Ayden

This morning Ayden was trying to get darrel to hold him and darrel kept acting like he was too heavy. Ayden came to me and said: "tell me to get up daddy" so I replied "go get up daddy" and his reply to me was "I not a squirrel" lol I love that kid, he comes up with some of the best stuff :D

Homeschooling Adventures With Oobleck

Ayden has really been enjoying homeschooling...He asks to do school work even :)

So because of his enthusiasm we decided to do some weekend science.  Today we made and played with Oobleck.  For those of you like me who have never heard of the stuff until now, it is just cornstarch and water.  Oobleck is a Non Newtonian fluid.... basically it is a liquid that behaves like a solid.  Its really fun stuff...plus they can make a huge mess and it just rinses away.  We choose to do this outside because it is beautiful out, but I wouldnt think twice about doing inside, it really is that easy to clean.  (you can always do it in the bathtub if you want to make it easier to clean)  ;)

Here is how you make it:
                 Add 2 cups of Cornstarch into a bowl
                 Add 1 cup of water
                 Then add a few drops of food coloring, as seen below (optional)

Then stir until it gets too hard to stir...or use your hands :) we did both!!!

 It is some really neat stuff.  Here I was showing Ayden how to roll a ball of it.

 Then it runs through your hands when you stop!

 Levi did start to get a bit curious about what we were doing.

 He eventually joined in :)

He wasnt sure he liked the way it felt.

 He started shaking his hand trying to get it off.

 Which turned out to be LOTS of fun because he could literally paint the patio with the stuff.  He kept coming back for more.

 Ayden thought it was cool to let it run off of my hands onto his.

 As we played with it, we talked about what solids and liquids look like, and how they behave.

 We learned that if you push slowly you could get your hands to the bottom of the bowl, but if you go fast it is like hitting a wall.

Because it is so dry here, the fun eventually moved closer to the water spicket.  

 I LOVE this one!!!  Levi was getting really into what was going on.

 Eventually the experimenting reached feet.

If Ayden tried to pull his foot out too fast the whole bowl would come with it.  

He had to hold the bowl down to get his foot out.

Levi thought we needed to stir some more

Pure little boy love!

Messy boys are HAPPY boys!!!!

Ayden toes. 

Ayden eventually learned that he could also lift the bowl with his hands if he pulled up quickly.  He told me it was sucking on him....Which makes sense, it had a suction like quality to it.

Levi toes. 

 Love this little face.

Ayden kept adding water to the bowl and it turned into a cloudy light blue puddle.  He told me that it wasn't sucking anymore.

I pulled out the hose to rinse off the patio, and that turned into another game.

(Notice that Levi has on 1 sock?  A few minutes before he was inside putting on my socks and trying on my cowboy boots <3)

We will defiantly be visiting this again.  The next time we do this we will be learning about sound waves.  Oobleck reacts to sound waves.  It jumps around and moves when you put it over a subwoofer.  I am excited to visit this with them later.

The boys learned a lot today, but I also learned that boys are happiest when they are messy, dirty and outside.  I saw some of the biggest smiles on their face while we were learning together.  These little boys just melt my heart.