Birthday Fun!

Yep, its that time again, I'm another year older. Each year for my birthday, I like to do something fun with the family. It's rather convenient when the weather cooperates with me. This year, the weather was perfect and the leaves are beautiful. On Sunday, the day before my birthday officially, we took a trip to Elligay, Georgia to get apples and a pumpkin. As an added bonus, we went up and over Fort Mountain, which is where my hubby and I met. The views from the lookout never fail to amaze.

Next, we drove into downtown Ellijay and smack into the apple festival. Imagine tons of people, and lots of traffic. I'm sure the festival is fun, but we didn't stop to find out. We pushed on through and finally arrived at Hillcrest Orchards to buy apples. We visited last year with our homeschool group and have been dreaming about their apple cider, apple pies, apple donuts, and pink lady apples ever since. It too was a madhouse, but we got our apples and headed up the road to Burt's Farm to pick out our pumpkin. Now I know you can buy a pumpkin at any grocery store or Walmart, and they are a bit cheaper. Why drive all the way to Ellijay, you ask? Its kinda like going to a Christmas tree farm and picking your tree rather than putting up a fake tree or buying one at Home Depot. Its the experience! I have never, ever, seen such big pumpkins in my life. This year they were more picked over and not quite as large as last year, but still rather impressive.

The one Ryan (in white) is leaning on is $46. Can you imagine paying that much for a pumpkin? Not me! The farm is a wonderful place to get some great fall pictures. They even have hay rides for the kids.

Let me just say that picking a pumpkin from such a wide assortment of colors, shapes and sizes is no easy task! Nobody could agree on one. Here was Adam's choice.

In the end we got a larger pumpkin that didn't cost that much. We'll be carving it into a masterpiece this weekend. The kids also each got a tiny little pumpkin each. Here they are with the super cool white pumpkins at the farm.

Here's daddy wheeling our pumpkin to the front. Such a fun day!

Biking Fun!

Saturday my family, along with my fellow American Heritage Girls leaders went on a long distance bike ride. The plan was to ride for a few miles and then have a picnic. We'd be done right after lunch. But when it turned out that it was just us leaders and our kids, we got a little crazy. We rode and rode, and rode some more. We started out at the Chickamauga Dam and ended up having lunch in the Bluff View art district down town about 7+ miles later. Then, we decided we needed to visit Julie Darling Donuts on the North Shore, so we proceeded to bike across the Walnut Street walking bridge. Of course, we had to bike all the way back to the Dam afterwards. We braved some (like 300 or so) seriously scary looking zombies on the way back across the river who just happened to be out and about having Zombie Walk 2012 or some such thing. Who knew? Then had to zig zag our way back down hill and out of the Bluff View area back another 7+ miles. All in all we figure we biked about 15 miles round trip. What a day! We did see some interesting sights along the way though...other than the zombies that is. There was this guy...

He was sitting right in the middle of the path just begging to get run over. When I first rode by I thought it might be something off a tree. It was HUGE! I'm talking as big around as a carrot and about 3 inches long. I have never, ever seen a caterpillar that big. He was also brilliant lime green. No way was I actually touching him, but I did find a small stick and move him off the path. I guessed at the time that anything that big and awesome looking had to turn into something cool. My guess was a Luna Moth. I was right. I just wish my boys had been there to see him. Ryan loves caterpillars of all kinds, and this one was a doozy! So, I'm sore, but had such a wonderful day with friends and family, that I'd happily do it again! If you've never walked or biked the Riverwalk, I highly recommend it. Its such a great trip with gorgeous views of the river, wetlands, cool factories, surrounding mountains and so much more.

