Meant To Teach

In  our history, we have now entered the Dark Ages (Early Middle Ages). I can already tell my daughters are going to have a blast learning about this time in history. Today was just the introduction. Besides castles and Knights, my daughters actually got into this lesson asking a lot of questions about the food they ate, the hard work they had to do, their healthcare, etc. It was all pretty interesting to learn about. At the end of our lesson, we decided to make a sun dial. We talked about how they used hour glasses, sun dials, and bells to tell time. The girls really enjoyed this. They marked the hour change on their sun dial, as well as came up with the idea of putting our camera on time lapse to see it move slightly - along with the sun and clouds.    

This year, we still did the normal Halloween things, such as carving and decorating pumpkins and attending numerous fall festivals and pumpkin patches. Here's a picture. My oldest was creative and decided to do Grumpy Cat. However, the girls really had blast with this activity that we did the week of Halloween. All you need for this activity is cornstarch, water, alka seltzer, and a container with a lid to put it in. We painted ours like a ghost. You fill the container about 1/3 full of cornstarch, then add water until your container is about half way full. Stir the cornstarch and water together. We then broke up two tablets of alka seltzer and dropped them in the container. Finally, we put the lid on the container and then gave it about 30 seconds and then in flew! I really wish I would have taken a video of this. We enjoyed it so much that we did it over again. Each time when the container seemed to pop and fly, we all jumped. Beware though - it makes a mess. It splattered al...