Science Central

This week I went on a field trip with the 1st graders to our local science museum, Science Central.  Samuel has been here before and really likes it. Here are some pictures from his trip:

The boys looking at the funny mirrors.

At the fog simulator.

Watching a balloon filled with oxygen
explode when it touched fire.

My group to chaperone.
 (clearly that one boy is going to be a basketball player someday.)

Finally, a video of Samuel spinning round and round (and round and round). Before I put the video, here is a picture of him three years ago at the same exhibit. Look how much he has grown!

Spring Break

The kids and I drove to Evansville for Spring Break to visit Gran and Papa Michael (for any non-Jackson readers: those are my parents.) It was the first time we had done the drive, which took us about 6 hours. The kids have never done such a long car ride before, and I was worried that Becca would give us a repeat performance of her 3-hour screamfest from a few years ago. However, the kids did really well in the car, much better than I had hoped for. It helped that I packed a zillion snacks, and made them road trip binders (thank you Tanya for this idea!). The thing they really enjoyed was listening to books on CD. I checked out a bunch from our library right before the trip and they were a huge hit. If you are looking for recommendations for kids this age, we liked: Mr. Putter and Tabby, Mercy Watson, and Junie B. Jones.

Evansville has a wonderful children's museum. Almost all of the pictures I took on our trip are from the museum:

Samuel making a bridge

In the water room

Becca and Papa Michael building a house

In the giant bulldozer bucket

Becca and Gran working the digging machine

Samuel said his favorite part of the museum was the building room (although his clothes would definitely indicate the water room!). Becca's favorite was absolutely the face painting. Here is a video of how much she enjoyed that:

She wore that face paint for the rest of the day and even  put up a fight when I tried to wash it off in the bath that night. I think she wanted to wear it forever.

Other highlights from our trip included:

Samuel going fishing with Papa Michael

Ice cream at Dairy Queen on the way home

  

Ice cream. Yum.

All in all, we had a great time on our trip. It was fun to see everyone in Evansville, and we will plan to go back again sometime!

Fun at School

We have had a few fun evening activities at school lately. First, Becca's preschool did a Family Fun Night that had a western theme. The kids had a great time in the bounce house and playing western-themed games such as hobby horse races, throw the lasso over the stuffed pony, try to throw a ball in a cowboy hat, etc...

Here are some pictures from that night:

They also both got their faces painted. Becca got a bunny face, and Samuel got a frog. I didn't get a good picture of their faces, but you can sort of see the designs here:

The 2nd thing we did was a cake decorating contest at Samuel's elementary school. Samuel and I worked hard to make this hamburger cake one Sunday afternoon:

The cake itself was pretty easy to make. I found instructions online that we followed and he did most of it himself. The buns are just plain cake, the sesame seeds are slivered almonds just poked into the top bun, the hamburger patty is a rice krispy treat made with cocoa krispies, the cheese and lettuce are gummy candies we found at the store, and the french fries are pound cake he cut up with a special kid vegetable cutter we have that happens to make those wavy edges.

All of the cakes were on display at the school ice cream social one night. It was neat to see what the kids had come up with. Although he did not win a prize, he did get a ribbon for participating (he wasn't thrilled about not winning, but hey, it's a life skill to work on, right?) and we definitely had fun making the cake. I'm sure he will enjoy eating it too.

Oobleck

About once a year around here we make oobleck. Why once a year? Because it is insanely messy. It takes me about a year to forget how much work it is to clean everything up when the kids are done playing with it. They absolutely love it, and would probably play with it every day if I let them. Maybe it's something we need to play with outside in the summer.

If you have never made oobleck before, it's just equal amounts of cornstarch and water mixed together. It's neat because it's both a solid and a liquid. It's actually a lot of fun to experiment with. Just not so much fun to clean up.

Here are the kids having fun with oobleck:

Interior Decorators for Hire

Thinking of redecorating a room in your house? Do you have a fondness for masking tape? Look no further than Norwood & Norwood, Inc. for all of your decorating needs. Payment gladly accepted in the form of Cheez-its.

Project Linus

(Jacksons: feel free to skip the 1st paragraph below since you obviously know the background here.)

Last year, the 7 oldest Jackson kids decided that instead of picking names for Christmas gifts, we would pool our money each year and give it to a charity. We would take turns picking the charity, going down the line from oldest to youngest, and then starting over again. Since I am the second oldest, this year was my turn.

I wanted to pick an organization that 1) was local, 2) would be something my kids would understand, and 3) would have some sort of opportunity for the kids to be part of the giving. I did some research and found Project Linus to be a perfect fit. Project Linus (named after the Charlie Brown character Linus) provides blankets to kids who have been through something traumatic - a house fire, an illness, etc... There are chapters all over the USA, including one here in Fort Wayne. All of the blankets made by volunteers in this area go to kids in Fort Wayne and surrounding towns. Samuel and Becca each have their own special blankets, so the idea of making blankets for other kids was something they could grasp. And we made no-sew fleece blankets so they were actually able to help make the blankets (although, disclaimer here - they got bored after a little while, so they did help, but it's not like they made entire blankets on their own.)

We ended up splitting up the money we had to work with - we used half to buy fleece, and gave the other half directly to Project Linus so they could buy whatever supplies would be the most helpful to them. The fabric we bought was enough to make 10 blankets. Project Linus uses blankets in 3 different sizes - baby, kid, and pre-teen/teen. Before I bought the fleece, I asked which size blankets they were most in need of, and they said they are almost always running low on the pre-teen/teen size, so that's what we made.

In case anyone ever wants to make blankets for them, it's really easy. I bought 1.5 yards of fabric for each blanket, cut off the uneven ends, and then used the directions found here. A lady at the Project Linus chapter here even gave me a plastic template to use for cutting the fringe all the same length.

This was a fun thing to do with the kids this year. Here are some pictures of the finished blankets:

Drawing Faces

The other day Becca and I were playing downstairs in the playroom. She loves to draw with the dry-erase markers on the easel. Usually it's just scribbles, but this time I noticed that she has figured out how to draw faces. Maybe this is something all 3-year-old girls can do? Samuel certainly did not do this at that age. I very clearly remember his 4-year checkup at the doctor's office where they asked me if he could draw a person and I had no idea because he never had. Now, of course, he draws all the time, but at Becca's age (3 years and 2 months), he could not have done this: