March Madness

We've had a leprechaun in the house since yesterday. 
His name is Larry the leprechaun, and he left this note:

 We tried the green muffins. They were pretty good! Leprechauns must eat a lot of green things.

Last night for Alan's science (trying something different this week so sorry it hasn't been a daily post, but we'll get there...), he had a challenge to build a leprechaun trap with assorted materials I had gathered. He made a trap door sort of system in a box and made a system of boxes with chambers he could fall into (with egg cartons). Not pictured is a tiny ladder he had leading to the top tower. Here is what his trap looked like:

This morning, Alan found a note at the table that said his trap didn't work and he was pretty disappointed. The trap was all knocked over, too. Here is the second note:

 And then, it started becoming clear. The leprechaun pranked Alan by putting shamrocks on his stuff! We found one on his lunch box, and that was the start. Then, getting ready for school, Alan found several on his backpack, as well as on three different shoes, and some of his toys! The more shamrocks he found, the more he giggled and the morning continued very silly and smiley after that! 😄 Happy March! 🍀

Why is the Sky Blue?

Today, we answered that age-old kid question: "Why is the sky blue?"

We needed:
1. clear container to hold water
2. water
3. milk
4. LED white light flashlight

We talked about why the sky is blue. I told Alan, " The flashlight will be our sun. The water is the sky and the milk is the particles that are in the air outside. The cloudy milk, or the particles in the air, show the blue most easily with the light and that is why we see blue in the glass and in the sky."

When we shone the flashlight at the milky water, we could see a blue tint!
To do this experiment, we followed this link:
http://www.rookieparenting.com/why-is-the-sky-blue-science-experiment/
They have a better explanation for the science behind why the sky is blue on that page.

We also did a follow-up to the experiment also from Rookie Parenting on why sunsets are red and orange. To do this, we simply shone the flashlight behind the glass and saw an orange color in the glass. Their video and explanation for that is here:
http://www.rookieparenting.com/why-is-the-blue-sky-orange-at-sunset-science-experiment/

Alan recorded all of this in his science journal.

Sorry I still don't have pictures to share! Today was a pretty sleepy day here, meaning I was feeling sleepy, so that's why this experiment was pretty simple as well, but I still found it neat. Until tomorrow!

All Updated! So........ It's Been Awhile, to Say the Least....... and SCIENCE!!!

Yes, this was a blog that I started when my son was in preschool.

Well, he's a first grader now. Wow, how time flies.

I could have started a new blog, or erased the previous posts. But those are some serious precious memories now that my first born is in school full time. Plus I really like that play dough experiment post!!

So the most significant things that have happened since I abandoned this blog are:

1) We moved from PA to VA in March 2015

2) We got married in July 2015

3) Alan started kindergarten in August 2015

4) We welcomed a baby girl, Nora, in May 2016

So, now you're all caught up... for the most part, anyway. Life goes on. I will fill in details as necessary as we go on.

So anyway, the reason I find myself returning to this blog is because I find that since my son started school and I gave birth to his sister, we've been connecting less and less, and I don't want to lose that special connection we once had. I know things change over time and that change is good, so it's not about that, it's more about wanting to do something special with just him and me while he's still little enough to appreciate it a little. They grow up too fast. (Did any of this last paragraph even make sense? I'm tired.)

So I went back to this blog because in an effort to connect, I started a daily science journal with Alan where we will record science experiments that we attempt. Today was our first day, and I didn't take any photos or video of our fun today because I kind of just thought of doing this blog again after he went to bed so that I can have a record of what we're doing each day in addition to his journal.This week, I thought we'd start with exploring weather, as that is a subject of interest with my kiddo lately. Today, we did two experiments, and recorded the second one as the first entry in his journal. The two experiments from today dealt with clouds. The first one explored why clouds make rain and the experiment we replicated can be found here:
http://laughingkidslearn.com/rain-cloud-science-experiment

Alan loved this simple activity because the clouds and the blue water were FUN and I used hair mousse instead of shaving cream, so he liked that the clouds smelled nice. Since he is a bit older, he understood right away when I asked him to guess what the mousse/shaving cream represented. He had fun loading the clouds with rain and watching the blue "rain" swirl through our "sky" (the clear water) in a mason jar.

After this, we made our own cloud by following this:
http://www.playdoughtoplato.com/cloud-in-a-jar/
He had a lot of fun with this and again, the hairspray made it smell good! ;) He begged me to do more experiments and was upset with me that I only prepared for two for today, but I assured him we'd be doing more after school tomorrow. I promise YOU that tomorrow I will be prepared with photos of our experiments, as this is a LOT of text, so you get a gold star if you've made it this far in this post! I will also talk more about our experiences with our experiments as time goes on, I just thought that today the cloud ones were pretty simple and straightforward to follow, and I wasn't prepared to blog them!!! Whoops!

We recorded our findings in his journal using this worksheet as a model:
 http://littlebinsforlittlehands.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Science-Journal-Printable-Pages-for-Kids.pdf

Until tomorrow!!