Alina's Adventures

A morning in the life of junior waterkeepers.

The Eldest and E. were dressed, fed, and out the backdoor by 8 a.m. this morning in pursuit of a noble cause. Last night, they regaled us with stories of a "disgusting, blood reddish pond" in the woods abutting Cherokee Hills and Woodland Hills. They were determined to investigate further this morning.

By the time I rolled out of bed and doused my face in coffee, the boys had returned- "You've got to see this!"- and convinced me to hop in the spaceship and drive over to Lakewood Circle to photograph the curious pond. I parked on the street and crossed my fingers that no one would report us. 

We entered the woods just past a water drain.

"Watch where you step," warned the Eldest. The kudzu hibernates during the winter but everything we see (and every step we take) is a mass of kudzu come summertime. Not what you'd call firm ground.

The Prophet and Gnome walked down the slippery slope, eyes peeled for holes and loose soil. They wanted to throw sticks into the "bloody water."

The boys were right. It wasn't pretty. And it came straight from the stormwater drain.

You could see the high degree of sedimentation just beneath the orange skein.

After having followed the water upstream and downstream, the boys had their theories. E. mentioned a possible sewer line spilling into the woods. We concluded the storm drain near the street was the probably source point of pollution.

Looking downstream from the pond.

The Eldest pontificates.

"Shouldn't we map out the watershed so we can see where all this is going?", I asked. The photos of watershed landmarks come in handy when map time rolls around.

The boys wanted to follow the water back to Cherokee Hills so I hiked back to the spaceship (which hadn't been towed) and drove back to wait for the budding waterkeepers.

"The water looks super yuck!"

Back at the castle, a hapless queen scoured the web for answers. The coolest geologist in the world (cough, Anne Wynn) gave us a clue- the boys were exploring the Cribb Mill Creek Watershed. And what do you know? A google search gave me the Cribbs Mill Creek Watershed Management Plan. The boys returned anxious to test the water and see the watershed plan. Cowabunga, let the good times roll.

We're off to test the water with our water testing kits. The mischief-maker in me says why not leave a geocache near the nasty pond to encourage others to bear witness but the fine, upstanding mom in me says what if some fool gets hurt. Who knows which side will win?

A volcano simulation with Bunicu and Pam.

Bunicu uses plaster to prepare the volcano as Prophet watches. He explains that plaster won't get sticky until you add water and then mold the wet plaster into a shape.

There are old black and white photographs from Romania-- photos from my baby days-- where I lay naked in the crook of his arm after a bath. I recognize the hands and how little they have changed-- still big enough to move mountains and gentle enough to soothe nightmares.

 I only notice the cobwebs on the windows in retrospect-- when I see a photo, for example.

The plaster is dry-- and the volcano simulation is ready to go. "Everybody outside," Bunicu declares. The fastidious metallurgist within seeks extra cardboard just in case this volcano gets wild.

"Oooooh," admires the Eldest in his best faux-Romanian accent.

I try not to mention what strikes me at first glance-- hey, that's a really little volcano. The captive audience awaits an explosion.

Soon, the Professor is doing what he does best-- pontificating about chemical processes and molecular physics. It's my favorite part, if only because it brings back childhood memories of dinner.

In his hand circles a bottle of citric acid mixed with red food dye. This citric acid will be key to the volanic eruption.

"Hey," offers the Eldest, "you know vinegar works just as well-- maybe even better-- than citric acid."

"Bah," says the Professor. 

The Professor (a.k.a. Bunicu) begins to squirt the citric acid solution into the tube which runs under and up the small plaster volcano.

A small trickle of red frothy liquid spittles up from the top of the volcanic cone.

"Oh no!" yells Gnome. "It's not working!"

The Professor continues his patient infusion. Finally, overhearing the Gnome's huffing and puffing, he asks what isn't working.

"The volcano!" shouts Gnome. "The volcano's not 'splodin'." 

"I'll be right back"- and the Eldest returns with a bottle of white vinegar procured from somewhere in the nether-regions of the kitchen cupboard.

As the Professor watches, the Eldest pours a capful over the volcano's top-- "so the baking soda will fizz."

When it fizzes and soaks the cardboard box, a satisfied smirk appears on Gnome's face. "Now it's splodin'," she tells us. 

"What did she say?" the Professor asks patiently.

"Oh. She said thank you."

Did I say thank you, dad? For all the ways your hands still grace our lives. Thank you.

Watching a luna moth emerge and dry its wings.

It was the Eldest who first spotted the bright green friend crouched in a corner of the castle exterior.

"A friendly dragon," we determined. 

Moving closer to establish the requisite rapport, we realized that our friendly dragon was actually a luna moth recently emerged from its pupa and testing its wings in real-time. Luna moths only live for a brief period of time, during which they must first spend a day allowing their fragile, splendid wings to dry.

Things began to happen very quickly- with the same intensity of being in labor, tiny movements leading to fantastic physical changes.

I called Prophet, Gnome, and Little B. to join us.

We watched the moth's fragile wings tremble with each gust of fragrant spring wind.

We studied the perfect symmetry of the lines on its back. Then discussed the shapes we could find in its thorax and abdomen.

Suddenly, the luna moth shuddered and curled into itself. When it curled back out again, two slender appendages with golden endings emerged and remained dangling.

Gnome opens the gate carefully so as not to disturb our moth friend.

When the luna moth tumbled down from its high spot on the wall, we watched with bated breath as it climbed up the side of the wooden fence to rest at the top of the gate. Then we relocated to watch the events from the other side of the fence. 

The Eldest admired the luna moth's "featherlike" antlers, which appeared to be made of perfect, super-sensitive combs.

"I can't believe it is so perfect.... and delicate," he concluded, as he stood, transfixed, by the tiny details witnessed up close, the ones we never bother to seek unless forced before us by a circumstance.

And so we sat, and watched- the little ones resorting to dirt and stones when the waiting felt too laborious. We made up poems and rhymes, which quickly turned to songs and riddles.

Four hours and several bowls of pineapple later, our luna moth friend felt ready to fly. I won't tell you which one of us cried when it finally heaved its amazing wings and fluttered away. The whole watching and waiting was intensely beautiful and awe-inspiring. I learned more about from this brief learning experience than I have learned from any textbook or media about the sublime life of the luna moth. Profoundly grateful for what Barbara Kingsolver calls the "small things". 

Road-tripping across Arkansas.

On the drive to Colorado, we crossed Arkansas and stuck to I-40 all the way. First came the spectacular border crossing of the Mississippi River in West Memphis. Then came Forrest City and Little Rock, followed by Conway (where we stopped to spend the night), Russellville, Clarksville, Ozark, and Fort Smith. The little people colored their maps as I chanted out local wildlife to keep on their radar. 

GEOGRAPHY: Using maps as guides for questions

Using highway map to answer questions about Arkansas (PDF)
Key to highway map and lesson plan (PDF)
Make mystery picture postcards lesson plan (PDF)
Rivers and water resources lesson plan (PDF)
Rivers and counties map activity (PDF)
River boundaries key (PDF)

NATURE STUDY: The ivory-billed woodpecker

As we drove through Arkansas, I remembered having read about a Arkansas scientist's controversial ivory-billed woodpecker sighting back in 2005. A documentary film about "the God bird" sighting offered us a chance to hone our critical thinking skills- not to mention learning a little more about the fabulous ivory-billed and its close cousin, the pileated woodpecker, who lives in the woods near our Alabama yard.

Max colored the pileated woodpecker as I recapped the controversy over the sighting. Critical thinking skills were duly exercised. We explored the woodpecker's natural habitat, and debated whether climate change or human development had more to do with the woodpecker's demise. The never-fail Cornell ornithology hub offered a map listing possible encounters with ivory-billed woodpeckers since the 1940's and NOVA boasted a focused and thoughtful video on the sighting controversy. 

The sad part of our ivory-billed woodpecker exploration came later- a few days later as we sat by the fireplace, watching the embers, burning scissor-scraps of remaining vacation brochures. Laying on his stomach, pencil working its way through the college-ruled lines of his journal, Max turned to me and said, "Mom, all the stuff about the woodpecker makes me sad."

"Why?" I wondered.

"Because I don't know if I want to be a scientist anymore."

Not seeing the connection, I asked him to explain.

"Well," Max began, hesitating for just a second, "That one scientist in the video could not believe in the ivory-billed sighting- and he said it was because he was a scientist. And I felt sorry for him when he said that..."

"Hmmm.... but we can't always believe things just because we prefer to believe them, Max."

"Yeah, but if being a scientist means you can't believe in fantastic things anymore, I don't want to be a scientist. I want to believe in things that make me happy- things that might even be impossible." His voice trailed off as he leaned over his paper to write again. 

I tried to tell him that many scientists believe in fantastic, impossible things- that science is the poetry of the universe and life at the cellular level, that beauty need not be sacrificed to the dull standards of evidence-gathering. But I knew he wasn't really listening- his pencil never paused long enough on the page. And I knew, somehow, that his concern deserved more than a standard reply.

In retrospect, maybe I should have told him that the tension between hopeful imagination and rationalistic materialism exists in every field and career path- that this tension is a facet of every modern life more than a fact of the scientist's life. And that it is only while teaching my children that I find myself free from it....

Shrooming with the kids in Alabama: Identifying sample #1.

We divide our field survey of shrooms into "samples" for the purpose of identifying them once we got home and we able to to consult a few online resources. Unfortunately, we currently lack a field guide to the world of the fungi. But we make do.

Sample #1: "The Pretty-In-Pinks"

Cap was red on top and slightly upturned. The stem was white with no ring.The cap was a light red wash- almost pink- with a soft, velvety texture. We agreed the shape of the cap was umbilicate- the edge was flat and recessed in the center, almost like a bathing pool for fairies. 

This pretty-in-pink sample boasted a obvious striate margin (another way of saying it had a lined edge). 

As I used a twig to flip over the cap, we agreed the stalk was centrally positioned. Unfortunately, our flipping method did not allow us to get a sense of the shape of the stalk's base. We could only speculate that it might have been equal.

But the underside of the cap revealed a large number of crowded cream-colored gills.

The attachment of the gills to the stalk was "free" (or not attached). Max claimed the white ring in the center made this "obvious". We concluded that it would be accurate to say them stem was white with no ring.

