Poem of the Week

And thanks to Grammy Ann for the suggestion!

Jenny Kissed Me

Jenny kissed me when we met,
Jumping from the chair she sat in;
Time, you thief, who love to get
Sweets into your list, put that in!
Say I'm weary, say I'm sad,
Say that health and wealth have missed me,
Say I'm growing old, but add,
Jenny kissed me.

James Henry Leigh Hunt

HT: Poem Hunter

Non Helpful Answers

Oob is the kid of the week next week.  It's his first time having the whole week (planning 20 meals) to himself, something he's wanted for a long time.  There's a reason I've been putting it off.

Me: So, what would you like to eat?

Oob: Swiss cheese.

Me: Uh... I mean for dinner.

Oob: Cow meat.  I mean mammal meat. How about seal meat?

Me: Well, I...

Oob: And I'd like chicken for breakfast!

Potato Stampers

 Here's a project I haven't done in a long time!  It's pretty easy, just cut a potato in half and carve each half into a stamp.  Then dip it in paint and start stamping!

Choclo and Oob mostly told me what they wanted or sketched it on the potato, although they later carved eyes and a mouth into a potato for a smiley face effect.

The older Zoomlians spent a great deal of time carving and perfecting their stamps.

We ended up with an amazing variety of stamps and a hankering for baked potatoes.

I just need to buy some to eat!

In Which We Are (Mostly) Self Sufficient

 I use my Kitchen Aid mixer about twice a day.  We make all our own bread, cookies, and what not, so our machine takes a bit of use.

I have damaged Kitchen Aids in the past (when they "walked" off the edge of the counter and plunged to their doom) but this was the first time one broke under normal use.

The part that you attach the paddle to fell off the machine.

Weird, huh?  It was a defective pressure fitting.  Anyway, it was only two or three years old: old enough to be out of it's warranty, naturally, and way too soon to replace such a pricey machine. 

Actually, with one car on the fritz, I didn't even want to pay for a professional repair.

So, I looked around online and found the part for $15 and You Tube instructions on how to replace it.  I felt an educational experience coming on!!

I carefully reviewed the instructions and determined that I lacked only two things: grease, and a pair of retaining ring pliers.  I got the grease at the auto parts store, and I figured I could jerry rig the pliers.

It all went exactly as planned...until I hit the retaining ring.  It turns out you really DO need the retaining ring pliers!  I fussed with it anyway, but eventually I broke down and called in the Marines: Bill!!!

And he did have a the retaining ring pliers and knew how to use them, and now I have my mixer back in perfect working order!

I get by with a little help from my friends...:)

Shearing Time

 All four boys were getting shaggy, and I thought it was time for summer haircuts.  Everyone except Zorg thought this was a great idea.

Zorg's great idea was: Can I have a mohawk?

My great idea was: How long?


The answer was 8 hours.

But it was a fun 8 hours!

Happy Music

I'm pretty sure everyone knows about the Piano Guys by now, but this always makes me happy!


It also gives the Zoomlians ideas about where we should put a grand piano and what they could do with it...

The Rosary Project

 We have a  book that we love to use while praying  the Rosary.  It's an enormous three feet tall, and it features beautiful icon-like images for each decade and smaller, cartoon-like images for each Hail Mary (along with a scripture quote for each Hail Mary).  It's a beautiful, thoughtful, prayerful work that makes Rosary praying easy, even for distraction prone young kids (and parents).

If you aren't Catholic, the Rosary is a prayer in which you say decades (groups of 10 Hail Marys) while meditating on events in the life of Christ.  The Hail Marys are there to keep track of the length of the meditation, to involve your body in the prayer, and, originally, as a way for illiterate people to "say" all 150 psalms like the monks did.  But the heart of the prayer is the meditation, and the greatest difficulty is distraction, and that was what was so great about this book!

