Friday, September 26, 2008

OOBLIK - Cornstarch and Water Experiment



What is almost solid hard when you try to push it around or drag your finger through it or roll it into a ball.....

But dripps off your fingers like a liquid when you let go of it and let it run off of your fingers or hands?



It's OOBLIK! You start with corn starch and add water until you get a mayonaise like consistancy (which we found out was harder to do than you would think.) Add water and it gets chalky and hard. We had just over a box of cornstarch and added around a quart of water to it before we could play with it. The instructions said to add the color to the water, but everyone wanted a different color, so we added it to the mix and they mixed it by hand. Which took a lot of effort!



Joel was totally amazed and kept making little balls and then asking everyone? Where is my ball? Bethie on the other hand never got her blue mixed into the stuff since she didn't want to touch it.

All of them loved it - from oldest to youngest. Matthew took a long time to get into his green. "It's really sticky," he said.

It was very messy - so we were very glad we took it outside to play.
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Thursday, September 18, 2008

We survived Ike

What a funny name for a hurricane - huh? Well, it came and went - thousands around us were without electricity, but we were blessed and only lost it a few hours. Tim had bought lots of water just in case for our last hurricane - Gustav - that hardly hit us with anything. So we were not overly worried - except for a few swaying pine trees at one end of the trailers.

We slept in Saturday morning, moved a few things out of the bathroom - just in case. Settled in working on the girls "Flight Journals". Late morning we lost electricity for about an hour, then again about 3:30 until after midnight. The bad thing is that we lost the water after a while too - since it knocked out the electric pump on the street's well. That was put on a generator around 11pm, so not a huge problem overall.

Others we know didn't fare so well. Tim's parents have 8 trees down in their yard, and I guess some is on their new fence. They were on vacation, so Tim is there helping with the trees today.

Karen's family had a lot of trees down in their yard, some hitting the houses. Grandma's house only had the top of a tree - no significant damage, other than knocking out the gutter and making a huge mess. But a tree landed on the corner of their house and dented the roof and outside wall. No damage that they can see on the inside - but it seems to have made their mold problem much worse. It did enough damage to the lines, that they were without electricity until last night.

Tim continues to job hunt. Six months, nearly a hundred interviews, nearly a thousand job apps and inquiries and sent resumes - but nothing past the nibble stage. Very depressing. So far we have survived on the unemployment and tax refunds, but even trying to be frugal.... well, we've had a few large expenses - car, AC, replaced the stove, school books .... and we keep digging further and further into the little freezer. On the plus side, I can see what I have in there. Sort of.

We've also had all the kids and myself sick with what appears to be a 24 hour bug - high fever and a headache - then it is gone. Kendra went down with it last night. At least I hope she has the short bug - Esther was running fevers for close to a week.

Joel is learning about armadillos - Kendra plays "Go Diego, Go" with him, and I told her that she should pick an animal every week or three and learn all about it, read library books and all. They are enjoying it very much. He's got a little one I found at Mom's house to borrow and slept with it last night.

Well, back to making soap. And cleaning house. Wish I had a better eye for organization, and an easier time of letting things go. A better floor plan wouldn't hurt either. The girls have a bunk bed and Kendra is closer to the ceiling than Vannan is to her. LOL I will have to post the pictures I took the other day of their room and my poor non-existant living room. YIKES!

Friday, September 5, 2008

Don't you LOVE getting great stuff for FREE!

I have downloaded quite a bit from this Giveaway site and got some great finds. This one is an update of a repeat - I don't do much scrapbooking but found the program fun to play with.

Ya'll may really enjoy it.

The catch is that it has to be completely downloaded and installed per the instructions (some are trickier than others) by midnight on the Pacific Coast. Today is Sept. 12 - so after that they have a new one.

And you can only use it for your personal benefit - not commercial.


http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/wondershare-photo-collage-studio-428/



And if you like that "Free" part...

Here is a blog that gives away books PDF - homeschool friendly books every day

http://homeschoolfreebie.wholesomechildhood.com/

Today's book is a puzzle book. I'm still downloading it - so not sure details.





And free all the time are the MP3 books - human read - at

http://librivox.org/

not everything is worth listening to...but lots of the great old books are there. The run on volunteers, and have hundreds more books on their list waiting to be read. My girls love listening to these on their MP3 players while doing chores.



I've signed up for all of their RSS feeds - and check them every day while checking my mail. You can sign up for an RSS feed on this Blog as well - very cool tool.

Also, we download sermons from http://www.oneplace.com/ - several of which have rss (or podcasts) available for download on a daily or weekly basis.

The girls love being able to listen to different things without bothering anybody and they can do outside chores too. I've also ripped their AWANA Ultimate Adventure CD's for the books that they are working on an put the verses they want on their MP3 players. Kendra loves to listen while she knits.

You don't have to have an MP3 player though - I've burned several of their favorite books and stories to CDs and I listen on my computer when I can. Most people have Media Player on their computers - I recently upgraded and LOVE the new version!

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