such a healthy attitude towards celebrating a loved ones life, I feel sometimes like I have so much to learn from her, as opposed to her learning from me!
She is also part Mexican herself and I love sharing these aspects of the culture with her.

Field Trip!

Yay for pumpkin patches! I love this time of year! Both my kids were born in the fall & I have always been a huge fan of this particular season....the autumn colors, Halloween, celebrating their birthdays, etc., etc...
One of our favorite activities is visiting the pumpkin patch. I don't know why this is so fun, except that is encompasses all our favorite things about this time of year into one area. Our favorite pumpkin patch has a a huge cottonseed hill that the kids can slide down on little sleds that are provided there. There are hayrides, petting zoos, playgrounds, mazes, etc., but the kids spend most of their time on the cottonseed hill.

Art

We started a project today with another homeschooling family. But shhhhhh! We didn't finish yet & it's going to take several get togethers before we can present the final product, so....more on this later.

Camping Trip

This weekend, we took the girls camping very near an old mining town. One of our mornings there, we took the girls to a fun place where you can sluice for gold or gemstones & press your own apple cider, just as folks did in the 'old days'. The sluicing was very fascinating to the girls...they found not only gemstones, but arrowheads, fossils and bits of old pottery from native Americans. They got to drink the very own cider that they pressed, which was pretty cool them & also pretty tasty. They had a blast.

Hamsters!

Lola was able to take home the class pet this weekend...he is a hamster named Stormy. Very cute little thing. Lola was so beyond excited! But we learned that we really didn't know anything about hamsters...we have a guinea pig & dogs, but have never had a hamster. I took the opportunity to do to a project with Lola about hamsters. We looked up info on the internet and she wrote down the new facts she had learned and drew a picture of Stormy. The girls had a blast with him. In retrospect, hamsters seems much easier to take care of then guinea pigs, I kind of wish I would have known that! :/ (just kidding, we love our guinea pig.)

Bontannical Gardens

We are so lucky to have a place like this within a decent drive. It is amazing beyond words, I wish I could explain. The kids can literally play here for hours without a single complaint or whine. There is so much for them to see and do. We had a very memorable afternoon here and managed to sneak in a little learning too.

Farmer's Market

A great trip to make with kids. I gave Lola $6 and a shopping bag. I let her pick and choose the items that she wanted to buy and encouraged her to count her money & change. She needed my help, but she ended up spending the whole $6 and had a great experience chatting with the farmers and tasting the produce samples.

Museum of Man

Lola loves this museum. Downstairs is an amazing Mayan exhibition, but it's upstairs is really where it's as far as she's concerned. Besides the really neat primate exhibition, human evolution exhibition, *real mummies*, there's the Egyptian dress-up/playroom. We save this part for last because it's Lola favorite part. She will play here for hours (if I would let her!). Here is photo of her dressed up and playing on the boat in the playroom, after a great tour of the museum.

Cheese!

Lola and I attempted to make paneer cheese today for the first time. Paneer is a fresh farmers cheese used in Indian cuisine. It was very easy and had only 2 ingredients...milk & lemon juice (or another acid, like lime juice or whey from a previous batch of paneer).

We heated the milk gently, then added the lemon juice. The acid makes the milk curdle and then we did our best to separate the curds from the whey. The curds can later be pressed and formed into a block.

I figured we couldn't go wrong, but somehow, we did. I later learned that we shouldn't have used ultra-pasteurized milk as it does not curd very well. Our milk curds were so small that it was difficult to drain the whey.

We did manage to salvage the cheese by just adding some salt and dill and blending it into a soft spreadable farmers cheese. It was delicious so it was ok that it didn't really turn out the way we expected.

a trip to the bay

Today, we took a drive to the bay. There's a lot to do and see there, plus many different catalysts for conversations providing opportunities for learning. After playing in the playground, we took a hike on the shoreline. That is where we found our first conversation catalyst...a dead heron on the beach. This sparked conversation about what we think may have caused the heron to die there. One theory was environmental. It was hard not to notice that the beach doesn't look or smell very clean. The water is stagnant and cloudy. Inwardly, I cringed everytime the kids dug their hands into the sand! Nonetheless, we had a really interesting walk and managed to pick up little "souvenirs" along the beach...like shell fragments and golf balls!

Time Capsule

Today, we discovered a neat website, called Keo.org. Keo is the name of a space time capsule, basically a satellite, that is set to launch in 2012 and will roam space for 50,000 years before returning to earth. The entire world is invited to submit messages to the "future earth" before the satellite is launched. There is technology for the future earth to receive the messages and instructions on how to relay them. Sounds super complicated to me, but Lola decided on her message and we submitted it. She is concerned about the state of the earth and hopes that we don't ruin it too badly for humans 50,000 years from now....

Plant life

We strolled through the gardens at a popular park near our home. There is a beautiful cactus garden and even a rose garden that are open to the public to learn from. Fortunately, most of the plants are labeled, which was fun especially in the rose garden. Some varietals of roses have funny names, which was very amusing for the kids. Gourmet Popcorn was one of the most memorable!

Sewing!

Lola is learning to sew!

Making Lotion!

Today, we made body lotions and butters. I needed to make them for a craft fair that I was co-hosting, so I thought it would be fun to include Lola in the lotion making process. She loved choosing the oils and the fragrances! She spent a lot of time smelling and feeling each one. She also enjoyed stirring the melting wax & oils together.

Chinese New Years!

We celebrated Chinese New Year and marked the beginning of the Year of the Tiger. We ate dumplings and noodles. We learned that unbroken noodles symbolize long life!
The kids made crafts and really enjoyed themselves!

Local Wildlife Hike

We took a walk at a nearby lake to observe our local wildlife and take pictures of any plant life that interested us. We found a white bird with long legs wading in the shore that we had never seen before. An internet search revealed the bird to be a snowy egret. We also observed geese and rabbits.
We found an unusual plant that we had never seen before. It has bunches of small round balls that have spikes all over them. We tried hard, but still haven't been able to identify it. We hope to someday soon!

Pretend Store!

To reiterate what we were learning about coin values, we decided to set up a pretend store in the playroom, where Lola was the shopkeeper and I was the customer. We used all the play coins from another money game that we have and Lola used her cash register. I pretended to purchase a toy and she would tell me the price. Whatever the price of the toy, we came up with as many different formulations of the amount as we could. For example, if the toy cost 60 cents, we would count out 2 quarters & a dime, or 6 dimes, or 12 nickels.