Grandma's Playground

 There's a new reason to love Grandma and Grandpa's house now. The Terre Haute Children's Museum opened up its new location this year. Other than the fact that they got rid of the miniature metal shopping carts and the semi-realistic cash register, it was a complete hit.

In more ways than one, apparently.

We were glad to see that they brought the bubble maker along. 

And the Bernoulli machine. There is an incredible paper airplane launcher as well.

The water table was good for tons of fun. Even I had to wear an apron. It is no good to get wet when you play with water according to the Curly-headed girl.

The Terre Haute Children's Museum is a nice cheery place to play for the morning. Lots of learning with lots of fun. We give it four thumbs up.

Duluth Harbor and Aerial Lift Bridge

We were in Duluth for the homeschool convention in April. As we were watching out the window, this ship came into the harbor. Hopefully, these photos give some sense of the scale of these ships. They are absolutely huge.

As you can see, the lift bridge is large as well. Each time a ship enters the harbor, the bridge sounds its horn and the ship answers back.

I never get tired of watching them. There is a free Maritime Museum to the left of the brown buildings. There is a piston from a ships engine that is two stories tall. It is not from a large ship, only from a tug. Amazing!

On Friday, while we were waiting for a seminar, we looked out the window at Lake Superior (behind the ship below) and there were five ships out on the lake waiting to enter the harbor. The waves were so wild they were backed up that badly. Usually five is a large number of ships to enter the harbor over the entire course of the day!

Spring is Coming, Regardless of the Forecast...

We are supposed to get hammered with a ton of snow in the next 24 hours. Thankfully, the brunt of it will not be dumped here! On the other hand, we have seen three seagulls (and two photos of local Canadian Geese). Spring is apparently imminent in spite of the lovely weather forecast. We are breaking out the spring clothing in anticipation of warmer weather.

In the (Greenwich, ha) mean time, we are keeping busy with this website. This is our second year of participating in Journey North. The girls each have two mystery class locations, and I have the rest. It's like a world wide game of hide-and-go-seek!

Science Fun

This year, we have been doing mostly NOEO Science. It lends itself well to children who want to read about science in real books and then take off on tangents to discover more about a given topic. The curriculum also includes hands on projects from the Young Scientists Club. Celsius the Science Bug is a favorite guest at our house!

For instance, on this day, the Straight-haired girl is mixing up water with baking soda in an attempt to grow crystals. It didn't work. Her best guess is that we used washing soda because we didn't have enough baking soda. My guess is that the water wasn't warm enough to allow the solution to become super saturated. We will repeat the experiment to see if we can do it correctly.

The Curly-headed girl loves to write the answers to Celsius' questions in the booklets. It makes her feel like a "real scientist." So far this year, she has made a weather station and monitored the weather, learned how it affects living organisms (including herself),discovered biomes and learned a lot about birds.

One thing I like about NOEO is the ease with which it can be tied to other subjects. For instance, while we studied birds, we were reading this book. We also looked at Audubon's prints, studied individual birds and did all kinds of bird art projects.

The girls also keep a science journal. This is full of their drawings and things they have found on the internet that pique their interest - or that I have put in there to pique their interest. They can cut, glue and color to their hearts' content that way and all of the papers stay in one place. We also take photos of experiments and projects and tape them in the journals.

Here are a few good sources for biology that I have found, in no particular order:
National Aviary
Herman the Worm
Project Feeder Watch
Journey North
Ology (American Museum of Natural History)
Monterey Bay Aquarium
Great Backyard Bird Count
All About Birds
The Weather Channel Kids
Dragonfly TV