The problem?  They only made one book!  They started with the Joyful Mysteries and then... stopped!  It must not have sold well enough, and it must have been very expensive to produce. It's also out of print. :(

I've been griping about the lack for several years now, and it finally occurred to me that I could make something similar.

Lacking in the kind of talent which produced the first book, I turned to Google.  The kids and I googled the first Luminous Mystery, the Baptism of the Lord, and did an image search.  We picked out 12 diversely appealing images, then printed them and cut them out as 3 by 5s.


I then wrote out scripture verses on the backs of the cards.  I totally cheated on this one, using my scriptural Rosary app.  Then I realized I could get the quotes on line, so, for the next batch, I printed them out and glue sticked the quotes to the backs of the pictures. Easy peasy!

I lay the cards on contact paper, then folded over the contact paper so the cards were laminated.  I cut these out, then punched a hole in one corner.  I unfolded a paper clip and used that as a ring to bind them together.

The reason I use 12 pictures is this: one is the cover, and on the back of that one, I write the fruit of the mystery and the words "Our Father."  This way, when you flip over the cover, you have your picture meditation for the Our Father.  The next flip gives you "1st Hail Mary (and the scripture quote)" across from the meditation picture for that Hail Mary.  The 12th picture (the 10th Hail Mary meditation picture) has the Glory Be on the back of it.

So far we've made The Baptism of the Lord and The Wedding at Cana, and I hope to do them all!

I

Poem of the Week

Dawn is a Fisherman - by Raymond Barrow

Dawn is a fisherman, his harpoon of light
Poised for a throw - so swiftly morning comes:
The darkness squats upon the sleeping land
Like a flung cast-net, and the black shapes of boats
Lie hunched like nesting turtles
On the flat calm of the sea.

Among the trees the houses peep at the stars
Blinking farewell, and half-awakened birds
Hurtle across the vista, some in the distance
Giving their voice self-criticized auditions.

Warning comes from the cocks, their necks distended
Like city trumpeters: and suddenly
Between the straggling fences of gray cloud
The sun, a barefoot boy, strides briskly up
The curved beach of the sky, flinging his greetings
Warmly in all directions, laughingly saying
Up, up, the day is here! Another day is here!

HT: Poetry Free for All

Seven Quick Takes Friday

1. Mxyl is back!!! After nearly three weeks away in Japan, it is so great to have him (and Grammy) home again!!!


2. An actual conversation this past week:

Acquaintance: Oh!  You like science fiction and comic books!  Now your blog makes perfect sense!

                                                       Me: ???????

If you are still confused, I also like science, history, poetry, art, literature, gardening, math, and my kids.  Now does it make sense?  Maybe if you stand on your head...



3. It must be spring, the frogs are back!  And the trees are blooming.  So, even if it's in the 50s, it's spring.

So break out the cool sunglasses, already!





4.Speaking of blooming trees, we found this curious dog wood in the National Arboretum's dogwood garden.  The bracts arch up and over each blossom like a bower - a fascinating and lovely effect!  The dogwood garden is one of my favorites, not just because you can catch frogs in the fountain, but because it feels like a Jane Austen novel.  One with frogs.



5. Coolest science experiment ever!  You can dissolve a ridiculous amount of sodium acetate in a small quantity of water, simply by heating the water.  As the solution cools, it looks like plain water.  But, dropping one tiny crystal in causes the entire solution to bloom into solid crystal, releasing a great deal of heat.  So I guess it's not literally a cool experiment, but it's amazing!  Details on how to do the experiment and where to get sodium acetate here.


6. We now have the coolest yard on the block!  How do I know?  Because neighbors keep asking if they can come over to play.  The grown up neighbors.

We have two slack lines: the red one is parallel to the street, the yellow one is running from the deck to the tree, at a 90 degree angle to the red.
 We also have the play house and the badminton/ volleyball net up.  Everyone's happy except for the grass around the net, but, as the Emperor told me, it's better to have us in shape than the grass in shape.

