Candy Experiments (with pictures)

Have you heard of Candy Experiments?  It's a particularly useful website right after major holidays in which tons of candy are handed out (ie, Halloween).  You take all your candy and you do experiments on it.  We've done it before, but this year was a bit different.

First off, I made them write.  They wrote what the experiment was, what they anticipated would happen, what did happen, and why they thought that was.  In other words, Boo and I tried to emphasize the scientific process to Little Bit.  Now, they didn't necessarily like writing it all down, but they did it.

So, I'm going to try to post pictures and explain what is happening in each one.  This post may be picture heavy.  If you have any questions, please feel free to ask me.

This is the M&M/Skittles test.  We put a small package of Skittles in water and watched.  Boo used water from the tap.

 Little Bit used water from the fridge.  And yes, it made a difference.  The "S"s floated up really quickly on Boo's test.  They took over an hour on Little Bit's test.

 This is the sink or float test.  We were using a mini 3 musketeers.

 I'm not sure what result we were supposed to see.  But we did it.

 This was test to see the oil in the candies.  We tested 4 different kinds.  This is Little Bit's plate.  She did a little bit shorter time than Boo.

 But Boo was intrigued and decided to do her own test.  She did each one on a separate plate and for a really long time.

 I don't remember what Boo was expecting to happen, but she was satisfied with the results of her test.  Interestingly, if you melt the candy long enough, it bubbles sort of like pancakes, but after it cools down, it's actually hard.

This was where we realized the "M"s were coming up on Little Bit's first test.

 This was an acid test.  We crushed up nerds and lemon heads and sweet tarts, and then mixed them into water.  Then they took a spoonful of baking soda and added it to the water.  We had some interesting results.  The nerds fizzed and died pretty quickly.  The sweet tarts fizzed a little, but then they foamed.  Very interesting to watch.

 This is a continuation of test #1.  We used hot water versus cold water.  The biggest observation was how the colors did not bleed off or mix as well in the cold water cup.

 Next we did a "hidden sugar" test.  We took our favorite foods and measure out how many grams of sugar each had, by using M&Ms and Skittles and other smallish type candy.  Little Bit measure Fast Mac.

 Boo measured a serving of Nutella.  Since she's a fairly healthy eater anyway, I didn't rub in how much sugar it had.  I like letting them make natural observations.

 Then we decided to do the chromatography experiment.  This one was a bit more complex.  But we figured it out and tested just about everything left in our candy buckets.  I can tell you that brown M&Ms and purple and red Skittles give the best results, while green ones aren't too bad either. However.... Smarties don't work for this test.

 We took this picture after about an hour.  I should have taken a picture the next day, because it was really rather spectacular.  But maybe that just gives you an incentive to do it yourself.  ;)

 Up until this point, I had been guiding the testing.  Then I let them loose.  I let them design their own experiments.  I was nearby to offer assistance as needed.


They did candy experiments for over 3 hours.

It's really fun watching my children grow and process and learn. Candy experiments is just one of the ways we accomplish that.

Plus, the more candy we use for experiments, the less I eat.  ;)

Until next time,
Hugs,
Melinda

Halloween Party

Boo is a teenager now.  With all kinds of teenage problems.  Part of the problem is that she's homeschooled and that the youth group at our church is mostly public school kids and sort of small. 

Of course, I say that because my youth group was 100+.  This group has around 15.  Maybe.

So Dale and I came up with a sort of plan to help.  We decided to have a Halloween party. 

Of course that meant that we had to clean the house.  I mean a really deep clean.  I joked that we were spring cleaning either 6 months early or 6 months late.  We spent a week and a half working on every room in the house (minus the basement and the garage). 

Then we decorated.

We made monster fingers.

And made witches hats and sugar cookie bones.

 I liked the decorations on my kitchen window sill.  Eyeballs, a blackbird, a pumpkin, and....

 .... our potion jars.  We had body parts, spiders, a snake, and "frozen bubbles."

 We made a crepe paper spider,

 and decorated the piano.  (The lamp has a black light bulb in it.)

 We set out Boo's potion bottles and her bloody candle.

 There were spider webs galore.

 This is just a few of the treats we made.

 And Jack O' Lantern pizza of course.

 We served Black Punch with shark fin ice,

 and mummy dogs!  These were different than "normal" because they had arms and legs.

And we played the mummy game.  They worked in teams of two to come up with the best mummy.  This is a variation of the "wedding dress" game that we played at one of my bridal showers, which I've also used for a snowman game.  It's very versatile.  :-D

While we didn't get a lot of friends from the youth group, we did have a good time.  The added bonus is that my house is now clean, and we've been following FlyLady's routines so that it is also staying clean.

We love having people over and we had a grand time.

Until next time,

Hugs,

Melinda

New family member!

This is a story I simply have to tell before I do anything else.  I'm gonna burst with excitement.

So last week, Wednesday to be exact, Dale is on his way home on his bike.  He called me and said, "I have a follower and I'm not sure what to do.  Can you pick me up?" Okay, I'm on my way.  But as I'm driving to pick him up, I'm thinking all sorts of crazy thoughts.  We had been watching Flashpoint, and I was terrified he had been kidnapped. 

