august twenty-seventh: oh, everything!

Now you know it's gonna be a fine, fine day when it's garbage day (and you get to watch them) and you have a beautiful yellow balloon that has given up some of its magic powers, and is ready and eager to play outside.
And so the day was begun.
And there was harvesting.
And rasslin
and lazin'-- with Dad.

And then I thought of the experiment I wanted to check out, and found two books on our shelves to go along with it.
Magic School Bus Blows Its Top, and How Mountains Are Made.
I put it to the babes, and they agreed to come to the patio with me for a while.
So Trev and I shared the reading. He got to read all the cloud caption quotation thingies. Whatever those are called.
We learned in How Mountains Are Made that Mount Everest is growing about two inches a year! and that there are seven big plates in the lithosphere.
The book showed an example of using a dish towel to push like plates do, how Folded mountains are formed. Cool!
So we tried that, too.
And then to our graham cracker experiment....
We broke a couple in half (along the perforation),
lined them back up again
and then rubbed them back and forth against each other to make debris... rocks and dirt.
After that, we broke one side in half again...
this time it did not break evenly, and the results were much more ragged, with large rocks (pieces) breaking off.
There was much more tension, and much more destruction.
Cool!

Maddie headed directly to Magic School Bus videos. You saw that one coming, didn't you??

We tested ourselves with a balance game.
And Maddie practiced writing letters.
Well, she meant to write letters. Actually she impressed herself and ended up drawing a boat.

Remember the eggshell experiment from yesterday?
How I put a blown-out shell in vinegar, and after ten days or so we're s'posed to be able to fold it, and then shake it up and it will blow itself up again.
Now I dunno about that last part.... but the egg has definitely folded itself!
I don't know if this has anything to do with it being an organic egg?
We'll give it another day or two, then see if we can get it to blow itself back up. Hmmmm...

There was more balancing

and then Math.lol.

Trev posed about seven riddles to me... I'm happy that I got all of the answers but one.

I had sat down a couple of hours before with a project I've been thinking of the last few days,
I wanted to prepare mine so I could show my babes what I was thinking, and to give them an idea of what I was talking about.
Now I sent my babes on their way the harvesting basket and sent them to gathering their pretties for their creations.

On to it!
And in the end we have

Ankylosaurus

and

Mama Pig.

The regular Mama loves them, of course.
And of course theirs are much more lovely than my own.

I made a balance scale -of a sort- for the children. (The baskets are tied on.)
We have one downstairs.... but you know.
The Physics Investigator took an interest, of course.

While that was going on, Trev mastered a part of his game that has been giving him a lot of trouble.
His mama went with him when he asked if she wanted to see.

And there was summertime.
Maddie worked on another art project.
And then announced that she was going to have A Real Tea Party. With Real Tea.
So Mama scooted off to the kitchen to make her up a batch of tea... as her Mama doesn't think her own batch of green tea is appropriate for a Little Gril at five p.m..
oof.

In the meantime, she got busy with letters and chalk on the chalkboard.

"Mom... how easy is it to smash an atom?"
Uh.....
Yeah. Right.
When I finished shaking my head I looked up "smash an atom", and came to a bit on a particle accelerator.
I wasn't sure that Trev was up for it, so I called him over to ask him about his question... what exactly he wanted to know.
He gave be a shpill about 'amoebas and single cells and particles....' and I said, "So you're thinking that this might be a difficult task?" and then I went to our favorite uncle... Bill Nye.
Of course Bill has something on atoms. We love you, Bill. (No, he's not really an uncle. I claim Willie Nelson, too. Because I like him, that's why.)

While this was going on Maddie got busy with play dough.

An' Mama headed to the kitchen to start supper.
Mmmmmmm....

Tea is over.
Supper is done.

The babes are off somewhere [waves hand over head, gesturing vaguely],
and this Mama is done.
It' been a very sparkly, happy day.

I'm off for my book. : )

Goodnight then, Sirrah.