Messy Art Again and All the Rain

This last week has been a very busy one for us. At least I remembered to take my camera with me, most of the time.

M asked to do a Big Messy Art project! Hooray, this has never happened before since he'd rather do almost anything else than paint. But this time he asked, no, insisted, on doing the "blow-dryer art". Remembering lessons learned the last time we tried this project, I prepared a couple of ping-pong balls, paint thinned with water, and a piece of paper securely taped to the box.

Also this week - we've had quite a lot of rain, but in between all the showers and thunderstorms we managed to go pick some mulberries. Actually, we got to go a couple of times, once with Chris and then, during the week - just M and I. For that second trip I got an old trike out of the attic. It's an old Kettler that I picked up at a Kids Exchange sale a year or so ago. I thought I got a good deal on it, but turned out the bike needed new set of tires which meant that the entire rear wheels assembly had to be changed. So for right now it's running as is and I'm just counting on M outgrowing his trike soon enough.

Big surprise this year - turns out, M can ride a trike all by himself... on a smooth surface and preferably on a slight downhill slope. Anything rough or uphill requires too much work, so he stops pedaling and asks me to push him. But boy, he loves riding downhill, going as fast as he can. Except that he keeps looking over his shoulder to make sure I'm not holding the bike. And when he does this, the bike swerves widely which scares me a whole lot since the breaks aren't all that great either.

Still, we managed to get as far along the Art Museum trail as the Two Mulberries. You see, the mulberries at the trailhead get picked a lot. When we got there, there weren't that many berries within easy reach. But most casual walkers don't go far enough into the woods and runners and bikers don't care about stopping and snacking. So it's left to us, serious berry hunters, to pick and eat them berries.

With our bellies full (we also had a mini-picnic half-way to the mulberries), we started heading back, but got caught in a downpour. So M pedaled and I pushed and panting we got to a little pavilion half-way to the car. It's a very nice pavilion with sweeping views of the entire Museum Park, but we never before made it there.

Another thing we did this week was testing our water wall. I saw this idea here and liked it 'cause it looked so simple. Besides, I already had all the components - a big piece of left-over peg board and lots of containers. So I took the next step - handed it all to Chris and told him that, when put together properly, it would make a terrific water toy (yes, he is a very patient and understanding man).

He set to work. Turned out that the bolts I had didn't match the holes in the pegboard. Nothing some drilling couldn't fix though. M seemed to be interested mostly in getting a hold of the drill. Once the wall was assembled, he showed remarkably little interest in it. Hmm, back to the drawing board since he generally likes everything that is remotely like a marble run. I might try PVC pipes and clear tubing instead.

At the end of the week we made a great discovery. We found a new (to us) park not far from the house (15-minute drive). The awesome feature of this park is its slides. They are built into the slopes. Somehow this makes them a lot more attractive to children of all ages (and to adults as well). M and a bunch of other boys from the local homeschooling group spent close to 2 hrs on these slides! Or rather on the rubberized slopes. There's something very compelling in being able to slide down the hillside.

More Space Stuff

Are you tired yet? Well, M's fascination with space is nowhere near over, just the opposite. We read The Magic School Bus Takes a Moonwalk daily and The Magic School Bus Lost in the Solar System - almost daily. That's in addition to lots and lots of other awesome books about planets and galaxies and astronauts that we go through several times a day.

We also finished the space helmet. It's giant! I clearly over-estimated my child's head size, but at least he won't get stuck in it. Plus now even adults can try it on (and believe me, we have no shortage of the takers).

Now when M goes anywhere where there might be other children (or adults) he wants to dress up in not only the space suit, but also wear the helmet and the "oxygen tanks". And when he's not in this uniform, he likes to approach people and announce to them "I'm going to be an astronaut when I grow up". He then proceeds to introduce me as Ms. Frizzle (the awesome, but strangely-dressed teacher from The Magic School Bus series).

He addresses me as Ms. Frizzle throughout the day as in "Ms. Frizzle, we have a problem" or "Ms. Frizzle, you are the strangest teacher in school" or "Ms. Frizzle, I have a question for you" or "Ms. Frizzle, take us to the magic school bus". And yes, he addresses himself in plural sometimes because while I'm Ms. Frizzle, he is her entire class. Oh, and our cat, Xander, is renamed "Liz, the lizard" on these occasions.