According to David Fischer, gilled mushrooms, or agarics, have evolved at least four or five times according to DNA study results.

This particular manifestation of the phenomenon of convergent evolution has repeated itself because each spore has an exceedingly slim chance of germinating at the right time in the right place—and two sexually compatible spores have to germinate in proximity to one another in order for mating to occur. In order to be successful, each species has to successfully compete against numerous other species for habitat. 

Fischer says the gills keep evolving because they "provide the highest surface-area-to-mass ratio for the external production of spores". 

When we broke open the middle, we discovered whitish cream spores. 

Identification 

The white gills and red/white color combination suggests a mushroom in the Russula genus. But which one?

Option 1: Russula rosea

Also known as the Rosy brittlegill, Russula rosea fruits in late October and early November, depending on the temperature of the location. The cap is red or pink, often cream towards the centre; sometimes entirely cream; dry, either shiny or matt, sometimes slightly powdered. 5 to 12cm diameter, convex, later flattening or developng a slight central depression. 

The gills are a pale cream color, almost freely attached; forked; very brittle. It maintains a mycorrhizal association with deciduous broadleaf trees, particularly Beech, but occasionally also found under conifers.

Option 2: Russula emetica

This option came up only because I read a possible ID of a mushroom almost identical to our Pretty-in-Pinks that called it a Russila emetica. First described in 1774, the "sickener" has a wide distribution in North America, where it thrives in damp woodlands in a mycorrhizal association with conifers, especially pine trees. Alas, this species is poisonous and likely to cause stomach distress. 

Option 3: Russula betularum

Russula betularum is a small, very pale member of the Russula (brittlegills) genus of mushrooms. It is usually white to very pale pink, inedible, and grows with birch trees. It is commonly known as the birch brittlegill.

Russula (Wikipedia)
List of Russula species (Wikipedia)
 Russula rosea (First Nature)
Russula emetica, the sickener (First Nature)
Russula nobilis, the beechwood sickener (First Nature)

A rock maze in autumn.

Milla decided to rearrange the rock maze... Something about the rich blanket of fall leaves made it difficult for the kids to find their way through the rocks. So Milla set about "fixing" things. She's a fixer. 

Meanwhile, nearby, we were simply a-mazed to discover how some plants ensure proper seed distribution. Fortunately, I did not have any plastic bags to bring home this sample for future learning opportunities. Max did put one of the seeds in his pocket so we could determine what plant was being "poop-planted".

Unfortunately, by the time we returned home, Max had "lost" the seed, which happens to resemble a number of the seeds we are snacking on these days.

Stones, seeds, leaves, life- all the swirling, all the color, never ceases. I've vowed to let my jaw drop more often in sheer amazement at the beauty and wackiness of life. I think this is a better choice than my usual holiday frenzy of lists and must-do's and plans....

54 ways to learn through exploring the autumn outside.

 “Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower.”
Albert Camus

1. Find symmetry in nature.
(Buggy and Buddy)

2. Use pinecones to forecast the weather.
(Sorting Sprinkles)

3. Write a poem about about how it's not just a stick.
(Child's Play Music)

4. Collect and sort different parts of trees.
(Inspiration Laboratories)

5. Make a neighborhood tree guide.
(Kid World Citizen)

6. Use trigonometry to find out the height of your favorite trees.
(Science Sparks)

7. Create mini-nature weaving looms to preserve your treasures.
(Housing A Forest)

8. Observe and journal about a stump ecoystem.

9. Find a large log and make painted coasters.
(bread and buttons)

10. Observe a day in the life of a backyard birdbath.
(The Locust-Fork News Journal)

11. Make a A-frame winter shelter in your backyard.
(Mother Earth News)

12. Go shrooming.

13. Whittle together.
(Acorn Pies)

14. Sing the autumn fairy song.
(Let's Play Kids Music)

15. Try some leaf sewing on your nature walk.
(How We Learn)

16. Celebrate your local "Fall Ball".

17. Paint on seed pods.
(Danya Banya)

18. Make colorful homemade stick wind chimes.
(Happy Hooligans)

19. Find a sacred stump and tell its story.

20. Play and craft with helicopter seeds.
(Lalymom)

21. Make a twig bow and arrow.
(Acorn Pies)

22. Make rock dominoes.
(Childcareland Blog)

23. Rake some pinestraw and donate it to your school garden.

24. Build an insect hotel.
(Babble Dabble Do)

25. Blaze your own woodland trail.
(My Nearest and Dearest)

26. Whip up some fancy dinner place cards from fall leaves.
(Cool Progeny)

27. Craft a thankful mobile- try using found natural objects.
(Made By Joel)

28. Find triangles and circles in nature on a nature walk.

29. Make fern prints.
(My Nearest and Dearest)

30. Fall madly in love with a longleaf pine tree.

31. Try leaf sorting- all you need is chalk and the great outdoors.
(How Wee Learn)

32. Create a stick family- and a story to boot.
(Craftulate)

33. Watercolor leaf prints.

34. Get acquainted with all the action around another tree stump.

35. Now consider building a little loom on it.
(Babble Dabble Do)

36. Join the Knowing Nature Challenge.

37. Play with sticks.
(Picklebums)

38. Delve into some acorn math.
(Living Montessori Now)

39. Go on a sound walk.
(Mother Goose Programs)

40. Plan an extended soundwalk through a local park. 
(Hildergard Westerkemp)

41. Make a home for hedgehogs.
(Breathing Places)

42. Play with leaves and markers.
(House Wren Studios)

43. Hone the fine art of fox walking.
(Hedgehog Leatherworks)

44. Make the easiest leaf wreath ever.
(willowday)

45. Pen an Ode to Autumn.

46. Practice your Tree Poses together in the grass.

47. Make a mobile of acorn people.
(Shared Threads)

48. Use the season as a reason for extra hugs and softened voices.

49. Create autumn nature prints in sculpey or clay.
(The Artful Parent)

50. Concoct delightful, open-ended autumn trees.
(Full Circle)

51. Fashion simple autumn leaf crowns from your special tree.
(Twig and Toadstool)

52. Start an Apple Day tradition.
(Storybook Woods)

53. Play the 5 trees outdoor game.
(5 Orange Potatoes)

54. Just sit in a sunny spot and sketch what you see- the world that surrounds you.

And if the weather is too wet for outdoor explorations, consider making a cardboard tree play house with instructions and templates from Spoonful. Because we can't control the weather outside- we can only vow to honor the weather within.

Learning about stream invertebrates.

Amy's expertise came to mind as we played around with freshwater invertebrates late last week. Max loved this freshwater name trail, so I decided to share it in case other home educators are preparing to watch what happens to local ponds and streams during cold weather. 

Learning about the periodic table: Ten great online resources.

The days of periodic tabling have arrived in the Coryell Castle. It's a challenge to teach because it wasn't always my strong point, but Max has been pushing to learn it despite state standards that don't map it to our academic year. So here's how we're doing it:

1
My favorite introductory video on the periodic table is this one.
11 mnutes of engaging combination of history and theory which provides much of the information needed to group the elements by class on the worksheets below.

2
Peridioc Table of the Elements (PDF)
Colorful and color-coded. 

3
Periodic Table of the Elements in Pictures (PDF)
Print as 2-sided document. An excellent resource. 

4
Periodic Table with Symbols (PDF)
Simple chart to help kids memorize the symbols and names of each element.

5
Color-Coded Periodic Table Worksheet (PDF)
Kids can color-code the element classes. It has an area for a color key for alkali metals, alkaline earth metal, transition metals, metalloids, nonmetals, halogens and noble gases. 

6
Name Game- Finding Elements (PDF)
A fun activity to be completed alongside a periodic table.

7
 Periodic Elements Cards (PDF)
32 pages listing all the periodic elements and their properties to print front and back. There's a card for every element, with a picture on the front and words on the back. Also included are twelve two-sided chemical group cards and five two-sided key cards (symbol key and color key).

8
Atomic Orbitals Handout (PDF)
This chart shows all the fundamental atomic electron orbitals as electron probability density distributions (fuzzy clouds), which is close as you can get to visualizing what an atom really looks like. The orbitals are labeled. It describes other ways to visualize atoms, namely, electron orbits (like planets) and surfaces of constant probability (bulgy blobs). It has a small periodic table showing in which order the electron shells are filled.

9
Periodic Table of Videos
Links to a periodic table of videos in which each element leads to a video about it. Great for visual learners.

10
The atom Handout (PDF)
A great review and introduction to the atom itself.

Exploring azaleas in our yard.

Last week, we took advantage of the last bright breath of the azaleas to learn more about the kinds that grow in our yard.

It all started when the girls picked a few large bouquets of azaleas and offered them to us as a gift. So we put each kind a different glass bottle with a little bit of water. Obviously, the azaleas were looked different from one another, so Max decided to try and identify them.

His Guide to North American Wildflowers wasn't very helpful since most of the plants were cultivated, probably purchased from a local nursery by those who owned the castle before us. So we turned to the native azalea cheatsheat in the hopes of finding more.

And then we did the unthinkable- we put off identifying our azalea friends in the interest of learning more about their anatomy and reproduction. Max wanted to see if our azaleas had all their "flower parts" so he could determine if they were perfect or imperfect flowers.

Lest you forget, dissecting flowers is the easiest way to really learn flower parts and distinguish between perfect and imperfect flowers. We also tried to determine the specific "flower shape" of our three azaleas.

Max reminded me that we could only really see the ovules, as "the ovaries are the eggs and they are teeny tiny before they become fruits".

Max got interested in the petal shapes and spent quite a bit of time trying to decide which petal margins were ruffled and which were wavy. I think I know why they never taught us this stuff in school..... it's not as easy as it appears to classify azaleas. 

Azaleas Handout (PDF)

Using the azalea handout above, Max noted the differences in our azalea friends. We took notes and hope to head over to the Arboretum for some help later this week. 

More azalea handouts and PDF printables:

Guide to Azaleas (Alabama Cooperative Extension)
Azalea Origami How-To
Azalea Bonsai (New Englad Bonsai Gardens) 
Azalea Culture for Georgia Gardens (Your Southern Gardern) 
Azalea Lace Bug Handout (OSU) 
Evergreen Azalea Handout (Virginia Tech) 
Azalea Leaf and Flower Gall Handout (University of Arkansas) 
Indian Azalea Handout 
Azalea Toxicity in Goats (Small Ruminant Ramblings) 
Azalea and Rhododendron Diseases (Clemson) 

Diagnosis Dogwood: The process for helping out a friend.

