june 13: go cellular

Trev has been watching many episodes of Magic School Bus. Er, and Maddie, too.
About three years ago (or maybe four) he discovered the show, and his Mama taped all the shows she could get her hands on for him. So we have like forty episodes, or something.
Don't you love MSB? Ms. Friz is the ultimate unschooler, as far as I'm concerned. She's pretty much a hero of mine.
So anyway, Trev's been watching and playing (the software games) mucho the last few days.
Of course we've had many questions and conversations, and he has filled me in on many a thing that isn't in my mind's piggy bank.
Yesterday he spoke a lot about Cells.
All kinds of cells.
This morning, first thing, he asked exactly what a cell is.
After thinking "building blocks" and "little blobs" and other such things, I thought of our friend Bill Nye. So of course I went to him to see if he had anything to show and tell on the matter.
You know he did.
[grin] Thanks, Bill.

Now where shall this take us?

We went to Ivan IV, aka Ivan the Terrible.
And Trev wants to scoot to the library to find books about Al Capone.
(Thanks, Night at the Museum 2.)

Mama gets a wicked headache while reading to the babes on the trampoline, so we headed inside for a bit. After a teensy nap, Trevelyn made it all better by reading three of his library books to me: Tyrannosaurus and Other Dinosaurs of North America, Allosaurus and Other Dinosaurs of the Rockies, and Deltadromeus and Other Shoreline Dinosaurs.
It's amazing how being read to will quite make a girl quite forget her troubles.
I laid on the couch, Maddie played puzzles on the floor, and Trev read on. ("Want me to read you another one?" "If you want to...." Hoping that he would. "Sure, Mom.")
Wonderful.

Rain, rain, rain.
It's raining.
What to do?
How about using the rain to make art?
I'm sure it has been done before, but none-the-less, I came up with this quite on my own.
Our first pictures found themselves practically being washed downstream, our rains were so incredible today!
I swear it seemed like it rained two inches in about fifteen minutes. It was crazy.
Belatedly, we went downstairs to get our little turtle friend to set him outside to be our tracker.
A few minutes later the rain slowed and then stopped, and Madd and I had another go at our RainScapes. I really loved this project!

Maddie's

Mama's

Since cells are the order of the day, we looked at a few things. We saved some clear and red onion skins from breakfast, and chose a mushroom to check out as well. (All this rain the last week/two weeks/year/eon has made for lots of mushrooms!)
We looked at the papery underside, and then a hairs-breadth sliver from the stem. Interesting that the stem piece looked just like a wood board- with lines going down, and knot-holes and all.
I thought to get out our pre-made slides of cells....

We requested several books from the library a couple of days ago, and eight of them were in, and waiting for us. The library is closed tomorrow (and I didn't want to wait any longer!), so I asked the babes if they'd like to trek over there. Of course they would!

A fine adventure, that. :)

Home to sticker play and Magic School Bus episodes

Two Jokes Of The Day:
How do you catch a rabbit?
You lay in the grass and make sounds like a carrot.
and
I guess rabbits have a lot of hare (hair) cells! HEY!!

and, Oh!... the cells...
Speaking of which, let's look at hare hair, shall we?and frog blood cells
and cheek cells
and wood cells.Cool.

Back to MSB!
and to the Garden.

Waitin' for Daddy. Er, with dinner. : )
Trev ran off to play (in the non-rain) on his bike
Maddie is watching Clifford
and Mama's gonna go choose a new book.

Life is so good!
An' we'll see you tomorrow.