Gardening Monday...

We usually stay home on Mondays because the weekends are so busy that we don't get much chores done. Today, we tended to the garden. I stripped the bottom inch off of a pineapple crown and let it air out. It will soon be ready for planting. In the meantime, we took out some of our veggies that had gone to seed & harvested some veggies that are still going strong. We picked lots of tomatoes, eggplant, chard & basil. Sounds like a great pasta sauce to me!!

Diamondhead

Today we took up a hike up to the very tippy top of Diamond Head. Scientists believe that the type of massive, but brief, eruption that formed the shape of the symmetrical crater is monogenetic, and therefore, they do not believe Diamond Head will ever erupt again.
It's about a 1.5 mile hike round trip and takes up to 2 hours. It wasn't very hard, except that it's unpaved and rocky. The hardest part was probably the stairs near the top. There are 74 of them!! Yikes! Lola was a champ and did the entire hike with me by herself and didn't require any help. She was so proud of herself when she got to the top! She took her own photos of the view. It was spectacular.

School had just barely started for Lola and we left for Hawaii for a week. Since we were already into the 2nd week of school, we looked for learning opportunities and didn't have to search very far. There were all kinds of new birds & plants we had never seen before and learned a lot about the various cultures that make up these beautiful islands.

Above photos are examples of the different ginger plants and plumeria trees we saw.

Also, Lola and I right before taking hula dancing lessons! We learned how to tell a story using hula dancing and, by doing so, learned a lot about the culture in Hawaii.

Back to School!

A very happy 1st grader on her way to the 1st day of school!

Volcano, Part 2

The explosion! Well, first we had to paint it. The girls did a great job. This afternoon was the grand finale...we poured vinegar into the top of the volcano and we got our red lava to bubble up to the top and pour out! Lola didn't like the smell of the vinegar, but she did enjoy the project as a whole!

Volcano, Part 1

Recently, Lola and I were chatting about volcanoes. She was fascinated by the fact that where her grandfather lives, Montreal, there is a dormant volcano. I told her how we used to find lava rocks as children. She wondered if they were still hot! Anyway, it gave us the idea to make a volcano from paper mache and have it "explode". I didn't realize at the time that it was really a 2-3 day project. Step 1 was making the base and the shape of the volcano. We used plastic cups and balled up newspaper glued to a box to make our shape. Then we poured some baking soda and a few drops of red food dye into the bottom of the volcano. After we waited a day for the glue to dry, we made the paper mache solution and shredded the newspaper. Lola covered it in paper mache, leaving a hole at the top for the "lava" to come out!

Baking Cookies

Lola has been asking to bake cookies for a long time. She is quite independent in the kitchen, wanting to do everything herself. I'm learning to be patient with that because I really want to nurture her love for cooking and baking. It's tough though!
Anyway, this time I let her do a lot more than I've allowed her to in the past. She is pretty competent, I was impressed! We made these great little vegan chocolate chip cookies from our favorite recipe. They were delicious!