Our dogwood friends have started blooming, and a few on the backyard tree still had their eyes closed this morning- a great opportunity to really savor each step of their development. Unfortunately, I am focusing on this tree today because she is suffering and needs a diagnosis.

You can see the leaves emerging like tiny fists of green from the branches below. The leaves look green and healthy, though this might have more to do with their novelty than their general well-being.

Dogwood berries turn red in September as a signal to the birds that the seeds are ripe and ready to be eaten by birds (squirrels eat them too, but they chew up the seeds in the berries). The birds swallow the berries, digest the "meat" off the seeds, and then the softened seeds pass through the bird's digestive system. Many of the white woodland dogwoods seen blooming in the spring were planted by birds!

DIAGNOSIS DOGWOOD

To diagnose our dogwood, Max and I are flipping through the field guides and looking online. For novices like us, dogwood diagnosing works by process of elimination. For example, we don't suspect Dogwood Anthracnose because the leaves are not affected- only the flowers or bracts. Yet this anthracnose is caused by a fungus, which would make it a recurring problem, and Max says he remembers the flowers looked this way last year as well.

So we did some more research on the fungus which causes anthracnose, and we found something that didn't suit our fancy. It looks like our friend is suffering from spot anthracnose. According to plant pathologists at North Carolina State University:

Spot anthracnose, caused by Elsinoe corni, affects the flower bracts (petals), leaves and young shoots. The most conspicuous symptoms are small (1/25 to 1/16 inch in diameter), circular to elongate reddish-purple spots on the bracts in early spring. The spots may become numerous and merge, losing the distinctive characteristics of individual spots. Severely infected bracts may be stunted and disfigured and fall prematurely.

Spots on leaves are very small and dark purple in color, but the centers may turn pale yellow-gray and drop out. Heavily infected leaves are smaller than normal, distorted and often killed. Infected young shoots and berries develop elongated, scabby lesions with a purplish margin. The causal fungus produces spores on the lesions, and overwinters on infected twigs and fruit.

And so we have our answer. Now time for the solution. This part led Max to a little despair, since now we must examine the extent to which our tree has been affected and determine whether it can be saved. Not exactly what I had hoped when I lured the munchkins to the dogwood blooms this morning.....

On the other hand, if worse comes to worse, we can harvest some seeds from the dogwoods in the front yard and try to plant some healthy dogwoods in the backyard. The cycle of life is not always easy to explore with kids when it involves the possible dying of a favorite climbing-hammocking-fort tree.

MORE DOGWOOD EXPLORATIONS:

Best Ever Flowering Dogwood Coloring Page (PDF from MEEEA)
Selection and Care of Dogwoods (PDF from ACES)
Cornus florida Fact Sheet (PDF from US Forest Service)
Flowering dogwood (University of Alabama Arboretum) 
How to harvest dogwood tree seeds (Ehow) 

Color theory experiments with kids.

One thing always leads to another- in life, in science, in all those experiments we call reality. For this experiment, we used the following supplies: a plastic pipette, 3 tubes with colored water (one for each primary color) in them, a test tube rack, a color wheel, a plastic color mixing tray (ice cube tray works well), and a cup of water.

Previously, we colored the water using fizzy color pellets (though a drop or two of food dye works just as well). After the color pellets fizzled out, les petites discovered that they would need a new skill- namely, the ability to pipette- for our next experiment. We set up our color lab on top of one of the girls' desks. Max carefully unscrewed the lids from the test tubes containing our color solutions and then returned them to the rack.

First we had to learn how to use pipettes to move colored water from one place to another. Rather than jump straight into the rainbow, the girls practiced their pipetting skills with the water in the plastic cup. We discussed how scientists use pipettes all the time to carefully meausure different liquids during their experiments. The blow-by-blow:

1. Pinch the bulb of the pipette with thumb and fingers and keep squeezing. This pushes the air out.
2. While you are pinching the bulb of the pipette, carefully lower the tip of the pipette into the water.
3. With the tip of the pipette under water, slowly release your squeeze. Can you feel the water being sucked up into the pipette when you do this?
4. Slowly pull the pipette out of the water. Why do you think the liquid stays inside the pipette?
5. To remove the liquid from the pipette, squeeze the bulb once more and the water will squirt out.

Each little person practiced using the pipette until they felt comfortable enough to move three teaspoons of water from one cup to another and the back again. Micah and Max could not stop laughing as Milla's pudgy but very able hands learned to use the pipette. Max informed me that "we do this all the time with those straws we get at restaurants, mom". Apparently, I had mistaken what appears to have science in action for mischevious attempts to upset the bourgeois meal conventions of the Tuscaloosa business class.

Max also pointed out that I used this "suction effect" to remove green slime from Milla's nose last year. Fortunately, those humiliating days of unsatisfied bulb suctioning are over since I discovered the amazing (and deeply satisfying) NoseFrida (known in certain circles as the snotsucker). 

Now we were ready for the next step- pipetting colored water into the indentation wells and discovering what new colors might emerge. Max went first. He carefully used his pipette to draw up some liquid from the test-tube with the blue-colored water. Then he squirted it into one of the wells of the plastic tray. Before using his pipette to draw up some of the yellow-colored water, Max flushed his pipette in the cup of clear water. He added the yellow water to the blue water in the tray well. The result? Green, of course. 

Now it was Micah's turn. She wanted to make "pink", so Max used the color wheel to show her that she should add blue to red. The red water looked pinkish to begin with- so it wasn't surprising when the combination of blue and red came closer to purple than pink.

The color wheel made discussing primary colors much easier. For example, when Max used it to help Micah find out how to make pink, he asked her "What two colors does pink lie between on the color wheel"? Milla could not wait to make her favorite color, orange, and Micah was familiar enough with the wheel to tell her to mix red and yellow. We ended up mixing and creating a whole tray full of colors, including black (which Max made because "it's your favorite color, mom"). 

Exploring colors in test tubes.

To each his own color pellet. Micah filled the test tubes with water and then the munchkins dropped in their respective pellets. Milla made the requisite "fizzing" hisses and oooohs as she watched the yellow pellet dissolve.

Micah regarded her purple pellet with all due seriousness and interest. She told me that purple is her "fifth favorite color". 

And Max thought a deeply as that blue fizzing pellet would allow him.

After watching the pellets dissolve, the kids placed the tubes back into the holder. It took less than one minute for someone to discover that you could hold up the blue tube in front of the yellow tube and get a green color liquid. 

So we "skipped" that experiment- can I say skipped if they discovered it on their own without prompting?

10 things I learned this week.

1. All the heating and cooling equipment and piping beneath our house makes a modish carcass in the sun and shade.

2. Insulation deserves a slew of medals for what it can do in a home where the heater is broken, the firewood diminished, and the nights dip into the 20's. Castles, as you know, often lack insulation. Ours is no exception.

3. Rose thorns leave inspiring shadows on late afternoon brick.

4. A roadside drainage ditch may actually be the moat for a gnome castle.

5. It is possible to fall inlove with the novels of Anthony Trollope while trying to fall asleep on the cold floor of an unheated home alongside a duchesss, a prince, a princess, and a grumbling king.

6. Dust lines pipes like schlerosis.

7. Science experiments with jelly-like substances evoke the mucuosity of life with little people.

8. It is very cold in a house without a heater. And it takes at least six days (and counting) for the hope of heat to warm our toes.

9. Milla is a fantastic direction in which to take the pig-tail. 

10. Test tubes filled with colored water makes for good distraction from cold feet.

George Washington Carver, one amazing human being.

There aren't many characters in American history that hold a candle to George Washington Carver. From inventor to artist to naturalist to botanist to professor to football player, there is little he did not do and nothing that he did not overcome to the do the things he loved. He offers an example in persistence, dedication, and creativity. Studying his life and work with the kids has been humbling and grand.

Max read Stephen Krensky's A Man For All Seasons aloud to us as we colored. He even paused to ask what felt like "reading comprehension" questions several times. One of my favorites- "Now girls, do you think it was fair that black and white people were segregated?" Micah looked confused while Milla nodded with enthusiasm. I guess I shouldn't expect moral revulsion from a toddler, and Max quickly stepped in to provide a long-winded explanation of why segregation and slavery are crimes against nature.

For the girls, coloring our own flip-book about Carver's life gave us opportunities to talk about the details, including his love for plants, his enjoyment of painting, and his admirable journey towards a dream that just involved tinkering, exploring, inventing, and learning. You can download the free George Washington Carver Little Book.

Max enjoyed the USDA's coloring pages and fact sheets on Carver, especially the peanut-butter process handout which illustrates how peanut butter is made. The rain left us reading, re-reading, and exploring the many inventions which still touch our lives thanks to the ingenuity and courage of this remarkable man.

Play with fruits and vegetables- and the poetry of plant life.

Fruity Veggies Hunt (PDF)

There's something fascinating about the fact that each fruit is literally a "womb" for fertilized seeds, just as the flower is a means of luring or seducing an animal into helping a plant to reproduce. No matter how many times we study it, I can't quite get over how beautiful these facts of nature seem to be.

Add to that the fact that drawing a female form often approximates the beautiful curves of a flower and the sturdy language of science leaves me for the wistful truth of metaphor.

Could there be anything more beautiful to share with your kids than the lines of a flower (and the hope that it these very lines which come to mind one day when their awkward teenage years bring them before the dreaded mirrors)? I'm just a little awed and in love with our lives today.

Learning about the constitution of "cuteness" with Max.

No, this was not a history lesson. The only constitution we explored was that of "what constitutes cute". It all started with a question inspired by Milla wearing an old man wig...

Max laughed and inquired:
"Mom, why are babies so cute?!"

Alina laughed and replied:
"Many things, Maxer. Partly the funny things they do and partly the way they look."

Max nodded:
"Yeah, babies are the definition of cute."

Alina wondered:
"Hmmmm.... I wonder what constitutes cute? You want to try and find out?"

Max shrugged:
"You mean like certain rules about what makes things cute?"

Alina smiled:
"You hit the nail on the head."

Max jumped up:
"Let's do it, Mom!" 