7.  Have I mentioned how happy I am to have all my kids on one continent again?

It's been a good reminder to me to enjoy this time with all my kids under one roof! 

For those of you still living in Babyville, yeah, it does go fast.

More fun with Jen

Kids' Chemistry: Heat

  We've been discussing heat from the very beginning, so the kids knew that heat was energy, and that heat energy was expressed in the movement of molecules.  You've got to love it when the kindergarteners can tell you that molecules move faster when they are hotter, and slower when they are colder.  They get it!

Anyway, they also remembered that heat caused an increase in reaction rates: it sped up the dissolution of the bouillon cubes, and it sped up diffusion.

 I also wanted them to see that heat affects density in liquids and gases.  I used 2 wide mouthed quart jars, and two little (8oz) soda bottles.

I put ice water in one little bottle and tinted it dark blue, then sealed it with foil and a rubber band.  I filled the quart jar with hot (tap water, not boiling hot) water. Then I pierced the foil with a pencil tip and dropped a few drops of the cold blue water into the hot clear water.

The cold water fell quickly.

This is the basis of certain ocean currents.  In real life, water density based on temperature moves millions, if not billions of tons of water!

Next I filled the other bottle with hot water, dyed red, and sealed it with foil and a rubber band.

I placed the sealed bottle into the wide mouthed jar, then filled the rest of the jar with cold water (strained ice water).

Next I pierced the foil on the hot water with a pencil tip.

The red water rose to the top, looking very much like a volcano!

 We moved on to gases.  Before class, I had placed an empty, uncapped soda bottle in the freezer.  Now I took it out and capped it with a quarter.

Theoretically, as the air in the bottle warmed and expanded, the coin would clatter and move.

Actually, the bottle got knocked over (twice!) and was filled with room temperature air.  So, your mileage may vary! 

Since the bottle was full of warm air, I reversed the experiment by capping the bottle (with, you know, the bottle cap) and stuck that in the freezer.  By the end of the class it was cold enough to shrivel the bottle.  The kids asked what would happen if we left it in all week, so we left it there, plus added a bottle of water.

Next up, we looked at how light was absorbed and converted into heat.  I had a (florescent) light bulb shining on black and white paper.  Theoretically, I would have had a thermometer under each sheet of paper, but a surface reading thermometer was more fun if you have one!

The black paper was two degrees warmer than the white.

 Lastly, we looked at heat absorbed and released in chemical reactions.

I stuffed a jar with fine grade steel wool, then poured in some vinegar.  I sealed it with a double layer of foil, then put a cooking thermometer through the foil into the center of the steel wool.

Over the course of 10 minutes, the temperature went up about 2 degrees- rust really is burning in slow motion!

 Then I dissolved half a cup of non chlorine bleach (Oxyclean) in water.  I had everyone touch the jar before we started so that they could feel that the water was room temperature.

Naturally, everyone wanted to stir!

I didn't use a thermometer on this one, but the kids all could feel the jar growing warmer.

For my piece de resistance, I did "hot ice."  This is sodium acetate, the stuff used in hand warmers.  It's reasonably non toxic, and available on Amazon. 

You need 160 grams of sodium acetate (which is the amount in the beaker) dissolved in only 30ml of water (which is the amount in the graduated cylinder).  It looks like a ridiculous proportion of solid to liquid - and it is!

But this is a case where a relatively low saturation point is very affected by temperature.

 If you heat the mixture in a boiling water bath, the entire amount will go into solution, and it will stay in solution as mixture cools.  This is called a super saturated solution.

And it only takes one tiny sodium acetate crystal (or even a hard tap on the side of the jar) to cause the sodium acetate to fall out of solution.

It instantly blooms into beautiful crystals and releases all that stored up heat you used to coax it into solution.

The best part is that you can put those crystals  (now a solid block with no visible water) back into solution by adding more heat, so your sodium acetate is completely reusable!