Our New Foster Baby

After raising 7 foster kittens this past spring, I said I was done with fosters for a bit. Little did I know that I had yet another surprise heading my way. Haley was at a friends house for a play date when she found a tiny little kitten crying and begging for food, sitting beside his tiny dead sister, abandoned by their mother. Apparently, some of the neighbors near her friends house feed the local stray cats, but don't do anything humane like call animal control or spay/neuter them. They have litter after litter of kittens each year, and each year those same kittens suffer. This little guy got lucky because my daughter knew what to do. When my husband came to pick her up, she showed him the kitten, shared the story of his poor sister, and low and behold, I received yet another foster kitten. This little kitten was in the worst shape that I have ever seen a live kitten in. Every single bone in his tiny body was highly visible. He weighed less than half of a pound. His eyes were crusted shut and he was covered in fleas. I honestly didn't know if I could save him. He was that dehydrated and thin. But, this kitten is a fighter. Here's Pumpkin, our latest baby foster.

He's now happy and healthy and is looking for his forever home. He's still tiny, and I don't think he's going to be a very big cat. He is a bundle of energy and spends his days enjoying his new lease on life to the fullest.

Introducing the Elements!

I have to admit, while I find chemistry experiments loads of fun, I get lost in the details when it comes to studying things like the Periodic Table. We touched on this subject a bit last week in reading about atoms. Haley got a bit glassy eyed while I was reading, although the boys seemed to understand. Maybe its that whole math thing again. They just seem to "get" math while Haley and I have to actually work at it. Regardless, in my quest to make the elements fun and more approachable, I found this fun song from They Might Be Giants.



I also printed out black and white copies of the Period Table for them to color and have some fun with. I also found a neat website that allows the kids to see the entire table, and by clicking on any of the individual elements they can find out more about it. It gives a picture and description of each one. This really helped in my opinion. All those numbers and symbols is just WAY too confusing in my opinion! Overall, I think that's enough for right now. I mean seriously, I managed to graduate from highschool and I don't think I even knew that much. Regardless, if you happen to be studying chemistry this year as we are, you might want to give some of these ideas a try!

Protons, Neutrons, Electrons and more...Fun with Atoms!

This year we're once again doing our Classically Catholic Memory program.  Last year it was all about earth science and astronomy.  This year we get to delve into the exciting study of chemistry and physics.  We've done some chemistry in the past using Real Science 4 Kids, and really enjoyed it.  We'll be using some of those studies again this year, and adding in lots more. 

Week 1 of our memory work focuses on atoms.  We spent the first two days reading about atoms in our Real Science 4 Kids, Pre-Level 1, and Level 1 books, Fizz, Bubble & Flash chemistry book, and the Usborne Encyclopedia of Science book. On Wednesday and Thursday I decided to do something more interesting and fun.  So, after scouring the internet for resources, here are a few of the fun ones we did.  First and foremost, Bill Nye The Science Guy has a segment on atoms!



Next, we made models of atoms using Play-doh. Adam chose to make a carbon atom. I was seriously amazed at how much he retained from the books we read. He used the Periodic Table of Elements to determine that his atom needed to have 6 protons, which he made out of purple Play-doh. Then, since all elements must have the same number of electrons as protons, he made 6 small balls of light brown Play-doh to zoom around the nucleus of his atom. He then determined that carbon has an atomic weight of 12.011, which allowed him to figure out that he needed 6 neutrons as well. He used mint green Play-doh for this. By the way, he remembered (all by himself), that you take the atomic weight of the element you wanted to make, and subtract the number of protons it has,and you'll know how many neutrons it has. Pretty cool, huh? Why is it that he gets this so easily while Haley and I had to re-read everything multiple times to make sense of it? So not fair!

Lastly, I found a cute little song that is sung to the tune of The Addams Family theme song.  I'm dating myself here...  My kids had no idea who the Addam's were, so that led to another search to give them little background info.  It really helps if you listen to the original theme song first to get an idea of how to sing this. 


Now that you know the tune, plug in these lyrics and have some fun! Hope your week was as fun as ours!

They're tiny and they're teeny 
Much smaller than a beany,
They never can be seeny,  
The Atoms Family.
 
