liralen | A Very Busy Week (Reply)

Last week was really fun and really, really busy. We would run off to dinner at about 5, get to the church before 6, get Jet off with his class, and then Tonya, John, and I would set up the classroom and then run three sets of at least two experiments every single evening.

I'll admit that this was the first time I'd ever heard of a science portion to a Vacation Bible School curriculum. And I think all of us really wanted to pull it off and fascinate the kids and make it work so that the parents would be good with us having something like that again. I think it might have worked, as at least five sets of parents said that their kids were happily doing experiments at home to show them and really wanted to come each day in order to do the surprise experiment of the day. *grin*

I think the best one was the "growing your own 'coral reef'", which we did explain wasn't a *real* coral reef, it was a bunch of chemicals, water, and salt that would let salt crystals grow out of a charcoal (we could have used sponge or concrete... weird) base, which would absorb the mix and then wick it up to the "coral". The results were pretty spectacular.

If you click it, it'll take you to where I put a few other pictures of the grown "coral". . It took the whole week to grow these things. We actually used Mrs. Stewart's Blueing as our blueing for these things, which is why the puddles at the bottom of them is so dark. It's concentrated blueing, where one uses about a quarter of a teaspoon for a whole load of white laundry, we were dumping a good two tablespoons of the stuff into each bowl at a time. Meep.

We did floating and sinking lemons with or without peels (the peels contain air pockets that float the fruit). We did "divers" putting packets of soy sauce in bottles of water (pressure on the bottle reduces the air volume, displacing less water...). We did towers of sugar cubes (with and without sugar glue, that was quite a one to 'reset' between classes). We did "fishing" for ice cubes using string and salt. We did breaking the surface tension of milk with drops of food coloring in it by using a toothpick tipped in detergent (lots of ooos and ahhs with that one). It was lots of just cool things about how reality works.

And by the end of the week we were all exhausted. On Saturday all Jet and I did was play Okami. *giggles*

Today, though, I asked Jet to *read* everything everyone was saying while we played. He hates that, but it's great practice for him as he's about to get back to it. He's starting to recover what he learned last year, so that's all to the good. So now video game time is reading practice time, like it or not. And he's loving Okami now, so I'm taking advantage of it.

We did stop long enough to crank homemade vanilla ice cream on the back porch. With just John, Jet and I we were all scrambling a bit, and Jet was stooping to go under John and I in order to put more ice and salt around the cannister. He did a great job of resupply and sitting on the rim to help put more weight on it to keep it down. The ice cream was for the "Ice Cream Social" after the performance on Sunday. Jet was quite happy to participate in the singing and dancing. He had a lot more kids his age this time through and he was very comfortable with the whole thing, which wasn't true in the past. I was glad to see that he really enjoyed the whole thing.

The ice cream was a hit, along with the chocolate and peach ice creams and toppings brought along by other people. It was fun to see it all get eaten.

Now I'm trying to find the class materials for a class I'm trying to teach in the fall about why Christians should take care of the Earth... *sigh* It's a good one to do. I'm just not sure I'm the one to teach it as part of my brain is like "DUH!!" Ahem. Stewards not Dominion. Damnit. I'm afraid I'll resort to swearing at anyone that doesn't share my belief. Which would make me a BAD teacher. So it is.

I cleaned out my "pile" for the first time in... nearly four years I think. Since we moved here. Maybe even beyond that as it might still be the accumilation in the same slot from the previous house. *giggles* John has said that he was afraid of that pile. I threw nearly two-thirds of it into the recycle. It is much happier now.

School starts in a WEEK. Agh.

Jet's ready, though, as he's wanting to play with other kids again. Open house is Thursday night. They post all the lists of the classes tomorrow. It would be good to know. The new school just a mile away is breaking ground and there's a long discussion about who should go to which elementary and how to draw the borders. I'm glad they're actually asking all the parents to vote and giving adequate arguments for each of the three proposals.

My jaw still aches sometimes, but not so bad I'm having to resort to any painkillers, which is very good. My breathing is much, much better now. My eyes are still irritated, even on the antihistamines, but they're NOT infected, so that's good. The irritation has gone down significantly, but they're still unhappy in the morning until John closes the windows and turns on the HEPA filter for me. That helps, too.

The prospect of allergy shots is mildly daunting, but also good in that I know what it can do for me. It really could clear *everything* up as it did in Southern California (everything growing all the time) and Seattle (with ALL those plants), so I have pretty good hope here.