Summer Astronomy

This summer we have been exploring the space beyond our atmosphere. It has been a blast!! As partners in our journey to outer space, our friends the O's have joined us. So in age order we have Kiah, Tessa, Kali, Lana, Logan, Toran and Laci. With Anique, Micah and Dan looking on from the wings. We started at the sun and have journeyed to Saturn. Over the next few Saturdays we will finish our study of the solar system. It will bring the official end of our summer and start of fall. My kids were just beginning to understand what that meant and I heared a chorus of "WAIT, WHAT, WE WON'T BE ABLE TO SEE THE O'S EVERY WEEK". Not fun for me either. We just love those guys! Of course right after the whine fest came the "what are we doing next summer with the O's? Oceans, insects, rocks, anatomy, botany, fish" you get the point. So what have we done/learned.

                       1) God is great and has made an amazing universe for us to explore.
                       2) If you can use food to make the point, it is sooooo much better.

Phases of the moon in Oreos

Making models of the Earth in rice crispy treats, gumdrops and mini chocolate chips

                         3) Volcanoes are really cool whether they are on Earth or Mars.

building of the volcanoes

ERUPTION

  4) Shooting off rockets in the driveway is a ton of fun.
  5) Shooting off soda bottle rockets with Dan's air compressor is even more fun. Sure wish we had taken pictures of the rocket blasts. Sorry, we will have to have a take two and post pictures later.

Beyond that we have learned that meteoroids and asteroids are pretty much the same thing they just differ in size. Comets are dirty snowballs streaking thru space (imagine that, even God has snowball fights). Jupiter has a mini solar system all its own and it has rings(I know right). Mars is home to the largest and tallest volcano in our solar system(bonus points if you know the name of it). The sun on Mercury looks white because Mercury has almost no atmosphere. Venus rotates in the opposite direction of all other planets. Isn't that amazing? God spun Venus backwards, that is just so amazing to me. It was almost as though He was adding His signature to His creation. Saturn is the only planet in our solar system that is less dense than water. That means that if you could find a body of water big enough to put Saturn in, it would float! No, I don't know how they know that, I'm sure math was involved. We have talked about Curiosity; the rover that is on Mars as I type.   We have even looked at some of the pictures it has sent back to Earth. Totally cool!!

I have to say I'm not really ready for all of this fun to end. Fall will be a major let down after all of this fun summer schooling. I am looking forward to the future adventures for the summer school gang!! Hope your summer was as far out as ours was.

Christmas Already

Is it to early to be thinking about Christmas? Well, I have already started the thinking about and planning process of this never ending holiday. My list has been started and I'm looking for sales. I've started cutting and sewing and soon we will draw names so that the kids can work on gifts all fall for their siblings.  Anyone who knows me, knows Christmas is my least favorite holiday. I love the spiritual side of Christmas and the hope and joy one can feel during this time of celebration. What I don't like is the santa, buying frenzy, it's never enough crazy part. I know that most people won't agree with my desire to tell my kids that late last night santa died in his sleep very peacefully and his funeral will be next week, but that is exactly how I feel. So instead of killing the old guy off we have decided to have him come on St. Nicholas day. This is the day that St. Nicholas visits good children in parts of Europe and now in parts of the United States as well. This year he will come on December 6th and I will be done with him for the rest of the month and we can get on with the study and celebration of Christ's birth. The real reason we celebrate CHRISTmas.

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE

Tessa's Birthday Trip

Tessa's birthday was so two months ago and I still have written nothing about it. So I have finally decided to put all else aside and get to the business of blogging about it. Tessa decided that for her birthday she wanted to go to the Worcester Art Museum in (get this) Worcester Mass. It is a museum started by a very wealthy family back in the day and of course they thought it would be a great idea to gather a bunch of artsy stuff and put it in a building that they paid for to show the community that they were something special. Isn't that how most art museums start? This one is pretty cool. They have three levels to cover different time periods, downstairs was the ancient to medieval time period. They had Romain mosaics that were very interesting, there were pictures of the mosaics being taken from Italy (I can't remember what part or Italy), as well as the story behind the removal and transport of the mosaics. They also had the explanation of the story being told with the mosaics, which was good because I sure didn't know the stories. There were Roman statues, busts and coins. There were Greek urns, metal plates and clay dishes. Jars and offering plates for the Greek gods. They had a room from an old monastery chapel called the "Chapter House" complete with stained glass windows. Tessa really liked the window and the fact that the only furniture in the room were long wooden benches that the monks would sit on and discuss the financial business of the town and church. There were many wood carvings of Christ and His apostles. The people in the 1500's were very fond of the Crucifixion and enjoyed portraying it in all of its horror. One of the coolest things we saw was a carving of the Jesse tree that was done in the mid 1500's. It shows the lineage of Christ and has many intricate details and carvings of each person. I guess that is what you did before Polaroid. There was also ancient oriental art, glass, jade, porcelain and china as well as many statues of Hindu gods and Buddhas galore.  They have several Japanese rice paper prints that are amazing. They carve a scene into wood (the negative), paint it with ink and press it onto the rice paper. They do this over and over to layer the colors, think silk screening. It was amazing. Apparently the very wealthy would have some of the panels of their rice paper walls done with these rice paper prints. Early wallpaper anyone.

The next floor up got a little boring for very little girls it was a lot of paintings of people, some of them looked very scary and angry, more crucifixion art and dead animals. I think the live ones moved to much. There was a full suit of armor that was pretty cool. On the third floor we discovered that we are not fans of modern art, if you can call it art. My personal opinion is, if I can do it, it should not hang in a museum. No kidding one of the pieces had tape on the floor around it telling people not to sit on it because it was art. It looked like a bale of hay done in paper decoupage. Yep, I could do that. Another one was three orange ovals on white canvas. Yep, I could do that. Water bottles hung from wire in the shape of a tree. They weren't even new water bottles. At my house that is called trash. But my all time favorite was the one titled black canvas. Yes you guessed it, it was a white canvas painted black. It wasn't even painted well because you could still see some white peeking out of the black. Give me the old stuff, that's all I have to say on that.

After walking the museum for a couple of hours we headed to the cafe and had an amazing lunch. Some where I have a picture of the sandwiches we ate and if I can find them I will post them. Of course no trip to the art museum would be complete without a trip to the gift shop where everyone found a trinket to remember the day by and then we headed back out into Worcester traffic and made our way back home for cake and ice cream. What kind of cake did Tessa want this year? Asparagus. That's my Tessa.

Next birthday trip will be planned by Kiah. I think New York will be at the top of the list and Dylan's candy bar will be a must see.