'round here

We've received lots of new supplies in the mail, and I'm pretty excited about several potential projects around here!

I think maybe one of the first ones will be a pond habitat. We have a pond in the neighborhood (well, relatively - it's close enough to walk to), and an aquarium that we're not using, so guided by our new book Aquatic Habitat we have something cool to study and play with for the next several weeks.

Another potential project is to work on our Timeline. It will be especially fun now, as before we didn't have our printer hooked up (vista + older printer = mucho aggravation), but now we have it connected to the XP, so we can print our favorite pictures of the Cambrian, the Carboniferous, galactic pictures, and a picture of my favorite, Stromatolites.

We have also decided to put in a few constellations on Trev's ceiling. He's always had glow-in-the-dark stars, but now we are going to get a bit technical. It won't be scientifically accurate, of course, as depending on the season and time the sky changes, but we'll try our best. Should be a fun project.
I think we'll also get out the Star Theater, and practice identifying the constellations in the nighttime sky. Maybe check out Stellarium again.
It's something we're all interested in - so why not?

We also have a new book called One Small Square: Backyard, which we haven't checked out in detail yet, but I think the idea is to sort of rope off an area (either literally or figuratively, I s'pose) in your backyard to study the habitat and ecosystem that goes on there. Another sort of long-term project.

Downstairs (in the playroom) I'm cleaning and rearranging and reorganizing - making space for new projects and new supplies.

Maybe we'll set up a Build It! math station, too, with pattern blocks, homemade newspaper dowels, and little wooden dowels with marshmallows. :)

I think today we're gonna go get just a couple more supplies (Really, Eric, just a couple!!) - some beads for Madd, clay, some wooden cubes, and microscope slide covers (that were accidentally omitted from our new slide kit.)

Lots and lots of things to do.

We'll let you know how it goes!