We started by looking through books and magazines for "cute" images and pictures. Max observed that cartoons "aren't always cute because it depends on how they are drawn". Then we did some online searches for "children's cartoon characters" and looked at the image results.

When I asked him to give me a list of more cute vs. less cute characters from books and cartoons, he came up with the following:

MORE CUTE: Caillou, Jiggly-Puff, Max and Ruby, Jo-Jo the clown, Barney, Big Bird, Winnie the Pooh, Clifford the Big Red Dog, Hello Kitty, Dora the Explorer, Babar, Curious George, Mickey Mouse, Strawberry Shortcake, My Little Pony, Chicka from The Sunshine Show

LESS CUTE: Skebo the juggler clown, Rabbit from Winnie the Pooh, Bugs Bunny, SpongeBob Squarepants, Superman, Batman, Sheriff Woody, Arthur

Then we turned to Cuteify, an online activity exploring our perception of "cuteness".  Learners adjust various factors (like pupil size or length of limbs) on a face, a cat, and a hammer. Then they alter the images for cuteness (or its opposite), and explore why we find some shapes and images cuter than others. There is also a "What's Going On" web page that talks about how we've evolved to find cuteness in some places and not others, and why it's often the case that roundness equals cuteness. 

Then Max made a list of "what constitutes cute". Here it is in his words:
"Large round wavering eyes"
"Fat body with curved form"
"Short legs with fat stature"
"Short height and round body"
"Closeness of eyes to nose" 

Learning about Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) with Max.

This month's issue of Muse magazine inspired our learning yesterday. The conversation between two cleverbots in the middle of the magazine reminded us of listening to Milla and Micah arguing over objects in their purses. Max thought it revealed that "robots, like humans, can have a sassy attitude". It's all in the programming, right?

Hypothesis: Robots will not be able to answer certain kinds of questions about the experience of being human.

Testing the Hypothesis: In order to apply his own version of the Turing Test to online robots, Max formulated ten questions which he thought would be hard for a non-human to answer. Then we looked online for six different chat-bots to “test”. Here are Max’s ten questions, which he came up with all on his own and I think did an excellent job of honing in on the inarticulable quintessence of being human.

1. What is your name? 
2. What is your favorite food? 
3. What is your last name? 
4. What is your favorite book? 
5. Who is your aunt? 
6. Who is your master? 
7. Have you ever seen a dog? 
8. What is your body made of? 
9. What does a fish swim with? 
10. How do you build with blocks?

You can read our 6 conversations and see how various bots fared with Max's questions (hint: a few of those questions stumped them every time) below. Here's a brief snippet of the convo between Max and ELBOT:

Max: Have you ever seen a dog?
Elbot: I had a pet furby once but it ran away.
Max: What is your favorite food?
Elbot: I eat chips, cookies and fried discs. Or a data salad, if I want to go light.

 

We had a great time chatting with inferior wannabe-human bots. On the other hand, we also decided it might be worthwhile to learn more about how bots actually successfully replicate certain human behaviors and educate us at the same time. Exploratorium has some great online footage and explanations of the robots surveying Mars.

Exploring shapes and textures with prints: A how-to.

Old books and their magic infuse our lives.

Learning by doing about the ancient art of printing began with a book picked up at an estate sale in another state. 

The first stamp experiments involved old styrofoam blocks and wooden blocks. We wanted to see what effect the different materials would have on the textures and depth of the printed shapes. By using some circular styrofoam building blocks, we found that the foam made rich and soft impressions with the ink- impressions that looked almost like smudged fingerprints.

Using the rough edges of wooden blocks as staps showed the rings of the wood as an embedded pattern within the rectangles. Max saw many levels of symbolism in this, and we vowed to set aside some "cool wooden edges" for future wood printing use.

Milla offered us our next printing experiment in the form of a grooved construction piece. We were certain the printed effect would be scandalously cool- and we surprised to learn that, at best, our cross only led to a continuous pattern of four small circles in the shape of a square.

Granted, this would make a great border, but we expected more bang from this experiment. Max pointed out that, in printing, spacing matters- recessed prints and patterns won't show up in the final product. Everything in your stamp needs to be raised at around the same level for it to show up.

Of course, all the experimenting led us to fabrics- and our efforts to print with loose fabric led to dye all over fingers and mumbled fabric prints. Sometimes it's worth skipping the instructions only to learn why they exist in the first place. You really need to create a stamp in order to fully apply fabrics to the art of the printing.

All you need to make a stamp is some wood glue, old blocks, and something worth stamping. Make sure to let it dry before using it.

Stamps made from old upholstery fabric and wooden blocks.

Stamps made from old lace doilies and wooden blocks.

Itching to get started on his official print masterpiece, Max insisted that we had experimented enough and now we were "ready" to create our own patterns using printed patterns. 

He liked the perfect, single circles created by cup prints, so he decided to create 4 x 3 pattern as his base design. Then Max decided to fill in his circles with the soft styrofoam print effect- but he wanted to use green ink.

"I want to stagger the green circles with another color, Mom."

 

Green and purple staggered circles.

Finally, Max decided to "edge in" (his words) with the lace stamp we made. For this, he chose a bright turquoise and treated the stamp like a triangle pattern.

Max prepares the lace stamp for use.

Max's final print pattern, almost finished.

Captivated by Carboniferous Landscapes: Natural history through paleoartistry.

We are reading Adventures in the Wilderness by Rutherford Hayes Platt
as our historic inquiry into how the understanding of wilderness has
changed in American history. 

Natural history makes every rock rise as sharply in our awareness as a continent. Unfortunately, I never cared much for natural history or geology in school. In fact, I can't even remember who my teachers might have been- only that I had to memorize a bunch of rocks and dates for various tests which seemed much less captivating than all those butterflies swarming around the flower beds outside the classroom window. 

So I tried to give Max an "in" and an "out" to our learning adventure. When he lost interest, we moved on. What I didn't anticipate is how long it would take him to lose interest and how many different things we would "accidentally" learn before we finished. After reading, we printed the handouts below and Max used them to answer the worksheets.

GEOLOGICAL TIME PERIODS HANDOUT (PDF)

PREHISTORIC AMERICA WORKSHEET (PDF)

Max and I meandered through various visuals of prehistoric times, including a few online sources which extended the bounds of our imagination and even offered opportunities for cultural critique of how dinosaurs are presented and anthropomorphized. Our online favorites:

Love in the Time of Chasmosaurs for dinos and pop culture
Paleoartistry opens to door to art of paleohistory
Dinner Time Inside a Brachiosaurus, super fun to discuss
The World of Charles R. Knight, which led us to our art work for the day 

Charles Robert Knight (1874-1953) was an American artist who took fossil records and brought them to life in magnificent oil paintings depicting what the world looked like millions of years ago. Apparently, the discovery of fossils led to "dinosaur wars" among the artists struggling to depict them.

Carboniferous Landscape by Charles Knight

Our art work of day settled on Charles Knight's depiction of a landscape from the Carboniferous Period in which he used 250 million year old fossils to receare the plant life of those times. Max said, "So ferns made coal?" That seemed like one way to put it.

From sapling to stump with a digression around sacred trees.

To wander over the earth in autumn is to discover life in the ruins of life, to be made conscious of the cycle. The leaves rustling underfoot are broken down, tiny cells seeping into the soil, becoming soil, enriching soil, forcing you to be aware of how many millions of years must have passed to create the soil on which you stand.

From the remains of a stump, life continues and grows. The wood is broken down by various specialized insects and decomposers into the worm-friendly dirt of the future. Nothing is left without use or purpose. The past is in our bones.

In eastern California stands Methuselah, a Great Basin Bristlecone pine (Pinus longaeva) believed to be between 4,844 and 4,845 years old. It is "the world's oldest known living non-clonal organism" and stands somewhere safe from prying human ambitions. Prometheus did not fare as well.

Jaya Sri Maha Bodhi is a Sacred Fig tree in Sri Lanka. It is said to be the southern branch from the historical Bodhi tree in India under which Lord Buddha attained Enlightenment. It was planted in 288 BC, and is the oldest living human-planted tree in the world with a known planting date. Today it is one of the most sacred relics of the Buddhists in Sri Lanka and respected by Buddhists all over the world.

Our stump makes no such claims. It's lack of celebrity allows it to fade as gently as it began, from sapling to stump. I love the way the rings outlast the space between them- like calcium deposits in an animal skeleton, the mind begins to invent a story that makes sense of the spaces, the blanks, those parts that do not fall in lists. 

The Fortingall Yew tree (Taxus baccata), currently residing in a churchyard in Perthshire, Scotland, is one of the oldest trees in Europe. Various estimates have put its age at between 2,000 and 5,000 years. 

Each nook and cranny offers a potential home for rustling creatures, musicians in the master fugue. What ended the life of this handsome tree-turned-stump? Did fire play a role? Was lightning involved? It stood alone in th center of the backyard, so it might have attracted unwanted electrical attention.

The Senator was the oldest pond cypress tree in the world, located in Longwood, Florida. At the time of its demise, it was 125 feet tall, with a trunk diameter of 17.5 feet. The tree was destroyed by a fire on January 16, 2012.

Even still, to the left of our stump, a green plant covered in a soft layer of protective fuzz collects dew on its outstretched arms. The color green lurks across the landscape, still mostly free of autumn leaves. We wait. And watch. 

Orange Beach and the mystery of the rust-colored sea shells.

During our sunset stroll on the beach a few weeks ago, Max and I were busy "shunting", or shell-hunting. We kept picking up these deep orange, rust-colored shells unlike the shells we've found along the beach in the past. The shapes were the same, but this bright orange color really stood out as different. So we decided to try and come up with a few hypotheses to explain the mystery of the orange shells.

