Our Week

We are in the middle of a busy week! Things started quiet and slow but certainly are not ending that way. On Monday Maddie had to do a science experiment called "Copper Top" which, unfortunately, didn't work the first time around. So we were real scientists, did some research, tried it a different way and it worked! The first attempt was to put an iron, non-galvinized nail into a solution of lemon juice with a dash of salt where pennies had been soaking. The first hard part was to find an iron, non galvinized nail! Fortunately Poppa Bill had some of those nails and Brian was finally able to locate steel wool to clean the nail at the local hardware store. Then we had to clean the rust off the nail. First we soaked it in coca-cola.....doesn't that make you want to go to the kitchen and have a glass? It did eat quite a bit of the rust off the nail then Maddie took it outside and ran the steel wool over it.



Then we put the nail in the solution....

and after an hour.....it looked exactly like it did before we started! It was supposed to become the color of the copper pennies. So we started over with vinegar and 1 teaspoon (not a dash!) of salt and 10 more pennies than we had last time around. The new instructions also said to remove the pennies before putting the nail in so we did all that. Immediately we could see a difference in the pennies!

Pennies on the left were in lemon juice and the ones on the right were in vinegar. And when we were done the nail did have a copper tone to it! So we had a true experiment complete with scientific frustration and a solution.


A lot of times people ask me how we handle day care and homeschooling. Maddie has become very adept and playing with the little guys when she feels like it and getting them to leave her alone when she really needs quiet time on her own. One morning this week she just really wanted to read her new book so she hiked upstairs, got her sleeping bag and curled up with her book. We got Tin Tin in Tibet from the library for fun because one of our latest history chapter was about Mongolia and Tibet.

Yesterday Maddie played with her camera for a bit while we were finishing coloring and getting ready to go outside(getting all kids rigged up takes at least 15 minutes on a good day!). I love this "self portrait" she took with the timer.

Today Maddie had her online American Girl club meeting. She has had a great time the last two months because the meetings are about Felicity! Today's book was Felicity Learns A Lesson You can see that Maddie, Felicity and Samantha were all ready to go!

First they discuss the book. The girls can answer via a chat box in the "classroom" which is monitored by several moderators. Then they have a snack and do a project. This month the snack was molassess cookies which we didn't make...we still have Christmas cookies around! The craft was to make butter which ended up, in our house, as a group project! The day care kids and I all took turns shaking the jar. It takes a good 15 minutes or so to get cream to change to butter. Tomorrow morning we are having bread and homemade butter for breakfast! Then the girls get to chat for a bit and the meeting is logged off. On the first meeting Maddie was so excited because one girl explained she had to go do schoolwork before lunch because she was in Hawaii!
Tomorrow is the next Williamsburg field trip about The War of 1812 and our 4H meeting in the evening!