Ten

Album Art

We have been playing a lot of Exquisite Corpse and have some pretty funny creatures on hand as a result. When it came time to produce this year's album art for the annual mix CD my cousin encourages me to do, I turned to our group art. I asked Max to do the lettering for the cover, and then I took a bunch of our finished Exquisite Corpse drawings and clipped them out and put them all together. I love the weird collection of creatures who clearly seem to all be accepting each other, exactly as they strangely are.

Kids Science Labs

I'm starting this post this as I am sitting outside the boys' science class at Kids Science Labs. This is new for me, to have free time while they are entertained by someone else. More time for blogging!

It's the first actual class they have taken, aside from the family classes the three of us have taken together. Max still worries if I am out of sight, and in general has not been willing to attend a class that I can not be in. The older he gets, the more challenging this will be. 

The classrooms here are perfect for us, in this regard. Each room is more like a huge cubicle with glass garage door like walls, no ceilings, just big sheets of suspended felt to dampen the sound, but sound carries throughout this giant warehouse-like space. I can hear bits of the kids shouts as they aim their catapult at Smit, their teacher, and pummel him with marshmallows. They definitely seem to be having a great time in there. Max does look out to check in with me, as he is prone to doing, but he is otherwise extremely engaged.

Luckily for them, the class is still small, so they get a lot of attention. The first couple of weeks were just three boys, and today a new girl joined them. The four of them seem to work really well together, and afterwards, both Max and Otto said they like the teachers and the other kids in the class a lot. It is pretty unusual for them to volunteer this information on their own. Otto even told me today, "I'm glad we came back to this class, even though I didn't like the first one." The first class involved throwing fruit, which was a blast for many of the other kids, but not for Otto, who has no interest in seeing fruit, smelling fruit, and least of all touching fruit, or, even worse, having any of its juice splash on him as he throws it against a wall.

They have had fun building with Magna Tiles, Legos, Tinker Toys, toothpicks, marshmallows, rubberbands and popsicle sticks. They have envisioned towers and built them, watched slideshows of the world's tallest towers, learned about building materials and cost for building each one. Today, they were running and sliding on a giant beanbag, which surely explains some scientific principle, but I have no idea which one. [I just asked the boys, and they looked at me with a sort of "Duh, mom" expression and explained that they were human trebuchets, that they were using their weight as they jumped on the bean bags to make a small block bounce up into the air.]

It's a great class, and the concept is that they spend a few classes talking about towers, learning about the materials and economics behind different choices, as well as the design principles, then they spend a few classes talking about catapults and trebuchets and the science of propelling an object forward, and then they will construct a giant tower or castle and build a catapult or trebuchet. They will suspend an egg inside of this castle/tower and then attempt to break the egg, knock down the tower. The catch is that they will be limited in KSL "money" and have to choose where to put their dollars, in the tower materials, in the catapult, or in the object they choose to launch. 

It's going to be very interesting to see what they come up with.

And now for a photo/video recap of the first few classes...

The first class introduced all the kids to the fun of magna tiles. They had a shake table underneath so that they could test the strength of their structures in an earthquake. The three boys worked together to build a design they thought might be sturdy.

For the next class, they drew some designs for a tower on the whiteboard and then had to build them in Lego. Otto had quite a challenge with his leaning tower, but he figured out a way to make it work.

Then they had to build the same tower out of marshmallows and toothpicks. That was much harder for Otto's design, but he tried.

In today's class, they made catapults from popsicle sticks and rubber bands.

They turned over tables to make forts and had a marshmallow battle (using spoons or their newly made catapults to propel the marshmallows).

Today's was an action packed class, and everyone seemed to have an absolute blast, including the teacher, who is extremely enthusiastic and seems to be up for anything. All the staff seem this way, in fact. They are a bunch of unschoolers at heart, whether they know it or not.

The lobby is packed with all sorts of building materials and games, and we always have to spend some time playing here before and after class.

Otto made this stack of 13 high last week.

And today, while they were building towers of magna blocks, I built this one. 

After today's class, Max, Otto, Peter and Nia got to work on building a super tall tower out of magna tiles. Shegan (one of the co-founders) even went into the back to get a ladder so that all the kids could climb up and add layers to the tower. They periodically measured it and were almost as excited about the height as the kids.

Keith (another one of the co-founders) measures with Peter.

Nia adds a layer. Peter's mom helped "spot" the tower as each layer was added. It's fun that all the adults get in on the action too.

And while I was taking the above picture, Alex snapped this one and posted it to Facebook. Another enthusiastic staff person. When I was telling Martin about the day, he retorted, "sounds like there are more staff than students!" At this point, there are. Works for us. But they are getting more people signed up for classes every day, and I have a feeling that classes will be packed by next "semester."

They convinced Shegan to climb up on a step ladder and put the top on one of their towers (the ladder had been put away, so they were going as high as they could without it). My favorite part about this video is the end, when the tower is about to crash, and I see Otto going to protect his smaller triangular tower, which he and Max were working on.

Here's the start of their triangular tower.

Success!

Smit was working on some ideas for a future class and called Max and Otto over to see him make a cloud in a bottle.

Yep. Fun stuff.

Lately

Homemade mayonnaise.

Max has been asking to make this for a while, and we finally did it. We had an absolutely perfect consistency, but at the last minute, it got too much oil, and we lost our perfect emulsion and ended up with more of a sauce. This actually worked fine for our immediate purposes, but it continued to separate. By the day's end, it was an awful sight and had to be thrown away. But for lunch, there was egg salad.

We have caught at least four chickadees in our rat trap. And only one rat. 

Campsite.

We had planned to go camping with our homeschool group last weekend, but we decided against it because it wasn't dog-friendly (and it was canceled anyway, due to serious storms in the park). So we set the tent up in the living room and camped out there. It's a fun place for reading the comics and eating quesadillas.

Belly shack. Yum. 

Margie's for ice cream sundaes and old fashioned sodas.

Otto lost two teeth in one weekend.

Lilli likes to chill out with the boys and their beanbags.

We are taking advantage of every sunny afternoon to dine al fresco. 

And just in case you didn't know, Letizia's makes the most adorable cookies.

Enjoying the Fruits of Our Labor

Must Be October

We made our annual pilgrimage to Honey Hill Orchard, where we usually pick late season raspberries, apples and pumpkins and participate in a general celebration of fall. This year, a hail storm in August caused such damage to the apple trees that the U-Pick apple option was not available. But we picked 3 pounds of raspberries, and at least 10 pumpkins. We took a horse-pulled wagon ride, a tractor-pulled wagon ride, walked through a haystack maze and had lots of fun on a sunny fall day. And we indulged in apple cider donuts, caramel apple pie, and some truly delicious cider.

We usually pick raspberries first, as this is the most time consuming task, and if we wait until the end, we don't have the energy for it. Max is a really good picker. Otto wants nothing to do with actually touching the raspberries, but he is good at spotting ripe ones, so he works with me, and points out good bushes. He was also the official photographer of this portion of our field trip, since the rest of us had raspberry juice on our fingers.

Haystack maze.

Then, onto the horse and tractor wagon rides.

Time for refreshments.