They are so small. (snap,snap)
They're round like a ball. (snap,snap)
They make up the air.
They're everywhere.  
Can't see them all. (snap,snap)
 
Together they make gases,
And liquids like molasses,
And all the solid masses,  
The Atoms Family
 
They are so small. (snap,snap)
They're round like a ball. (snap,snap)
They make up the air.
They're everywhere.
Can't see them all. (snap,snap)

Neutrons can be found,
Where protons hang around;
Electrons they surround  
The Atoms Family
 
They are so small. (snap,snap)
They're round like a ball. (snap,snap)
They make up the air.
They're everywhere.
Can't see them all. (snap,snap)

What is it with bees and pools?

I wish somebody would please explain to me why it is that I have literally hundreds of honey bees at my pool every day?  We have a beekeeper about 1/4 of a mile from our house and apparently their favorite watering hole is our pool.  I've heard that its the chlorine.  At first, the kids were terrified of being stung.  However, after explaining that honey bees are generally very unlikely to sting unless threatened, they've gotten used to them.  Haley even goes so far as to let them land on her hand!  Their favorite landing spot is my float.  You can generally find around 25 bees on it at any given time.

Having them so close and in such great numbers does allow us to study them.  We have enjoyed many days sitting really still in the pool watching a bee slurp up pool water.  Unfortunately, some of the bees fall in and drown.  I do my best to rescue as many as I can, but inevitably I miss a few.  Why all this talk of bees...maybe because we haven't done much else of interest over the past few days.  Here's a closeup of one of our "pool bees".  Cool huh?

P.S.  Haley says to be sure to look for the hair on her eyeball.

Garden Fun with Loofahs!

We've had a raised bed garden in our backyard for several years now.  Earlier this spring we had several varieties of lettuce, a few strawberry plants, and 4 tomato plants.  One of our dogs seemed to think the garden soil was the very best place in our entire yard to sleep.  He ruined two of the tomato plants, dug up my spinach and lettuce, and basically ruined the garden.  So, I finally convinced my husband to build a fence around the garden to keep him out.  At this point it was late in the season, and we only had two tomato plants and one strawberry plant left.  So, I decided to just do something for fun in the garden this year.  When I was a child, my German grandmother had loofah vines growing on a fence in her backyard.  I have vivid memories of picking the loofahs, taking them home, and using the loofah sponges in the bath.  In discussing loofahs with friends lately, I'm amazed at how few people seem to know what I'm talking about.  Surely you've seen or used a loofah at some point in your life?

We ordered seeds online and in just a few weeks we had vines growing up our fence.  It took quite some time, but we finally were rewarded with big yellow flowers about two weeks ago.  Kinda pretty, aren't they?

So we've watched and waited to see our first loofah gourd appear.  On Monday I finally found one!  In looking more closely, we actually have about four loofahs already.  They are growing like crazy and get bigger every day.

We have enjoyed watching the vines twist and climb on anything and everything around.  Good thing the birds are done with the house for the season...I think the loofah vine is going to overtake it soon!

As I mentioned earlier, we also have two tomato plants that survived the dog.  Nobody in our family actually eats tomatoes except my husband.  We just grow them for fun.  We haven't had much luck with them this year though.  Could be because the kids keep picking the green ones before they're ripe.  While I was out admiring our loofah gourds this week I found this interesting looking caterpillar on one of the tomato plants.  In looking closer, it seems he had a friend with him, as there were actually two on one of the plants.

After taking his picture and showing the kids, we scoured our Field Guide to Butterflies to figure out what he was.  Turns out he's not exactly considered a good type of caterpillar.  He's a tomato hornworm.  They are actually garden pests.  He and his buddy will most likely devour every green leaf on the tomato.  Oh well...at least somebody will enjoy them.  They don't even turn into a pretty butterfly.  They end up as a somewhat nondescript moth.  Bummer...