Week 5 - Half-Way Home

Just 5 more weeks or so before my stronger half gets back and we head back to NC. Let's see, what were we doing this week...

Ah, so M got sick. So we pretty much stayed home most of the week. And since we stayed home, we made stuff, mostly toys but also a magazine.

First, we made the TIE Fighter using a toilet paper roll, some empty tea candle holders, styrofoam ball (big mistake since it managed to both absorb a ton of spray paint and melt in the process), left-over styrofoam take-out containers and some odds and ends.

Then we made a robotic capsule that uses two kinds of fuels (disgusting syrup and liquid methane, as explained by M). Then we played a bit with it pretending that it first landed on a wild planet full of hungry dinosaurs and then - on the Moon.

We also made a drawbot, but I can't find a picture of it so I'll post it later. Tomorrow we're staying home again 'cause M is not completely over his cold. So we plan on making another bot, this one - to knock the building blocks down and then to have an epic fight with the drawbot.

Another thing we tried making was our own magazine. M seemed to be interested. You see, I bought him an issue of Popular Mechanics that he really wanted 'cause it had a picture of a giant space ship on the cover. But turns out, the actual article wasn't very long and, more importantly, didn't have many pictures at all.

I suggested that if he was to publish his own magazine, he can control what stories appear in it. He, of course, said that the magazine had to be only about the Outer Space. In fact, he wanted it to be called "The Cosmos Magazine". So we went through our collection of clippings and M put together a cover.

Then he chose two pictures - the Moon and the Big Dipper - and created stories about them. I, of course, wrote them down. He then wanted an article about galaxies, but didn't want to come up with any more stories himself. So he went to ask Grandpa for a story and that's how we ended up with an interview.

Also, before M got sick we went to a lake nearby. The weather was very nice and M wanted to get some decomposing bark for some experiments. I asked him what kind of experiments and he relied "I am going to pour some water into a bowl and put bark into water and wet it and then I will observe what happens". He did collect enough bark and then he did do the experiment. Afterwards I asked him about his observations. His response: "The bark got wet, floated, but didn't change at all".

So that's about it. This weekend we'll be doing a ton of kitchen experiments, I guess. Oh, and go on a walk to look for bunnies 'cause M wants to catch one and bring him home and feed him bunny food and call him "Zaika".