Maple Tree Tapping (Part 1)

We decided to try to tap our maple tree on the cheap for the first time this year. This video is documenting our progress.

Art Fraud Detective Review

We just finished the Art Fraud Detective by Anna Nilsen.  It is a superb book that helps kids look at painting in detail from The Museum of Art while solving  a crime.  It helps build problem solving skills while learning about famous artists and their paintings. 

The premise of the book is that the museum had an informant call in and let them know that 30 of their paintings have been stolen and replaced with forgeries. There are four gangs. each with four forgers, that are behind the crime.  Each gang leaves behind a symbol on their forgeries and each forger leaves behind a certain number of changes to each painting as their calling card. It is up to the reader to figure out who is behind each forgery, which paintings are  real, and the identity of the mystery caller.

We would highly recommend this book! (Check your local library.)

Science Playground?

The St. Louis Science Center has an outdoor park that we don’t normally utilize.  It was beautiful weather when we went downtown for some free Ben & Jerry’s, so we spent some time outdoors…learning.

Hydrogen Powered Car

 

 

 

 

                           

 

Building a hydrogen powered car that can run for 10 minutes using water as fuel.  It’s a family affair :0)

Parts of a Bean

We did several experiments from Janice VanCleave’s  Biology for Every Kid.  One of them, taught the boys about the parts of a bean.  We soaked beans overnight then dissected them to find all of the different parts of a bean. 

Osmosis Jones?

Joshua and Brian learned about osmosis through an experiment with raisins and water.  They both put a few raisins in a cup of water and let them sit for a day.  Today they looked at them and found them to be a lot larger and more plump.  They found that through the process of osmosis, the water had crossed through the raisins’ cell membranes and entered into the raisin, because water travels from greater concentration to an area of lesser concentration.  We found this experiment in Janice VanCleave’s Biology for Every Kid: 101 Easy Experiments that Really Work.   

                        Before                                                          After

Chore Chart

I found an idea for a chore/job chart on Martha Stewart’s website that was both interactive for the kids and myself.  The kids really have enjoyed it so far and I like the flexibility of changing their jobs based on what needs to be done in that particular day. 

I put all of the extra jobs on the top of the fridge and made labels for “morning,” “noon,” “evening,” and “complete.”  The boys love moving their jobs to complete and seeing what they “get to do” for the day:-)

I found the best price for 8.5 x 11 inch magnetic sheets at Michaels (3 for under $6.)  I only needed 2 sheets.  I made the background out of a piece of scrapbook paper that I glued onto the magnetic sheet.  I printed the jobs using a spreadsheet and printing them directly onto the magnetic sheet.