Being Ms. Frizzle is really not so bad at all. Especially compared to all my previous gigs as Winni the Pooh, the ghost, Lolochka the puppy, Zamatayu the dog, Luna 3 the lunar module, the witch, etc, etc. At least I no longer have to speak in alarmingly low, startlingly high or unnaturally constipated voices. And I get to hear things such as "That was a great field trip, Ms. Frizzle" pretty much after every playdate and outing.

But I started running out of ideas for space-related games and craft activities. Thankfully, our local teacher's store had this awesome book - Solar System - Curriculum Based Hands-on Activities. It's for Grades 1-3, but I looked through it quickly and it seemed that many of the activities could be easily adapted to a younger child.

M was very excited when I told him we'll be doing more space experiments. So far we've done the experiment to see how impact craters are formed and why a space ship can't land on a gas giant. This sounds fancy, but all it took was some sand and potatoes for the former and an egg and a coin for the latter.

We also made a couple of catapults. One was large, simple and not very spectacular. The other one, slightly more complicated and much smaller was awesome. It shot little foil projectiles clear across the room!

Then we took a little break to look at some pictures of space stuff. And that's how we accidentally stumbled upon a new game. We lined up the cards, set the catapult some distance away and tried landing foil meteors on different space objects. Then M tried to launch the little astronaut into a black hole to see him get spaghettified.

Millions of Stars and a Backhoe

This is M's spaceship. It's huge (all three of us plus the cat can fit in it at once) and has lots of stuff attached to it - a control panel, lots of buttons, a mailbox, a gas tank (can't see it from this angle very well), a telescope (can't see it at all), and the faithful robot Zigzagoroll (hey, M named him).

(What's up with all these posts?! Well, we were so busy doing all sorts of fun stuff lately and I meant to blog about it as it happened... Except that we all got sick. And as we got better, we had to hit the ground running - Chris had his work and I had, well, my biz. Plus all the house chores that piled up sky-high in just a couple of days (incredible!).

So I'm playing the catch-up now while I procrastinate and put off work projects.)

The weekend before we all got sick we all went to the Morehead Planetarium in Chapel Hill. Now that M is into space and being an astronaut, it was a perfect excuse for me to go (I love planetarium shows even better than I love IMAX ones).

M couldn't wait to go to the planetarium. Of course, he had to put his space suit on! You see, in his "The Magic Schoolbus: Lost in Space" the story begins with a field trip to a planetarium. Except planetarium is closed for repairs. I think he secretly counted on our car turning into a rocket at some point and blasting off into space a la the Magic Schoolbus.

Well, let's just say that M enjoyed every second of the planetarium show (we watched the one based on one of The Magic Treehouse books). And he learned a lot of new stuff, like what galaxies are and what black holes are and how one can get spaghettified if one falls into a black hole.

So on our way back home, he told us about all this. Except that he doesn't pronounce his "r"s and "l"s in some of the words. So it came out something like this: "See, in space there are many galaxies. Galaxies have millions of stars! And there are backhoes! Backhoes are dangeyos and you don't fall in them!"

When we got back home, he played with his spaceship (at the top of this post), which, by the one is not a spaceship at all, but now it's his lunar module. And then he felt inspired to build a model of the International Space Station out of the off-cuts from our everlasting treehouse project. And we were duly amazed.

P.S. Ah, if you are wondering why M is wearing a little furry critter backpack with his space suit, the answer is simple and kinda obvious - since M's in open space, he needs oxygen to breath and the pack stores his "кислородные баллоны" (oxygen tanks).

P.P.S. This is the latest in our collection of space crafts (no pun intended). This little guy is Giotto, a space probe that was sent to the Halley comet. Don't know what went into the original, but this model is built with a toilet paper tube, a section of an egg carton, a plastic lid from a spice container, foil, painters tape and a small piece of wood.

Candy Science

Since this year's Halloween was on a Sunday, we didn't get as many visitors as we planned for and, consequently, had lots of candy left.

So the next day I asked M if he wanted to try a few candy experiments. He's all excited about experiments since, you know, that's what astronauts do on the space station. Our experiments were nothing fancy - just mixing hard candy with hot and cold water, soda, vinegar, flour, and salt. Oh, and we microwaved a few of the concoctions. Soda and vinegar mixes were huge hits as well as nuking the mixtures. We also finally learned that not everything that smells good tastes good. That's a huge breakthrough, don't you think?!