Inspired by Ambleside

Davin was reading from "Our Island Story" in his room. When he was done, he came out and told me, "Mama, I think I'm going to make a Britain war chariot out of Legos some time.".

If we weren't reading books from the Ambleside Online curriculum, I don't think he would know what a Britain war chariot is and what it looked like....I know that it's something I never learned!

Here's Davin's description: "There's horses at the front and then there's a little space at the back for where the soldiers stand. There's spears at the sides of the wheels. When the horses go forward, the wheels turn and the spears kill anyone that it catches up to."

Sounds pretty brutal!

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Climbing Girl

Little Quinnlyn has found a new favorite outdoor activity: trying to climb up the slide on our swing set.  She only gets a foot or two up before coming down, but she sure loves it!  It's so cute watching her try and climb up, then slide down giggling, fall on her bottom on the ground, and get back up and start it all over again!

Our little dolly:

Here she goes; notice the tongue sticking out because she's really concentrating!:

 Trying not to slide down, still concentrating:

Hey Mom, can you believe I'm such a big girl?!

Ahh, this is the best!

Okay, I really think I can get it this time, what do you think, brothers?

Look, I'm doing it!

 See ya later, Mama!

Science Exploration Day: Taking in Water

(Day 120 in MFW, pp. 18-19 in "Science with Water")

First off, here's our happy little girl!  I just can't get enough of that dimply smile :)

Today we learned about "Taking in Water": how some things soak up water while others keep water out.  

Here's Davin seeing if the sponge takes in the water:

Here's Dorian putting water on the sponge.  We talked about why sponges are good for cleaning, since you can soak up spills and other messes with the sponge and squeeze them out into the sink.

 Next we tested the absorbency of 5 materials: wax paper, newspaper, a towel, tissue paper, and plastic:

Dorian testing the wax paper-not absorbant:

Davin testing the newspaper-kind of absorbs the water, but not completely like the sponge:

Dori testing the towel-good absorption:

Now the tissue paper-doesn't take in water well:

Quinnlyn really wants to play with the water, too!:

She spilled the bowl of water right after this picture, and I told the boys to try using the tissue paper and newspaper to clean it up.  They noticed right away that it didn't work well and put the towel to good use to mop it up!:

 Davin examining the towel up close to see if there was a clue to why it was able to take in water so well.  He noticed there were tiny gaps that the water was able to get into, whereas the other materials didn't have this:

 "Quinny, let me so how absorbent your clothes are!":

 The old classic celery with dyed water experiment.  The boys thought this was very cool:

It didn't take long for the water to reach the leaves, turning the a little blue (on the left) and red tinged (on the right).  We looked on the cut ends and cut some slices to see the "tubes" in the celery that the water traveled through, also.

Another day of science fun! I just love that all of the kids get excited to explore and do experiments, even if it is just simple things like this.