I pulled up, and he showed me the little black dog that had been following him.  She was as sweet as all get out.  We were able to take her to the vet before they closed for the night.

She had a microchip.

Which is good for her, and good for her owners, but bad for Dale.

For that 30 minutes that the dog followed him, and my coming to get him, and taking her to the vet, Dale had a dog. 

My silly husband who protests that he doesn't like animals  got attached to a dog.

I asked him Thursday night if he wanted to go look at a shelter, and he insisted he didn't.

So, we're sitting on the couch just chilling out Saturday morning, when I looked over to see what he was doing on the computer.

He was looking at dog pictures.  ROFLOL

So, I got him and the girls up and out the door.  First we went to Brookside Barkery and Bath, where one of the local shelters was showing and adopting dogs.  We almost came home with Drummer or Charley Horse.

Next, we went to Wayside Waifs.  We went up and down their kennel areas.  We looked at all the dogs.  We picked 2 to meet.  Dolly and Holly.  Dolly was a cattle dog mix and loved her toys.  Holly looked like a whippet mix, and was fairly shy.  We played with both dogs.  We ran outside with both dogs.  We couldn't decide.

But the good thing about Wayside Waifs is that they want you to have a dog-to-dog meeting before you adopt.  So regardless, we had to go back to get Nana.

Keep in mind, we left our house at 10:40.  When we got back into Independence at 2:00, we decided to go have lunch at our favorite restaurant Square Pizza and talk about which we liked best.  We picked up Nana and got back to the shelter at 3:00.

As we were walking in the door, Holly and her new owners were walking out.  Oh well, and congratulations. 

So, we did the dog-to-dog meeting with Dolly.

Surprisingly, we didn't know Nana was a herding dog until we saw her herding us.  First she herded Dolly away from us, then she herded us away from Dolly.  We had lots of concerns with having two dogs, and asked lots of questions on how to handle the two of them.

But at 5:30, we left the shelter with Dolly, that Dale has re-named Skye. 

Meet the newest member of our pack!

The thing about cattle dogs is they have a LOT of energy.  They are what César Millan would call "high energy." One of the best ways to get rid of that energy so that you don't have destructive behaviors is to give them lots of exercise.  So Dale and I have been waking up early (5:00 am) to walk both dogs.  We've been increasing our distance every time.  We walked just over 2 miles this morning.

Skye looks like she would have a lot of fun on an agility course, but that probably won't happen until next spring after we've had some time to work on her with training.  We know that she loves chasing tennis balls and Frisbees.  And already, all of us have spent more time outside exercising with her than probably in the past month. 

She is a good addition to our family, but more importantly.....

Dale has a dog.

Hugs,
Melinda

Homeschool progress

It was pointed out to me the other day, that I am supposed to be keeping a journal of sorts to document the progress that the children are making in our homeschool efforts.  While I am going to still keep up a certain level of anonymity, I am going to try to start making regular blog entries along those lines.  Little Bit is still the youngest.  Boo is still the oldest.

My mother in law came for a visit about a week and a half ago.  She and her new honey weren't here for very long.  We went to the Truman Presidential Library because even though we've lived in the area for about 7 years, we have never been.

Later that night, I asked Little Bit to read Nonnie.  I thought she was going to choose an easy to read book.  She did.  Sort of.  The book she read was actually an easy to read chapter book.  She read out loud to Nonnie for about 15 minutes.

And she's been reading verses out loud during Bible time.  Words like "therefore" and "judgment" and "Israel.". (We're currently in the book of Judges.)

This child, the one I struggled and fought tooth and nail to get to read, the one who still really doesn't like "reading and phonics," is becoming a reader.  She loves going to the library, and she loves checking out chapter books.  I am amazed at how well she has improved in 6 months. 

Of course, part of it is that I stopped pushing certain books, and started letting her pick books she thought she would enjoy.  It really makes a difference.

So that's Little Bit's progress.

Boo's progress is a bit harder to gauge.  Is she improving?  Yes.  She constantly writes and reads.  Her history is a freshman level history book.  She is able to converse with her daddy and myself on a more intellectual basis.

But math is still sort of a sore subject. 

She uses Teaching Textbooks.  She's on grade 7.  And she's a "freshman."

In all honesty, math is probably one of the biggest reasons I wanted to pull her out of public school.  Her 3rd grade year, she had 3 different teachers within about a 3 month period.  That's when they learned multiplication.  It was never cemented in her mind, so I still see the struggle even 6 years later.  And it seemed like none of her teachers wanted to work with her.

So we pulled her out and started working with her ourselves.

Dale has started practicing basics with her.  Just trying to do math drills and improve her speed on the basics. 

This is where the benefits of homeschooling comes into play.  I can tell you that Little Bit is strong in math, and Boo is strong in reading.  If Boo never takes calculus or trigonometry, that's alright.  Little Bit does have to learn how to read, though.  But my efforts are going to focus on reading for information as opposed to reading simply for enjoyment. 

So that's our progress this year.  I hope to have more updates, ideally once a week, but practically, once a month.  Have a good day.

Hugs,
Melinda