HYPOTHESIS #1: More iron is oxidizing in the water because when the Gulf oil spill occurred, iron ore exploded into the water. (Max's first guess)

HYPOTHESIS #2: The chemical dispersant used after the Gulf oil spill served to disperse large pools of floating oil but it also served to release or oxidize iron deposits already existing in the water. (Max's guess after learning about dispersant/flocculant)

HYPOTHESIS #3: After the oil spill, the iron ore floated up and got stuck in the oil that was leaking into the Gulf. Then the dispersant dispersed the oil along with the iron. (Max's combo guess)

We decided that we needed to answer two questions in order to narrow down our hypotheses. First, we needed to know what chemical flocculant in the Gulf. Then, we needed to know what effects the chemicals in this dispersing solution might have on a variety of existing natural resources, including iron. To find answers to our questions, we searched the internet for descriptons of flocs used as well as their effects on biotic communities and their chemical interactions with other agents. We found the following to be interesting:

• Other names for chemicals that serve in conjunction with flocculants, or plays roles similiar to flocculants, are called thinners, dispersants, coagulants, and de-emulsifiers.
• Deepwater corals didn’t escape the ecological damage of the April 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

• How much they were hurt depended on how close to the spill’s source they were. More than 20 kilometers away from the wellhead that ruptured in the 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, Paramuricea coral thrive (left). But as close as 11 kilometers away from the wellhead, coral have lost tissue and are covered in brown flocculent material (Source)
• "The first step in assessing the impact of any release of chemicals into the environment is to identify the chemicals involved, their environmental fate (what happens to them after release), and their potential impact on ecosystems and human health." (Society of Toxicology)
• "The DWH incident not only released much more oil than previous spills such as the IxtocI blowout in the Gulf of Mexico (1979) and the Exxon Valdez tanker accident (1989), but the oil was released at a much greater depth (1,544 meters vs. 50 meters). The greater depth of the DWH spill means that additional factors such as temperature, pressure, and salinity may have affected the physical and chemical behavior and transport of the oil, complicating the assessment of dispersant effects". (Society of Toxicology)
• "By current estimates, the DWH spill released about 4.9 million barrels (795 million liters) of crude oil, accompanied by a similar volume of natural gas. Added to this was approximately 7 million liters of dispersants that were applied either at the surface (two-thirds) or at the wellhead (one-third). Crude oil contains hundreds of hydrocarbons of various types, as well as chemicals containing sulfur, nitrogen, or oxygen." (Society of Toxicology)
• "The use of dispersants likely increased the bioavailability of the oil (its ability to be taken up or acted upon by organisms) and enhanced the opportunities for biodegradation. However, it also may have increased the potential exposure of sensitive organisms. The fate of the released oil and its many components remains poorly understood. " (Society of Toxicology)
• "Dispersants are used to enhance the mixing of oil with water, reducing exposure of organisms on the ocean surface and coastline. The trade-off with their use is that chemical dispersion of oil can increase the exposure of organisms below the surface in the water column and at the seafloor to oil, dispersants, and oil- dispersant mixtures. The dispersants used in the DWH incident (Corexit 9527 and Corexit 9500A) contain several surfactants (surface-active agents), solvents, and other chemicals. In short- term (2- to 4-day) laboratory tests using lethality as an endpoint, these dispersants tend to have relatively low acute toxicity to aquatic animals, although questions remain about potential sublethal or delayed effects." (Society of Toxicology)
• "The application of Corexit 9527 and Corexit 9500A in the deep ocean (1,500 meters) is unprecedented. Thus, there are no data on the fate and effects of dispersants applied in the deep ocean and how they may differ from what is known from surface application and from short-term (2- to 4-day) toxicity tests in the laboratory. An important question is how the impact of the dispersed oil differs from that of undispersed oil, and for the DWH spill this is not yet fully known." (Society of Toxicology)
•  The dispersant COREXIT was pumped down the Deepwater well head by scientists from UC Berkeley for the purpose of preventing more oil from making its way into the ocean where it would harm aquatic life. (Source)

We found the answer quite simply while flipping through an old issue of Audubon magazine. According to an article in the September-October 2010 issue, we read that:

"In the Gulf, more than two million gallons of Corexit has been released from the air, distributed on the surface, and injected underwater. It's what created the orangish tint in the Gulf for months, spawning the nickname Agent Orange among local people. Longterm effects? Who the hell knows?"

Two years later, pockets or orange sand and orange-stained shells remain easy to find at Orange Beach and Perdido Key. Corexit did not "correct it". We were sad to discover how the oil spill's legacy continues to scar our beaches.

How to dye fabric with blueberries.

I discovered a bag of blueberries picked a few weeks ago in the fridge this morning. Rather than throw them away, we decided to do a little wildcrafting and cook up a batch of blueberry dye.

supplies

a bag of ripe or overripe blueberries
two large pots
stove
little hands
salt
a yard or so of cotton fabric
colander 

how to do it

To make the dye solution, gather your blueberries and put them in a large pot. Add double the amount of water to the berries. Bring your berry and water mix to a boil, then simmer for about an hour.

As the water simmers, you can prepare your fabric to absorb the dye. Soaking the fabric in a color fixative will make the color set in the fabric. For berry dyes, a salt fixative does the trick. Mix 1/3 cup salt to 8 cups of cold water. Then add your fabric to the fixative and simmer for an hour. You should have two pots on the stove happily simmering.

By order of operations, your dye mix should finish simmering first. Remove the pot from the heat and strain the dye mix using a colander. Set aside the pot with the strained dye mixture.

Now check on your salt fixative. Remove the fabric and fixative mix from the stove. Rinse the material and squeeze out excess mixture. Rinse the fabric in cool water until water runs clear.

Finally, everything comes together with the dye bath. Place the wet fabric in the pot with your berry dye. We decided to tie-dye our antique tablecloth, so we tied it with rubber bands before putting it in the pot. Simmer the fabric in the dye mix until you get the desired shade of color. We err on the darker side, since fabric color lightens when it dries. 

For a stronger shade, remove your pot from the stove and allow the fabric to soak in the dye overnight. To preserve the color of your fabric, wash it separately in cold water. And to see how our tablecloth turned out, check back tomorrow because we're going for the all-nighter...

Mushrooms and fungi and fun-guys and fall in the air.

All our wanderings have included mushrooms over the past few weeks. Micah spots them immediately, then Max trots over to describe them and classify them in his chart-like mind right before Milla commences to crush them with her pounce or a stomp.

This fun-guy was located near Windham Springs in Northport in a wooded area down a trail.

A gargantuan fun-guy that would make a perfect saucer for fairy folk in a yard down the street. This fellow likes the sun.

Max, Micah, and Milla use a magnifying glass to get a close-up of a fun-guy hanging out in our backyard. He's a pretty typical fun-guy, common to these parts. 

All that up-close observation left out frat-boy fun-guy looking rather tattered and abused. He needs a sign that says, "Milla was here".

Fun-guy, lichen, or burrowing critter den? We weren't sure. He goes under fun-guy for now so we can remember to classify him later. He lives on the side of side of an old pine tree stump.

Crazy fun-guy crew living in a neighbors front yard. This is a sun-loving set of fun-guys who bring the adjective "moldy" to a whole new level.

Solitary velvety fun-guy who keeps his distance from the moldy crew while claiming the sam front lawn as home. 

Exploring our forehead parasites: A science experiment.

There's nothing like reading a little E.O. Wilson to uncover new creatures in your life. In this case, we learned about the commensals, symbiotic organisms that live on the bodies of other species  or in their nests without helping or harming them. Commensals are free riders in cases where cost is not an issue.

Wilson explains that most of us carry two such commensals on our foreheads- mites with wormlike bodies and spidery heads so small that they are almost invisible to the human eye. 

Demodex folliculorum dwells in the hair follicles. Demodex brevis dwells in the sebaceous glands.

If you want to get intimate with your forehead mites, Wilson explains how you can do just that:

Stretch the skin tight with one hand, carefully scrape a spatula or butter knife over the skin in the opposite direction, squeezing out traces of oily material from the sebum glands. (Avoid using too sharp an object, such as glass edge or sharpened knife.) Next scrape the extracted material off the spatula with a cover slip and lower the slip face down onto a drop of immersion oil previously placed on a glass microscope slide. Then examine the material with an ordinary compound microscope. You will see the creatures that literally make your skin crawl.

Source: E. O. Wilson, The Diversity of Life, p. 177

Apparently, the Japanese even have special cosmetic products guaranteed to kill these "beauty-destroying" mites. So here's a science project idea to help you learn more about forehead mites and their habitat requirements- not sure if it's been tried before, but we are going to do so.

PURPOSE: To find out what forehead mites need to live on our foreheads.

HYPOTHESIS: Skin oils trapped in hair follicles and sebaceous glands keep forehead mites happy.

EXPERIMENT: Run a sample of forehead mites on your forehead. Count the number and note the integrity of each under a microscope. This is your sample. Then assemble several cosmetic products which claim to remove oil from facial skin and plan to use one 1x a week for several weeks. For example, you can run a control swab and then use witch hazel for week one, a popular astringent for week two, a product with salycylic acid for week three, and a chamomile tea bag for week four.

Run another swab after use of each product. Note if the mites are fewer. Try another swab at a later point during the week and see how quickly (if at all) the mites return based on the various products used. There are many variations- and loads to discover.

Making a water filter.

Yesterday's experiment evolved from a little reading and a few moments of peace in which Grand Bon-Bon was not fretting about one facet of his 95 years of life or another. These days I feel as if my ability to be involved in my children's lives has been limited by my grandfather's incessant worries, concerns, and frustrations.

Being 95 is not easy and, unfortunately, some who live to this ripe old age consider it a curse rather than a blessing. I suppose there are lessons to be learned from this as well, including the fact that being a critical, "problem-solving" type person is tolerable and even "successful" when you are young and middle-aged but quite painful and miserable when you reach the twilight of life. I am reminded daily of the importance of seeing the beauty in life- not the beauty in what you have created (because at 95, there isn't much you can "create" anymore) but the beauty in what is created.

On that note, Max and Micah cooperated in this ultimately-awesome experiment to create a water filter.

Max chose his own "ingredients" and added them in the order above. The book suggested using cotton and blotting paper, but Max ruled in favor of an "all-natural filter".

Now all he needed was muddy water. So he went over to the garden and picked a fistful of red clay dirt which he then mixed with water and added to a bowl.

At first, the muddy water didn't go through the filter at all. Max discovered that he would need a faster flow, so he moved from pouring muddy water from a small bowl to pouring muddy water from a bucket.

After a few tries, it was Micah who delivered the shout of glory, "It's WORKING!". Sure enough, the water was clear as day- Max's homemade filter was strong enough to remove even red Alabama dirt clay from the mix. I didn't get a photo because life intervened, but the filter worked perfectly and helped us visualize the role of a stream as a water filter in an ecosystem.

You can find more fun water experiments and ideas in this book.

