Other things this month...

Uploading pictures off my camera for the month and have some more I'll share...

Earlier this month the girls took out the shells they collected from the creek in May, as well as shells they collected from Virginia Beach, VA and York Beach and Wells Beach in Maine. They were grouping them, touching them, drawing them, smelling them, listening to them, learning about them.

Georgia, feeling inspired by the movie Imagine That, wanted to know what scones were. We looked up some recipes and realized we had ingredients to make cranberry scones.

Olivia wanted to know who the Queen of England was...also inspired by Imagine That. (same scene as scones...the girls love that scene!)

Georgia went to the Creative Kids Club at the library where they made a tambourine out of paper, paper clips, and bottle caps.

Olivia had her first visit with the dentist.

And added some pictures to her alphabet book. She loves cutting out pictures, words, and letters from magazines and uses them in her alphabet book, or in collages.

Pan starts with a P.

The girls are also participating in the summer reading program at the library, have played soccer, captured bugs, fed the daring jumping spider they captured, watched it make a nest and later found lots of itty bitty spider babies.

Ancient Discoveries, the Clepsydra

After watching an Ancient Discoveries episode about ancient technology, Georgia wanted to try to make her own simple water timer like the clepsydras she saw in the show. Clepsydras, like sundials, were probably one of the first time-keeping devices in history. They were used all over the ancient world throughout history, but the name clepsydra comes from the Greeks who used them to time orations made in court so that each side had equal time to state their case. In Greek, Clepsydra means "water thief" or "steal water".

Georgia got out some disposable bowls and straws and went right to work. She used an old cell phone to time how long it took the water to empty into the other bowl.

You can almost see the water dripping out...

We found a site from the History Channel called The Ancient Hobbyist which shows how to recreate and build some ancient inventions. Here's a video that shows how to make a clepsydra as a clock.

And you can download a PDF of step by step instructions on building a clepsydra here.

There are some other interesting projects on the Ancient Hobbyist site that we'll have to try sometime...like a bamboo flute, or a trebuchet!!

Dyeing Eggs, Latvian-Style

We attended a workshop on how to dye eggs using the Latvian method of using onion skins and other natural objects to decorate and dye the eggs.

Click here to read our post from two years ago when we attended this same event.

The first thing we did was to take a square piece of fabric and put a small pile of dried onion skins on top. We used yellow onion skins. The next step was to decorate the eggs using flowers, leaves, herbs, anything we wanted. We wet the egg to make the items stay in place.

Next we put some more onion skins on top of the egg and gathered the material to enclose the egg. We then tied string around it several times to keep everything closed up and in place.

Mark used a fine netting fabric for his. He did not surround it with onion skins, but instead, the egg would pick up the color from other eggs while they boiled.

After the eggs boiled in their cloth and onion blankets, they were cooled in ice water, unwrapped, rinsed, dried...and voila!

The girls also made and decorated some paper baskets.

Maple Syrup Festival

We went to the Maple Syrup Festival again this year. We learned about syrup making through history and different cultures. We also learned about modern practices, and watched sap boil in the evaporator. We sampled syrup made in our own county...and bought some to take home, too. It was DELICIOUS!!! The girls sampled some maple candy.

Georgia demonstrated the yoke for the group.

Listening to a colonial-era interpreter about syrup making in his day, you can see the sugar shack in the background.

After our tour, we decided to go for a walk down to the beavers' pond. It was such a beautiful day for the first weekend in March!

We saw a lot of turtles out sunning themselves on such a lovely day.

And some Canada Geese as well...

We had a nice walk, definitely a nice break from winter weather.

The next day, Georgia made us some yummy pancakes! She made banana, blueberry, raspberry, and plain whole-wheat pancakes. We had a feast! And we used the local maple syrup purchased at the festival! Mmmmm.

Archaeology of Ohio

On Saturday, Mark and Georgia attended a lecture called Archaeology of Ohio. Author and editor Robert N. Converse shared his knowledge on the prehistoric cultures of Ohio, with a focus on artifacts and prehistory of our county. After the presentation, he offered to inspect any artifacts that we may have found, letting us know more about the pieces.

Georgia brought in her arrowhead that was found at her great grandmother's house.

She was told that her arrowhead was from the Archaic Period, and probably came from the Glacial Kame or Red Ocher cultures. He said it is about 5000 years old!!!

After returning home she told me all about the lecture. We searched the Internet to learn more about the Glacial Kame and Red Ocher cultures, the Archaic Period and looked at a virtual gallery on the First Ohioans.

She also watched some videos on making a stone age weapon, flintknapping stone age tools, and making a knife by flintknapping.

She also bought a dinosaur excavation activity from the gift shop. She needs to dig for the bones and then put the skeleton together. They are supposed to glow in the dark, too. She's found most of the bones, but still needs to put it together when she finds the rest.

Olivia worked on crystal mining.

We are still chipping away at the crystal mining block. It gets taken out from time to time. When all the rocks are free they can add them to their rock collections.