Saturday, June 1, 2013

Bugs, Bouncy Balls, and Bubble Snakes

I should be home cleaning my house. I am letting my kids spend too much time watching "The Magic School Bus" episodes on YouTube. And here I am being the "good example" still on the computer! My excuse, it is pretty poor, but I haven't updated this for a while and even though I have a pretty good excuse for that, I hear it is not a good blogger thing to do! ;) My excuse for not posting forever is this: my hard drive DIED! Totally gone! And what is worse, the backup stopped backing up some time last September!



This is pretty deflating for a graphic designer! I had oodles of tools that I used to make my life much easier. Many of the best ones are gone. There is an upside however...I have a great excuse to search for newer, funner ones! On the homeschooling side: Completely derailed!



Yup! Just like that. Not only am I now completely unorganized (because I had gone through and organized everything sometime around December), but public school got out around the same time my computer crashed. For most homeschoolers this would not be an issue, in the coffee shop its a pretty big issue especially if you plan on schooling on any level throughout the summer. I have to tell kids that they cannot play until we are done with school (i.e. kick them out the door...not always good for business). I think I may just have to start homeschooling the neighbors kids as well. I think God is working on my patience!

On the up side, a break from the computer is refreshing from time to time and makes me realize how much I need to regulate it. Mainly for myself, but also for my children. And yesterday, I did just that. After a rough morning, I decided we NEEDED to go for a nature walk. Earlier in the morning, my son decided he wanted to make an "bug" book and put pictures of bugs in it. So off he took with my D70 trying to focus on tiny little bugs. After being rather unsuccessful (either because he couldn't find any bugs, or because he could not really handle the big camera), he gave up. So on our nature walk, I took my husband's camera, the D300 (much better), and captured a few creepy crawlies.

Ants...



shiny bug...



?...



Now if we can manage to get the hubby to print them, and put a little (or a lot) of effort into figuring out what they actually are (I did not excel in entomology!), we will be in business!

Here are some other interesting sights we saw...







After the nature walk we made one of these:



and after the friends came back we all tried to make some of these homemade bouncy balls...



which turned out more like this...



We may have to try this one next time. Bonus: This one has the explanation as to what is actually happening to make the bouncy ball. I haven't looked very hard, but I have not found a good explanation for the borax version. If anyone knows, I'd love to heard it!

1 comment:

  1. I love the coming of spring because of nature walks! It's always amazing to see plant and animal life return. Enjoy those kids! =)

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