Topographic map-making.

Learning about our local watershed has made topographic maps a fascinating journey of discovery and art. Though most are made on computer now, Max wanted to try and draw his own topos. It's a great way to incorporate mathematical visualization and geometry in everyday learning with kids.

So go on out into your backyard and make a topographic map. Or take a walk through the neighborhood and create a neighborhood topo- I bet neighbors would love a copy. It truly demonstrates the concept of a watershed for kids and adults, as you can see where puddles and runoffs tend to form and how they are distributed.

Topographic symbols

Earth contours on a topographic map

Relief shading details

Topographic map vegetation shading details

Topographic map water shading details

What type of soil do you have in your yard?

Or how about in your watersheds? Or the highest point in your town? What do you know about soil? Wouldn't you like to know more? Print and play. And please share any discoveries you might make in the comments section- I'd love to have a reader soil survey and see what I can learn about you from your soil type.

The parts of a tree.

An evening at the community garden.

When Patrick returned from work at almost 6 pm this evening, we loaded the spaceship and set off for some afternoon-evening gardening. We were greeted by a pileated woodpecker with a bright red head who was busy drumming away at a fantastic old tree stump- the kind that attracts wildlife of all shapes and distinctions.

Micah went around and watered all the snow peas and carrots, which we planted from seeds sent to us by Sarah.

Then Max helped Micah to plant a few more marigolds and strawberry plants which we purchased from Brown's Nursey in Holt- we were overjoyed to discover that they are back open for business. Before long, we heard Oak running across the field screaming Micah's name, and then the Johns family appeared with garden implements in hand. At least four other neighbors dropped by to water or plant during our evening at he garden- it was wonderful to "commune" with them and chat about bugs, cucumbers, and life as we live it.

One of Sarah's pretty snowpeas.

Max crowed with delight to find several happy snow pea plants peaking out from the soil. He also reminded me that we need to get a trellis for them. I'm thinking we might make one from all the dead bamboo and other teepee remnants strewn across our backyard.

As I dug holes for strawberries and Patrick busied himself planting tomatoes, Milla picked up little pieces of dirt from our plot and carefully laid them in the plot to our right. It didn't seem to cause any harm, and her self-righteous, yet concentrated scowl discouraged me from interrupting her.

We dug and planted until dusk dimmed the scene. Tomorrow, I'm going to call Kenneth at the UA Arboretum and purchase a lovely smattering of compost. 

Clay pots and water experiment.

Sometimes it's the simplest things that bring on the light bulb moments. Today, for example, Max and Micah learned a little bit about the properties of clay with a simple experiment. To get Micah interested, I asked her how water comes out out of the sink. She didn't understand the question, so I asked her in what direction water comes out of the sink tap.

MICAH SAID:

"Down, I think."

ALINA SAID:

"I agree. Does water usually flow downward?

MICAH LOOKED AT MAX AND THEN SAID:

"I think so."

ALINA SAID:

"What if I told you I knew a magic way to make water flow upwards?"

MICAH SAID:

"When you drink it with a straw, it goes up."

ALINA REPLIED:

"You're right! It does! Okay, but can you make it go up without sucking it through a straw?"

MAX INTERJECTS:

"Yes, evaporation is part of the water cycle. It happens all the time."

ALINA SAID:

"So true. I have little magic left to work with you guys. But let's find another way".

SUPPLIES

1 plastic petri dish (or similar bowl)

1 small clay planting pot

3 minutes after putting pot in dish.

Max poured a finger-level of water into the plastic dish.

Then he placed the clay pot inside the dish.

Then we all observed as the water slowly rose up through the clay pot wall.

7 minutes after putting pot in dish.

20 minutes after putting pot in dish.

After about 2 hours and 30 minutes of sitting outside, the water had risen all the way to the top of the clay pot. It might have moved faster if the heat wasn't quite so oppressive. 

Water climbs up the clay because fired clay is not a firm, solid material. It has many tiny holes similar to the many tiny holes on a sponge- except the holes in clay are even tinier. In this little holes, the water can creep upwards because it has the need to fill small openings even when they are above the water surface.

The water adheres to the holes like glue and doesn't flow back down again. This particular characteristic of clay pots makes them perfect for potting plants and keeping the soil moist at various depths.

I think painted and glazed clay pots have had the tiny holes filled in, so they lose this special power.

A snail and a slug.

Every morning, the grass is a little greener and more buds break through. This spring has been especially amazing, since learning ecology with Max makes me more aware of every tiny change in our surroundings.

I found these two friends on my morning walk with Mary and decided to try and bring them home so Max could observe them in his magnifying container. They rode in my lap for the drive, hung out a bit in the plastic container, and recently returned to the wet slimy mud they seem to savor.

You can see the snail's simple black head and the slug, a little tougher to see, is hanging out in the brown leafy area.

The snail and the slug look identical, which led Max to wonder about the difference between the snail and the slug. Obviously, the difference is in the presence of a shell. Members of the mollusk class, Gastropoda (or "stomach-foot"), include both snails and slugs. Gastropods which don't have an obvious shell are usually called slugs while those with only a very small shell- too small to use as a home- are called semislugs.

Other than having a reduced shell or no shell at all, there are really no appreciable differences between a slug and a snail except in habitat and behavior. A shell-less animal is much more maneuverable and compressible, and thus even quite large land slugs can take advantage of habitats or retreats with very little space, squeezing themselves into places that would be inaccessible to a similar-sized snail, such as under loose bark on trees or under stone slabs, logs or wooden boards lying on the ground. (Source: Wikipedia)

Now for the identification of our snail and slug. I don't think we'll be able to id the slug without a microscope. As for the snail, we're starting with whorls.

And it looks like our friend has three whorls to his name. He is definitely a garden snail- I took him from the community garden grass, where his presence might be considered a pestilence. The Coryell consensus rests with Cornu aspersum, the brown garden snail, a happy muncher of plants and ornamentals. 

Peter Hatcher's drawings of snails seemed worthy of a print-and-color for the munchkins. I wonder what creatures tomorrow will add to the mix.

The forsythias defy gloomy weather.

The forsythia shrubs pose across neighborhood lawns in their most flamboyant spring garb. Leaves sit in a simple opposite arrangement (though the occasional trifoliate does appear to break the mold) with a basal pair of small leaflets and a serrated margin. Leaves are produced in spring only after the forsythia loses its dazzling golden gown.

The flowers are bright yellow with a deeply four-lobed flower, and the petals joined only at the base. These become pendant in rainy weather thus shielding the reproductive parts. 

Making rain barrels at the community garden.

Today I played innocent bystander (or napping-Milla-watcher) as Patrick and some super-handy neighbors created a natural rain barrel irrigation system for the garden.

Patrick pretends to help and no one pretends to pay him.

Mike and the others engineered a masterful feat, and I fear the case of Heineken was not enough to demonstrate our fascination and appreciation.

As the men worked, Oak and Micah found their own ways to enjoy the day. First they rummaged through an old barn. Then they took turns running off the truck ramp and seeing how far they could jump.

Micah ran all the way to the lip of the truck and then stopped in her tracks before jumping.

Oak showed Micah how to measure her jumping distance by observing her footmarks in the dirt. The jumping and running matches continued as a background buzz to the sonnet composed when drills meet plastic.

We left before the installation was finished, but I promise to post photos soon- it is a model for green gardening and water conservation. Did you know that you can harvest rainwater and use it to water your garden? By harvesting rain water, you take advantage of a renewable natural resource and save money on your monthly water bills. If you'd like to learn how to make your own rain barrels, here is a lovely printable PDF tutorial from the Alabama Environmental Council:

HOW TO BUILD YOUR OWN RAIN BARREL

The Lost Ladybug Project.

More on that citizen science bug thats been nibbling at our time. The Lost Ladybug Project (LLP) is a wonderful citizen science project for all age groups and it is especially appealing to parents and teachers of children in grades PreK-6. Why? Unlike more complex citizen science projects, this one is designed so that even young children can participate in every aspect of the scientific research.  

Developed in 2000 by entomologists at Cornell University, participants in the project help locate and identify North American ladybug species that were once common but have become rare over the past 20 years or so. The nine-spotted ladybug is one example. What is happening to these native ladybugs?

The entomologists theorize that competition from invasive species, hybridization with non-native ladybugs, or environmental factors such as climate change may be affecting the populations. Citizen scientists are helping Cornell find answers, so that the entomologists can take measures to increase the native ladybug populations. 

Getting involved in the project is easy. Participants look for ladybugs using the field guides and other identification tools provided on the Lost Ladybug website. Early summer is the best time, but it depends on your location. Participants can either locate the ladybugs on plants, use sweep nets to collect from a grassy area, or attract the insects to sheets. Once collected, the ladybugs are “chilled” for a few minutes to slow their movement. This part of the process makes observation and identification much easier for young children.

Now comes the best part. The citizen “researcher” takes digital photographs of the ladybugs and then uploads the images to the LLP website, complete with field collection information such as date, time, location and habitat. That’s about it for the basic contribution to the project, but there are plenty of inquiry-based activities listed on the website for more in-depth involvement. As of this month, participants of the Lost Ladybug Project have contributed 13,748 ladybugs to the project. The contribution of citizen scientists to ladybug research is evident; the LLP now holds one of the largest and most geographically diverse databases of ladybug information in the world.

Of course, LLP comes with free learning resources, including an All About Ladybugs handout, a snappy Lost Ladybug Song, a Basic LLP Field Guide, a standards-based lesson plan, a Draw your own ladybug coloring sheet, info on how to find, collect, and identify lady bugs, a handout on how to make your own sweep net, 30 ladybug bingo cards, and so much more.

Love letter #51: Citizen science.

Citizen science is a term used for the systematic collection and analysis of data; development of technology; testing of natural phenomena; and the dissemination of these activities by researchers on a primarily avocational basis. Individual citizen science volunteers or networks of volunteers, many of whom may have no specific scientific training, perform or manage research-related tasks such as observation, measurement, or computation.The use of citizen-science networks often allows scientists to accomplish research objectives more feasibly than would otherwise be possible.

Citizen science is one approach to informal science education. To capture these multiple meanings of citizen science, some workers in the field now refer to "public participation in scientific research."Citizen science is related to long-standing programs employing volunteer monitoring for natural resource management, and is often employed as a form of education and outreach to promote public understanding of science. Technology is credited as one of the main drivers of the recent explosion of citizen science activity.

