Manic Mondays

Goodness, what a manic day! Trying to get so much packed into one day, with the usual "unforeseen circumstances" added in..

Still, yesterday we did some more science, setting off some Lemon Juice Rockets. Its just the sort of science that works well for all 3 boys at the same time. William has plenty to watch, Samuel has plenty of action, and Joshua explains to everyone what is going on! I know most of these experiements are "beneath" him (this is the kid with particle physics posters around his room, and whom I am trying to teach quantum physics too!) but he still seems to get a lot out of it. It also gives him a chance to show what he knows, which he enjoys.

To our great pleasure, Samuel came up with an idea for altering the experiment, which was brilliant. So, later on today we hope to attach a balloon to the top of the bottle instead of a cork, and see what happens...

This morning I sorted out the art box, and the collection of recycling items set aside for "making". I now have 3 tidy boxes - just need somewhere (other than under my sideboard) to keep them...

Today's unforeseen circumstance was the revelation that our car tax had run out at the end of July - might seem unlikely that we hadn't noticed but in my defence a) we have 2 cars and it wasn't the one I'd been using and b) Roarke had opened the renewal notice and "put it somewhere safe" without telling me...

After the usual hunt for the relevant documents, he's set off now to get the tax!

Both the older two lads settled down to some workbook activity (maths and english) this morning - after I lost my temper somewhat. One of those spiralling situations, with each lad playing up in turn. To be fair, they did have very clear warning that I was reaching the end of my fuse, and I did recover quickly and apologise. However, the upshot was that they (semi)voluntarily got their books out and worked reasonably hard for just under an hour.

Joshua helped make lunch (stuffed jacket poatoes), as a cookery lesson, and Samuel is planning breakfast tomorrow. Slightly worrying as he is involving his dad too... and I've heard "pancakes", "fry up", "waffles" etc all mentioned. Not sure we have that much food in the house!

Yesterday I settled down to some baking. I made gluten free cheddar crakers, and potato scones. The scones are like drop scones - rather than cream-tea scones - and the boys had them with cheese melted over the top, and baked beans "on the side" for tea. The crackers are one of those things that don't last even half the time it took to make them - you rest the dough for an hour but it took less than that for us to eat them all! They are gorgeous!

I experimented with some polenta that was left over in the fridge, and turned in into a successful "pizza" for Roarke and I, using tomato ketchup smeared all over it, cheese, spring onions and parmasan on top. Yum!

Dinosaurs are popular again in our house at the moment. William is especially interested. He has invented his own dinosaur, called a giraffadactyle! He can describe how it looks, walks, what it eats and how it lives! So cute!

Found a nice game today on the Ulster Folk Museum site - can ANYONE manage to land the SC1?! I keep crashing..

UPDATE:

Live science update :0)

We've just carried out our rocket experiment again. We tried 3 different liquids - lemon juice, lime juice and malt vinegar. Vinegar worked best! We tried the normal rocket experiment, we then tied a balloon to the cork so we could actually see where the cork went (and to help it land), and then we placed an empty balloon over the bottle to see if it would inflate.

Not sure if this will work, but here is the video of the balloon experiment - I hope you can see it!

Roarke said he wished science had been this exciting at school! He is always very open to the fact that he never found science interesting before marrying me. Over the past 13 years I think I've answered more science questions from him than the kids! He's always saying "what I don't understand is why..."

So, after the experiments, he said "what I don't understand is why/how the vinegar and the bicarb produce carbon dioxide". I then had to produce a fact sheet to explain the serious science behind the experiments, for him and for Joshua! If you are interested, it is here.

To prove the point made in my fact sheet about this reaction being used to produce fizzy drinks, we also showed the boys the remaining water/vinegar mixture in the bottle fizzy quietly and looking exactly like cola! (and no, William, you can't drink it!)