Leaf rubbings

These are my new obsession. Ostensibly I collect leaves for the kids and let them do the rubbings, but they've done, like, two. Meanwhile, there are close to 30 in my Nature Notebook, and I think I blew my cover when my husband caught me doing leaf rubbings at 10 o'clock one night. So yes, I'm addicted. At every park I find new trees, and I can't wait to get home, do a rubbing, identify the tree and add the rubbing to my collection. Plus, they're so pretty! 

They're also simple. Just find a leaf, fold a piece of paper in half around it (or, if it's too big, place it between two sheets), hold it steady with a finger, and rub over it with a wrapper-less crayon.

What's that? A Dwarf Chinkapin

Silly me. I saw these acorn caps on the ground and loudly proclaimed for all to hear, "A burr oak!" I was so pleased with myself! Then I get home and discover, wrong! It was a Dwarf Chinkapin (also spelled Chinquapin).

Dwarf Chinkapins are a type of white oak (meaning they have rounded lobes) and their official name is Quercus prinoides. They can withstand a wider variety of habitats than their larger Chinkapin counterparts, but like Chinkapins, their acorns are some of the sweetest nuts.

The Great Yeast Experiment

Last week we took a field trip to a local bakery, in order to get free samples learn about the science behind baking bread. And boy did we! We bake bread a lot around here, and the kids already loved watching the yeast bubble up, but now they understand just what yeast does -- which is burp, of course. They used to be able to tell me that the yeast is alive and that it eats the sugar when the water is heated to the right temperature, but now they just say, "It burps."

Besides that important tidbit, they also learned the process of growing wheat and why we can't grow it down south (because it will never dry out in our humid air), and just how the wheat in the fields is turned into flour. As the baker explained the milling process V-Man piped up and called out, "Just like at the mill we saw!" And indeed, the weekend before we had visited an old mill and the kids had played around on the millstones. If education is about making connections, then my boy had done just that.

They came home with wheat to plant, which we did, and the very next day it had sprouted. That stuff grows fast! And every morning there are water droplets on the tip of the blades. I'd love to know why.

We re-enacted one of the yeast experiments to prove that yeast expels carbon dioxide as it eats the sugar, which is what causes bread to rise. You need a packet of yeast (or about 2.25 teaspoons), an empty water bottle, a stretched-out balloon, and two tbsp of sugar. Heat one cup of water to 110 degrees, pour it into the bottle, add the yeast and sugar, slip the balloon over the top, and watch it inflate. 

Word smoothies

I totally stole the blender idea from pinterest (LOVE pinterest!) but added the "glass" myself. Each consonant blend is laminated and velcroed to the blender, and every day when we review sounds I choose a different blend and make "smoothie" words. The kids get a kick out of making their own smoothies (for now, at least!).