(Source: Wikipedia)

This article is a great place to start in understanding how citizen science is changing our landscape as well as our learning habits. The Great Backyard Bird Count stands as an excellent example of effective citizen science. More thrilling citizen science projects that get this lady's heart beating like a DC techno beat:

The International Boiling Point Project

eBird

The Human Genetics Project

World Water Monitoring Day

Project Feeder Watch

Nest Watch

Bird Sleuth

Global Water Sampling Project

The Global Sun Temperature Project

The Square of Life Project

The Bucket Buddies Project on March 7, 2012

The Noon Day Project

Life at Hurricane Creek, a local citizen science project through Project Noah

An animated water cycle.

I love it. Click on the image to watch the cycle change or just take your time and wait for it to change itself. A gift from the cool cats at the Groundwater Foundation.

Seeding cantaloupes and bell peppers.

Yesterday, we seeded the cantaloupes and the heirloom bell peppers given to us by Sarah. Max found the perfect potting soil in our front yard- a dark, rich, loamy mix driven into our driveway by the week's rains. Like all good, natural soil, it required a little sifting.

Max, Micah, Milla, and I spent time removing twigs and pebbles which might stand in the way of tiny roots. Granted, Max got a little distracted by his annoyance with Milla's continuous stirring of the pot.

Each little spot of soil required the carving of a little nest for the seed.

Then little hands put the seeds in their nest and made a loving wish that each might grow.

Then little hands (and big helping hands) covered the seeds with soil.

As proof our soil's yumminess, Max discovered two worms. The munchkins marveled over the worm's "inner life".

Stop-motion animation for planting seeds.

Planting seeds just wouldn't be the same with Tino to teach us how to create stop-motion animation. What a great way to learn how movies are made. Here is the result of Tino's and Max's little experiment which endeavored to show how a tomato seed finds its way into soil. Tino told Max to choose music, fonts, and much of the later staging. The artists would love your opinion.

The wonderful world of tree stumps.

The other day, Max discovered a new ecosystem on a stump in our yard. Today, we revisited a different stump ecosystem- one more comparable to the ruins of Athens than a prefab condo.

A close-up of the holes in the top of the stump.

Max is convinced that the strange little black critters we saw who could carry large loads were none other than termites.

When Max peeled away bark from the side of the stump, he discovered a happy community of ants and their residence. Micah was not happy to know that ants lived in the stump.

Max said:

"Hey mom, the hole in this stump turns into a tunnel at the bottom! It goes sideways into our yard!"

Theories of what and who lived in the stump hole abounded. Micah hypothesized a "Bowzer lives there". Max was convinced some sort of animal lived there- an animal who had a secret tunnel running underneath our entire front yard. Was this the gateway to a whole new world? The closet that leads to Narnia? Suddenly, Max thought of a way to find out.

He placed little twigs over the opening- "If animals live here, they will move the twigs. If gnomes live here, they won't have to." Science with kids is so much fun!

Soon we will know the secret of the stump. Of course, we have also learned a little about the scientific method in action- hypothesizing about who uses the stump and setting up an experiment to test the hypothesis. Conclusions to follow, though they may not be "conclusive".

Ferns are tricky creatures.

Of course. What could be simpler? Classifying a fern from Bunica's backyard- a fern that stays green all year long, though we've noticed it tends to be more verdant during the spring. We knew that the "leaf" of a fern is called a frond, but beyond that, ferns were new territory.  

According to the American Fern Society:

The frond is divided into two main parts, the stipe (leaf stalk or petiole) and the blade (the leafy expanded portion of the frond). The blade may be undivided to finely cut, each degree of division having a specific term.

"Pinnate" blades are divided into leaflets (pinnae), with each leaflet narrowly attached to the central stem (called the rachis in this leafy part of the frond). Blades more divided are designated as bipinnate or even tripinnate with some divided four or five times. The ultimate division are called pinnules. Another type of division is one where the green leafy tissue isn't completely separated from the rachis but rather it spreads along the rachis, instead this degree of division is called "pinnatifid".

Fronds vary greatly in size, from tree ferns with 12 foot fronds to the mosquito ferns with fronds only 1/16 of an inch long.

Then we discovered the wonders of the illustrated glossary at the Hardy Fern Library. First we tried to sketch the fern, but all the tiny details sapped away at our patience reservoir.

Next we tried to dip the fern in green paint and make fern prints, but it was difficult to get the leaflets to stay down when we pulled our fingers up.

Then we decided it might be easier to paint around the edges of the fern and, in so doing, capture its outline.

Time to try something else. So we painted the ferns down with the paint hoping to paint-glue them to the paper. One nice result from this experiment was that the green paint really brought the veins out in relief, so we were able to get a more thorough picture of the plant veins.

But the fern didn't adhere. Enter Mod Podge and a slightly spastic Alina dousing the fern in Mod Podge and thereby destroying the cool green paint vein effect all so she could get that fern to live in its horrible new home atop a piece of paper.

Alas, we failed to classify our fern because classifying ferns during the winter is something only fools and amateur naturalists attempt. You see, the easiest way to classify a fern is by the pattern, arrangement, and size of the sori located on the underside of the frond leaves. Sori are clusters of dust-sized spores, which the fern uses instead of seeds to transmit its genes.

The fancy, complicated, exciting life cycle of a fern kept our attention for quite some time. Unfortunately, as you can imagine, the sori are not evident except during the spring, when the plans begin their reproductive process. No sori means our fern could be one of many 

All this fern study left me hankering for some post-Soviet poetry, the kind filled with secrets, skeletons, and hastily-erected identities made from cheap plastic. Pardon me while I indulge in the cure. More fern finagles in the morn.

Comparing and contrasting currencies to learn more about cultures.

Patrick surprised Max with a Saudi riyal. Max turned it over in his hand and said:

"I can't read it. How much is this worth? Where can I use it? Do you think I can use it at the gas station down the street where the guy from Saudi Arabia works?"

And so the investigation began. What can the currency tell us about Saudi Arabia- its culture and government? How can our observations inform our understanding of our own currency?

 

The two sides of the American dollar bill.

Max observed:

"Both bills have old men on one side and buildings on the other side, but the American guy is not smiling. The Saudi Arabian guy is smiling and his hair is covered with a turban. That's just what they wear there- like blue jeans for us."

We used the Google currency converter to find how much it was worth. It seems the Saudi riyal is worth about a quarter in US currency. Max figured this means it would take four of his riyals to equal one dollar.

Max also noted that both bills have "some sort of seal-like thing on them". He felt the seal made it look real official and formal. 

"Wait a minute Mom! The Eygyptians used seals and lots of ancient people used seals as signatures for various kingdoms. I guess our kingdoms use them too."

I was perplexed:

"But how can that be true, Maxer? The US is not a kingdom."

Max laughed at me:

"No really, but in some ways, it still acts like one. The President is like a king- he gets treated royally. And we have seals. And the White House is like an American palace. I mean, it's like a kingdom here too..."

I insisted that the US was a democracy in which people got to vote, so it wasn't like a kingdom. Max agreed that people voted, but the President "still gets to decide everything":

"It's like we get to vote for our king, but he's still like a king."

One side of the riyal is written in English. We talked about why this might be. Max said he thought lots of people who spoke English must be in their country and have enough power to make them write in English on the currency. I tried not to smile.

Listening to Max's observations is refreshing- the perspective of a child tends to pick out the obvious and ignore the conventional. I wonder if our government would be better if little people could vote. Sometimes I think they know more than we do. And they are certainly less partisan (unless, of course, we drill them into party preferences at an early age).

To extend this activity, you can print copies of different currencies from different countries and compare them. It's a wonderful way to explore cultural similiarities and differences, as well as the history of modern economics.

How to learn with a stethoscope and a stopwatch.

The Littman Classic II SE Stethoscope

Learning Resources Simple Stopwatch

The first time I heard my heart beat through a stethoscope brought an awareness of my own body and life to me. Suddenly, the fact that the heart pumps blood throughout my body turned from an abstract idea to a real, live whooshing and sucking sound. When learning with my kids, I scour my memory for those little ah-ha moments in the child in me learned something profound.

Cachey Mama's invitation to her Wishlist Wednesday gave me the perfect excuse to daydream about two items I've wanted for a long, long time. Since some of our learning goals for the year require meausurement and experimentation, I dream of a stopwatch and a stethoscope. There are so many ways to use these two tools, together and individually, to make comparisons and study relationships. These comparisons are best illustrated on paper by charts and graphs, one of Max's favorite hobbies. 

Max can use the stopwatch to compare his pulse to that of his sisters. Or that of his friends and neighbors. He can keep an ongoing chart measuring his heartbeat after eating, after bathing, after playing, after dancing, and even after getting upset. He can find an average for his resting heart-rate. He can explore averages across the spectrum of activities. What is the recovery period (the time it takes the heart to get back to resting beat after exercise)?

We could explore frequency in other creatures by using the stopwatch and picking a given amount of time to observe the dog and see how often he scratches, growls, barks, or sits in a 7 minute period. Then we could graph this. We could try again at a different time of day and see if our results differed. If they did, then we would try the entire experiment again the next day to see if we could discover any persistent patterns that might suggest relationships between time of day and frequency of particular behaviors.

What better way to spend time waiting in grocery lines or at large events than asking people nearby to be part of an ongoing average resting heartrate experiment? There are so many ways and so many contexts in which these two tools could help us learn about our world and how it works.

Other experiments and explorations might include:

• Relationship between grooming and horse's heart rate
• Fitness tests and challenges
• Relationship between perceived color and heart rate
• How fast food travels from mouth to stomach
• A day in the life of your heart
• Sound ranging
• Effects of various exercises on the cardiovascular system
• Relationship between caffeine and typing speed (with me as guinea pig, of course)

There's no way to predict the relationships and comparisons Max and Micah would discover with two simple tools. 

Constellation canisters.

Using a photocopied version of a star guide (or the templates provided by NASA), cut out a constellation and place it on the bottom of a film canister. Now, using a pushpin, punch a small hole through the paper and the canister for each star in the pattern. Hold the film canister up to the light and look through it to make sure you have punched the holes all the way through. You should see light through each hole. Take the pattern off the canister and remember to label your canister with a strip of masking tape on the side and the name of your constellation. Make one or several constellation canisters.

