August 18, 2009

Hooked!

I was getting T. ready for bed the other night when she asked suddenly if I knew what an hypothesis was.

"Tell me," I said.

She paused for a minute, to recall the information, and said, "it's an idea you can test!"

July 31, 2009

It's in the stars

T. is a girl who loves her bedtime. She's never been a night owl (unless you count those dreadful colic days, or the months post-op when she decided it was neat to be awake from 3-6 a.m.). Even if she has the chance to stay up to do something fun, she starts to wilt after 7:30 and asks for bed, and jammies, and sleep. As a result, she's had little interest in the world at night. I'm not sure she's ever really seen a starry night sky--at least not to gaze at in wide-eyed wonder.

July 24, 2009

Have bubbles, will travel (even if by armchair)

It was only fitting that yesterday we came home from a morning of end-of-summer-like activities (meet-the-teacher event for L., and a work meeting for me) to find a package awaiting us. A dear family friend has a yearly tradition of sending us a "Christmas in July" package. This year we unwrapped the mysterious brown parcel to find this:

Amazing Places

July 16, 2009

Taxonomy

My kids have enjoyed our weekly summer science activities so much this summer that they actually asked whether or not we could do summer science at the beach this week.

June 29, 2009

Microcosm

Even though social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter are often criticized, I'm a fan of them. I know that they can't come close to one-on-one face time; to a long conversation over coffee, or a walk in the park, or a thoughtful letter sent the old-fashioned way. And my friend's visit this past weekend was a testimony both to the importance of face time, but also to the value of technology in keeping connections alive and possible. I thought a lot this weekend about other old friends--and about how amazing it has been to reconnect with many of them over Facebook.

June 25, 2009

Grow crystals, grow!

For Christmas this past year, my sister gave L. this really nice crystal growing kit which, alas, we haven't tried yet. It's not that he's uninterested in crystal growing, but growing crystals takes time, and patience, and the ability (and desire) to follow some rather lengthy sets of directions in order to achieve the desired results. And while L.
June 17, 2009

Bang, bubble, and fizz

L. and I have been sending off vinegar and soda bottle rockets since he was about three years old. In fact, one of my many treasured memories is of a sunny afternoon one spring when L. was three--the first time ever we tried the experiment. We were standing in the back yard at our old house, and L. had been waiting all morning for me to get home from work. He had very high expectations for the experiment--as he does these days, too, for any experiment we undertake. Achieving anything less than perfection--or less than the results he imagines in his head--is unacceptable.
June 10, 2009

Little big engineers

In the never-ending quest to scour the internet and libraries for all science crafts and activities related to L.'s interests I found a great one last week. L. loves to build and design structures, and he has an uncanny ability to render his visions into small, almost-microscopic, blueprint-like form on paper. When he's inspired, he'll sit in his bed with his plastic protractors and compasses and his pencils and painstakingly draw his designs. T. doesn't quite possess this type of focus or interest, but she does love to work with her hands and manipulate objects.

June 2, 2009

Summer Science

Yesterday I wrote about how we were moving into summer mode at Professor Mom's house--trying to organize activities for the kids and working them around our own summer school teaching schedules. I've written before about how difficult it is to come up with challenging craft activities for L. to enjoy, and we decided together to focus on doing at least one fun and interesting science experiment each week this summer.