august twelve: ten thousand things

Before Trev was awake this morning I read that it's commonly known that if one starts at the outside of a meter/yard stick, with slow and careful (but attempting a constant) movement, one will always end up with bother fingers in the center.
Due to friction and levity.Well, I didn't know it.
So I attempted it. Several times. (Had to make sure it was true.)
Maddie woke up whilst I was learning this evidently Widely Known Truth, and wanted to play along.
Of course she did.
"Ooooh... is that an experiment???" she asks so eagerly.
So what happens when you begin to move to the outside from that same (arrived upon) center point?
The same thing, you might suppose.
Not so.
Once finger movement has begun, less friction is upon one finger, and increasingly so, until one finds oneself off the end and tilted and eventually fallen...
'Tis always the same.
Try it out.

We showed Trev when he eventually came to deliver our morning's kisses.

Then we tested the same theory again with little cardboard rolls.
Place the meter stick onto the rolls, and rotate each roll toward the other.
The stick shall stay balanced, though wobble a bit.
When you try it out the opposite way, and rotate the rolls away from one another, the result is more friction upon one side, carrying the meter stick away from the other, until it finally falls.
Same thing.
Hmmm.
Mama is still contemplating the natural (metaphoric/physical) laws to be discovered in this lesson.

Like this one... faster energy means heat (and heat means faster energy), and cold is slow.
Which we accidentally discovered in an experiment from a couple of days ago, but confirmed again today.
Which of course makes perfect sense... you see that truth in nature all the time (life is slower in the winter season).

An' there was music.Evidently Maddie is learning the notes of the guitar, because she would hum in pitch simultaneously with the keys she would strum. Most interesting.
Play is not meaningless, friends.Which of course I know you know, I'm just mostly acknowledging it again myself.

And this one was fun....
You know the "you can't blow up a balloon in a bottle" experiment? You can't fill the balloon up with air, because the bottle itself is already full of air.
Well, if you put a hole in the bottom of the bottle... you can!
And if you put your finger over the hole after you blow into the balloon, it will stay! (It creates a vacuum.)
Fun!
And now... when it's filled with air, fill the balloon up with water, and take it outside before you let your finger go!woohoo!!
Great fun, that. :)
(You can also just hand off your bottle to someone unsuspecting, letting your finger off as they take it....)

and there's been other things, too, like

wrapping Mama's yoga mat around a great big giant hairy dog

and posing the question "Mom, in the English language, do we use Fahrenheit or Celsius?"

and Ice Age (d-of-the-d, of course)

and Clifford reading games

and marveling at care bear's ability to float -equally well on tummy or back-

and there was the beginning of an art project-- that shall, alas, have to wait 'til tomorrow, for there is a bit of a breeze out which hampers our plans...

And Maddie has experimented much on her own
and returned to the Mud

and we made rainbows with the prism

and put together little letters and their matching pictures
and we decorated (again) the trampoline with many, many, many alphabet letters (verra interested is she)

and checked out the half floating egg experiment....

You put an egg in a a tall glass that's half filled with salt water (a few tablespoons so it's saturated)- and then smell that delicious salt water-

and the egg floats.
Then you take a spoon, and deflect the fresh water that you pour onto the egg.

The clean water will float on top of the egg.
Since we've never done this before, afterward we rinsed off our egg, and placed it in a cup to make sure we were correct in our supposition... and the egg sunk to the bottom of the cup.
Trev totally got that the salt water was more dense than the egg, therefore floating it.
Cool.

and we swam
"Mom? I was thinking that since Soleil (our friend) is having her own Tea Party tomorrow... I was thinking that you could fill some beer cans up with lemonade, and Xavier (her brother) and I could have our own party tomorrow. You know... disco style."
[choke, snort]
"Ya think?" I don't know. Maybe because beer cans are shiny like disco balls. ?? lol

"Ooh," reports Mama. "Look at that feather."
"Oooh, do you think it came from a Blueberry Bird?" asked Little Blueberry. "I'll put it in my hair..."
And now we've had our supper and I think I've managed to wear them out... one is watching Peep, and the other is playing JumpStart Third Grade. Again. But I'm not complainin'.