Now you can quiz yourself: Choose one of the canisters and read the name. Look through it to try to remember the pattern. Slowly turn the canister and observe. Try to learn the constellations without looking at the names. Then go outside to find the patterns in the night sky!

(You can find more wonderful seasonal ideas like this at Nature Net News Crafts).

Playing with rocks, stones, and crystals today.

Don't you love those days when all you need is a little chart to open a whole new world of play and wacky experimentation?

Keeping the questions alive.

Children who are discouraged from asking questions soon lose this beautiful habit. Like everything else, it can be "trained" away. Yet asking questions leads children down the path of causal discover- what caused this and why? What is related in my world?

Rewards for correct answers, as opposed to an environment which rewards continuous questioning, "trains" little people to find questioning and imagining strange and unfruitful. 

Most children fall victim to the answer syndrome and to the periodic "normalized" examinations that purge thought and criticism. Few children can resist the answer syndrome, and once they have sucuuumbed to it they find it difficult to believe that intelligence is not given by facile answers, just as few of their parents can resist the cash syndrome, and find it difficult to believe that Socrates was right, "that virtue is not given by money."

 

A study of snowflakes.

In 1611, Johannes Kepler published a short treatise, On the Six-Cornered Snowflake, which was the first scientific reference to snow crystals. Kepler pondered the question of why snow crystals always exhibit a six-fold symmetry. He speculates that the hexagonal shape plays an important role in how the snowflake develops.

A drawing from Hooke's book.

Then in 1665 Robert Hooke published a large book called Micrographia, containing sketches of practically everything Hooke could view with the latest invention of the day, the microscope. He included many snow crystal drawings, which for the first time revealed the complexity and intricate symmetry of snow crystal structure.

A snow crystal photographed by Bentley.

Wilson Bentley (1865-1931) was an American farmer and snow crystal photomicrographer, who during his lifetime captured some 5000 snow crystal images. More than 2000 were published in 1931 in his famous book, Snow Crystals. You can view many images of Bentley's snow crystals here. There are many types of snow crystals; we explored the most common at this Smithsonian page.

Snowflakes gave us an opportunity to play with our new compasses and protractors. First we decided to learn how to fold hexagonal snowflakes, paying special attention to symmetry. We used:

• a sheet of white paper
• a drawing compass
• a protractor

8 began by plotting a circle that was 6" in diameter for the center of the page. To find the exact center, we used a ruler to measure the length and height of the page. Then we halved both and used the ruler to plot a point at this half.

Micah works with her compass.

From the center point of the page, Max set his protractor to draw a circle with a 6" diameter. He then used his protractor to divide the circle into six equal slices by drawing six triangles (360/6 = 60 degrees).

Next he folded the circle in half, forming a semi-circle with three 60-degree angles (180/3 = 60 degrees). Max was pretty excited by all the angles and his new toys so we took a little time to discuss symmetry as he played around with the compass.

Then we folded paper into thirds along lines between pie slices.

Now the time came to cut our snowflakes. What type of snowflake did we want to create?

Max: How about one of each?

Oh my. That would mean repeating all the steps above again at least 8 times. I was curious to see how long Max's interest would stay with the snowflakes.

Max helped Micah a little with her cutting.

Playing around with celery.

MAX: I don't think I'm ever going to like celery, Mom. It gets that yucky, rubbery texture. I don't like it.

ALINA: It's not always rubbery. Usually, it's pretty crisp and crunchy. You can keep it from getting that way, you know.

MAX: I don't know much about celery, actually. Why does it get rubbery at all?

And thus he threw down the gauntlet on New Year's Eve. Not one to ignore shiny metal objects on the floor of my kitchen, I told Max I didn't know the answer, but would love to help him find out.

We discovered that celery stays firm and crunchy as a result of water pressure within its cells. When celery dries out, it loses water through evaporation. If you put a stalk of fresh celery with leaves on it in an empty glass before you go to bed, the celery will be droopy and rubbery in the morning. However, all it takes is adding some water to the glass and waiting a few hours to see your celery perk back up. The cells absorb the water to replace what they lost through evaporation.

Before we left for the park, we set out a stalk of celery in a glass without water and a stalk of celery in a glass with water. When we returned, sure enough, the water-endowed celery was thicker, firmer, and happier than the water-starved celery, who looked quite peaked.

MAX: Cool. So the celery cells suck it up. But I don't see how because it doesn't have an open stem, like flowers do.

Right. Time to play with celery. We took the celery stalks out of the glasses and Max cut an inch ("the white part", in his words) from the end of stalks. Then we held them up to see how the water was absorbed.

MAX: What are those dots?

Capillaries. And capillary action is pretty fascinating. 

MAX: I get it! See Mom, the one that didn't get water has really small capillaries because they are dried up and smushed together but the other one has big capillaries full of water.

Seeing the capillaries wasn't enough- Max needed to tear apart the celery and trace the capillaries up through the stalks. As he played around, I learned that chefs at nice restaurants like to soak celery in water before serving it to maintain that crispy, fresh texture.

MAX: So you can keep celery from being rubbery by giving it water or putting it in water. But why don't we keep our celery in water then? Why do we put it in the fridge? Does the fridge give it water vapors?

We couldn't find an answer to that, so we added it to our ongoing questions. We did, however, learn some more specific tips for keeping celery crisp in the fridge- tips that led to all kinds of questions about the nature of aluminum and how paper towels stay wet (rather than drying) in the fridge.

Max wanted to do the classic celery and dye science experiment (with his own twists, of course). He put 5 drops of blue food coloring in one glass with water and 4 drops of red food coloring in the other glass with water.

MAX: I want to see if a different amount of dye makes the color more bright.

I told him that having multiple variables in an experiment could make it hard to tell which played a casaul role in the experiment's results. Max nodded.

MAX: Yeah, but I still want to try. I can write down all the variables and we can do it again if it doesn't work.

I'm glad he sticks to his guns when curious.

MAX: The glasses aren't the same and we didn't measure how much water we put in each glass, so the water volume might be a variable. The colors might be variables too. Maybe red is absorbed faster than blue. Plus, I think the one with the big capillaries that spent time absorbing water while we were at the park will absorb more dye.

ALINA: I don't. Why do you think so?

MAX: I don't know. I just do.

I guess we'll find out next year.

A game of 20 questions for a naturalist in winter.

Pinecone peekaboo.

The glorious weather has us romping through the yard today with a game of 20 questions.

1. Are Santa's reindeer male or female? Why? answer
2. When does the annual Christmas Bird Count begin? answer
3. Is mistletoe really poisonous? answer
4. Is dumping fall leaves on the roadside for garbage pickup a wise idea? answer
5. How can you use an old Christmas tree to make your yard a happier place? answer
6. Is a poinsietta a flower? answer
7. Is there a meteor shower tonight? answer
8. How can you set a winter table for wildlife? answer
9. What are the best edible plants for winter foraging? answer
10. What do squirrels do in the winter? answer
11. How can you help backyard wildlife survive the winter? answer
12. What makes winter a tough season for animals? Why? answer
13. How does climate change affect the Gulf Stream and why does it matter? answer
14. Why is the holly tree associated with Christmas? answer
15. Which animals hibernate during the winter? answer
16. How do animals know when to hibernate and when to wake up? answer
17. Why do loggers prefer not to chop down large trees in the winter? answer
18. What is a "chilling requirement" and why does it matter? answer
19. Does tree sap disappear during the winter when the tree becomes brittle? answer
20. What does snow smell like? Why? answer

A lesson about flowers and tea.

Max loves our white camellia tree and decided that he wanted to write about it in his nature notebook. While scouring the web for camellias, I made a mistake that turned into an awesome afternoon of learning moments.

I printed a copy of this camellia page for Max to color and add. Then I printed a different sheet with what looked like a dearth of cool information about the camellia plant. Except that there are many different species of the genus camellia which led us on an excellent adventure. DIY.

A JOURNEY THROUGH FLOWERS AND TEA

reading..... Going where the words lead us. Print a copy of this coloring page for the Camellia japonica, the Alabama state flower, and make it sparkle. Then print a copy of Debbie Odom's exquisite handout on Camellia sinesis, the tea plant and read it together. Most of what follows jumped from this reading, which led Max to various questions, ideas, and activities. Reading for us never occurs without extensive talking.

writing..... Time to compare and contrast the two types of camellias. We just drew a chart with Camellia Japonica on one side and Camellia sinesis on the other. Then we used books and printouts to fill in the blanks. Our blanks included scientific names, type of plant, native location, current locations, leaf description, peak bloom season, growing needs (i.e. type of soil, light, water), role in ecosystem (who eats it or uses it and how), and human uses.

Max also felt the need to make a "tea flyer" so "other people can learn about tea". I love how he tries to extend what he learns into a teaching opportunity. Reggio would be proud.

brewing..... Max could not wait to sip some tea. So I showed him how to brew his very own cup using the stove. We talked about "steeping" and why it works best when the cup is covered so nothing escapes through steam. Then we sipped our teas and added a little honey for sweetener.

sorting and arranging.... Drinking tea led us to questions about all the sorts of teas I kept in my mysterious tea bin. Since Max seemed so intrigued, I took the bin from the shelf and dumped its contents (the pre-bagged teas) onto the kitchen table for him to sort and classify.

First he divided them up by brand and then he divided them by ingredients. Then he made a list of different ingredients in our teas, like lemon balm and mint.

the inventory.... He basically took an inventory of each type of tea and the number of tea bags in our possession. Such a great way to practice his information-sorting and charting skills. Next time we go to the store, I'm going to give him $25 to restock our tea inventory based on his assessment of our needs and uses. I can't wait to see what he selects.

creating.... With all the teas sorted and arranged, how could we share Max's new love affair with others? Why, by sharing tea, of course! As I hastily stitched together a couple of tea wallets, Max created inserts describing tea plants and 5 teas he selected for Bill and for Micah Naomi on the basis of "their need" for them. Both of us beamed at the result.

enjoying... We brewed another cup of tea and settled down to watch the tree lights twinkle and discuss all the cool things we had stumbled upon in our learning adventure. What a superfantastic way to fritter away an afternoon.... and study some science on the side.

I'd love to know if you try flowers and tea and what comes of your adventure.