January 17, 2014

(click here for today's pictures)

Science Experiment Day!

• This was the first night since we had been home that everyone slept all night and that was just wonderful.  When Robby left for work, the rest of us-well, we didn't really do anything for awhile.  By 8, the boys had used up all of their kindle time (only an hour and the thing won't turn on until 7) so they were begging Campbell to let them play on hers for a second.  I had my shower so we could start the day.
• The kids knew that today was a "fun school" day but we still had to do a few non-fun school boxes.  I made Graham do his phonics and math and that was fine.  Reagan, my perfectionist, had already completed her hard stuff and just did handwriting.  
• And Anderson spent so long in the bathroom this morning, like his daddy does, that he was the last one to even get started.  Seriously, I don't know what the child was doing in the bathroom-I am going to have to start putting his work on a clipboard for him to work on in the john.  After he did his phonics, I looked at his math and it was something new and looked hard.  I told him to skip it and we could do it at lunch.  He quickly obliged and then before lunch, he watched the video and breezed through it.  I was certainly surprised since I vividly remember Reagan struggling with that.
• So fun school started!  I had been playing "fun school" up so I was pretty concerned that the kids were going to think I was nuts and be a bit disappointed-they weren't.  We started by reading a few books on snowmen.  Then we talked about the 5 senses and I had the kids bring me something from each sense.  Then some more books and a video about the state of matter.
• Next I had signs for the kids to hold up to identify each of the states of matter.  I would hold up something and they would all hold their signs up-honey, cup, air, water, ice, smoke and on and on.  Then the kids had stations where they had to use a sense to identify solids, liquids or gases. For example, at the hearing station they shook the containers to hear if it was a solid, liquid or gas.  Then at the touch station they felt 3 balloons filled with air, water or ice.
• We then read another book and then the real fun started-we made an ice snowman.  I had frozen three balloons filled with water and then set them up to be our snowman for the day.  We talked about it was a solid and then took predictions of when it was going turn into a liquid.  And the plan was to boil it into steam when it melted (but it hasn't melted all the way yet)  We looked at it all day long and took measurements of the water level throughout the day.  The kids may not have learned anything but we sure had fun watching our snowman melt...or maybe I had fun watching it melt!
• After the snowman was happily melting away, we then had ourselves a little snowball fight. Anderson was the one who figured out what we were going to do when he saw me carrying in dozens of Robby's socks.  Masking tape down the floor, snowballs on each side, timer set and the losers had the most snowballs on their side when the timer went off.  We played and played and played-we played so many rounds of our snowball game that the kids were exhausted and begging to take a break.  
• Lunch was our break and then we did a bit of snowman art (I forgot to take pictures of that event)  Then I started on laundry, Reagan and Anderson were drawing, Keaton and Whitman were helping me and Campbell and Graham were upstairs.  And that is where the trouble started-she bit him, he squeezed her neck, they screamed at each other, I told them to put up my laundry, they screamed, fussed and cried, I told them no movies, more screaming, fussing and crying.  That is how my afternoon went-actually, after Campbell and Graham calmed down, I had 4 kids asleep so I spent my afternoon dancing.  Well, not really dancing but cleaning attics, straightening and drinking hot chocolate.  
• Everyone did wake up happily and the evening started.  We had supper and then we all sat down in the living room to look at our pictures from our trip.  The kids loved watching them and then when it was over, Robby passed out taffy that we bought for the kids on our trip.  It was like he was passing out gold!  
• Then we watched a Price is Right before bedtime.  After we put the kids to bed, Robby and I picked up their toy room.  We never do that but it had gotten pretty out of control and if it is clean, then they will play up there tomorrow and hopefully, they will play up there quietly all morning long!