Last week we spent our school time a little differently! And at the end of the week, I got to spend the weekend at the beach with just the co-op moms! It was such a nice recharge for us all! And sooo many awesome tide pools we found in Yachats. We will be taking kiddos there sometime this summer with group!
Avery has been very into DIY SCI videos by Steve Spangler. Our monthly subscription boxes his company makes have been super fun as well. One day we sat down and wrote a list of all the experiments Avery wanted to try from the videos, and watching how flowers suck water up their stems was one of his top favorites. It was actually a little hard to find white flowers! I looked at three stores before finding some ranunculus's at New Seasons.
I hung some oregano and thyme in the kitchen to dry for cooking, and Emmet thought that was a great idea. He strung his own drying strings up and picked a bunch of mint to hang. Then I mentioned a friend made simple syrup with their lilac flowers to make food-dye free snow cones. Emmet thought that was a GREAT idea so we made simply syrup, lilac honey, and he hung some to dry for tea as well. The syrup was equal parts sugar and water, brought to a boil and boiled just until the sugar dissolves. Then you place a handful of lilac flowers, NO green stem or it will be bitter, and let steep over night. Strain the flowers and place simple syrup in fridge to keep for up to 3 months. The honey was even easier, just place flowers in honey and let sit at least a few hours and enjoy within two weeks. So fun!
Reading, reading, reading. I cannot even keep track of how much reading. It happens in the car, when they wake up, as they are falling asleep, randomly throughout the day. Especially on babysitter D and T day's, she and her son bring new books to share and all four kids just sit and read for hours. Michael is loving Garfield comics and read over 10 of those books last week!! Emmet really likes Minecraft comic books right now and Avery likes looking at pictures in all varieties of books. The Garfield comics you can follow along without reading for a lot of them so he has enjoyed them as well. Also, all the plants. House plants, our wax dipped hanging plants from the fall, and lots and lots and lots of baby starts have germinated in our living room this year!!
Every time we get gas they want to wash windows!
This Environmental Science box has been SO fun. We created a little micro biome and have done experiments to see how weather patterns happen (ice melting in one side and a "forest" on the other side creating temperature differences), how desserts and forests use different amounts of water, how the atmosphere helps hold in heat, and how the ice bergs melting creates rising waters and flooding. We also have CO2 detector strips to see how rising ocean tides effect greenhouse gasses, and then we will plant seeds and see how those change the CO2 levels. A lot of awesome knowledge packed into one box! We are looking forward to purchasing several more of these kits.
The garden!! It has grown exponentially this winter. We went from 13 fifty foot garden beds last year, to 52 this year!! As of this week we have all 52 beds planted and our CSA starts in one week!!! Kids have been awesome adapting to me working almost full time to get everything ready for the growing season. They also help out a ton and can spout off why no-dig gardening is best for improving soil and what methods work to grow veggies pesticide and herbicide free!
Hope you are having a beautiful spring,
The Dillman's
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