clay creations

D and J made some lovely clay creations at the MFA this month. They toured the ancient Egypt exhibit and saw sculptures, jewelry, and objects found in tombs and even saw a mummified head. I'm always amazed that art, jewelry, sculpture, and yes, even heads, can survive for such an incredibly long time. It's amazing. It makes me wonder what we will leave behind for people to discover thousands of years from now. Sadly, I'm guessing it will mostly be plastic. After touring the Egypt galleries and exhibits the children made their own creations. J made a cat, inspired by some of the Egyptian sculptures she had seen, and of course her love of our new kitten, Lewis. D made a . . . tank. What, you didn't know the ancient Egyptians actually invented the tank? It's true. In their spare time, after they were done with those silly pyramids and sphyxes and all that nonsense, they moved on to tank warfare.

I'm actually not sure where the tank idea came from, but at least he had fun, and came up with an original idea.

geology all wrapped up

We finished our study of geology this week. During our past few science sessions we have created models to show how sedimentary, igneous, and metamorphic rocks form. We've used the Flip 4 Science Geology kit for our geology study and I have been most impressed with it. It outlines three levels of inquiry for learning, over six different levels. Students can either try all six lessons at the first level, or cover each lesson at all three different levels, thus learning more each time. We chose do study each lesson at the first (directed inquiry) level and had a great overview of rocks, minerals, and the rock cycle. The kit includes rock and mineral samples to explore as well as all the items needed for the experiments. As D likes to say, rocks rock!

baking spree continued

I have been dreaming about baking pistachio cupcakes ever since I recently saw them on a friend's blog. She has all sorts of yummy recipes posted and I just had to try this one. I frosted them with a honey cream cheese frosting, which was a bit heavy for the light, airy cupcake, I think next time I will try her pomegranate icing instead. yum. Here is a link to her blog, but I must warn you - you might find yourself baking uncontrollably, or salivating at the very least if you read it.

(as usual, blogger will not let me insert a link - as usual, i can't figure out why. when my tech-savvy engineer husband can't figure it out, i raise the white flag while yelling "damn you blogger! damn you!)

but you can cut and paste http://greenroommag.com/spoonful/ to read her blog.

hitting the freedom trail

On Friday we took the T into Boston and toured the Freedom Trail with our HS friends. The Freedom Trail is a walking tour to up to 16 sites that were made famous during the Revolutionary War and during the days of unrest leading up to the war. We saw the State House, the gravesites of Paul Revere and John Hancock, the site of the Boston Massacre, and learned some fascinating nuggets of historical info from our guide, who was dressed in period costume and assumed the role of Sheriff Wright, a sherrif who lived in Colonial Boston during the war. D's favorite part was examining the musket and musket ball that Sheriff Wright brought along. I've attached some of our favorite pics, but for privacy reason I never post photos of other people's children on our website. This makes it tricky to add photos taken during field trips! But D and I snapped some good shots of downtown Boston and the graveyard to share. We ended the day with fried clams, Indian food, and gelato from Quincy Market. Did you know that Faneuil Hall used to be part of Boston Harbor and that it was later backfilled to create more land in the city? This is fascinating to me - first off, why would you fill in a harbor? And how did they do it? Can you imagine the ammount of work it would take to do this pre-industrial revolution? I feel a reasearch project in the making...

baking spree

I don't know why, but I have a desire to bake all sorts of goodies lately. Today we baked homemade bread. I recently bought the book Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day, the sequel to Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day and yesterday we made our first batch of whole wheat dough. My three helpers measured flour, which gets a bit messy when you have a toddler who insists on measuring things herself, whisked eggs and watched the dough rise, checking on it every so often to see how much bigger it had become. D even mentioned to J that the reason we could mix the water and oil together is that we added eggs, which act as an emulsifier. I was glad to see that he remembered some of our chemistry from earlier this year!

My next baking project this week will be some cupcakes that I have been dreaming about since I saw them on a friend's blog. Can't wait.

playing hooky

Today was 80 degrees and so very beautiful. We grabbed our books, towels, and yummies and spent the day at the beach swimming (D even dunked!), playing wiffle ball, and searching for treasures. D found a big crab and spotted some piping plovers, endanged birds that nest here during the spring. It was blissful :)

A Pebble for your Pocket

This is our new, favorite book to read as a family - A Pebble For your Pocket, by Thich Nhat Hanh. It is a sweet and gentle book for anyone wishing to share mindfulness with their children.