Seeping cell

In the mornings W and I read and study scriptures in our library. Our cat Luke just loves to steal the attention and W takes the bait.

The weather has been great lately, so we've been doing some of our subjects outside in the shade. It's really nice and I recommend it for people with busy babies. Our baby could just roam as he pleased and he loves the stop and play with the grass and he was easy to keep an eye on (no furniture in the way to block my view). Whenever the weather is nice we try to take advantage of this.

W constructed a 3 dimensional cell replica. The book called for use of Plaster of Paris. I didn't have the stuff and I didn't want to buy it. So I looked up online if there were ingredients I had at home that would suffice. Many websites had an alternative of 1 part water to 2 parts flour. This seemed to worke quite nicely. We put together our cell and set it out to dry up. It seemed to take a long time to dry up. After about 3 or 4 days it started dripping down the side because I had lifted one side the night before to check it's "dryness". I think that let some air in and then the air tried to escape bringing gobs of the stuff dripping out the side. I waited to see if it would stop and it did that dripping thing for another day. Eventually the oozing stopped and it still looked decent so I decided to let it keep "drying out". Eventually it started to smell really bad. I turned the bowl and saw a clearish green puddle forming in one spot. I asked W if I could just throw the thing out. He said that was okay. I figured, even though it took us probably 3 hours to make the thing together, we could just do it again if we really wanted to. I took it out of the bowl and put it immediately into an old bread bag, tied it up and had it disposed of outside. Underneath the bowl was a slimy clearish green film that I had to wipe up (with an antibacterial wipe of course). It was disgusting! Lesson learned, and note to self: just use Plaster of Paris next time - don't always believe the internet.

E is also learning about cells. This is HER version of constructing a cell, a plant cell and an animal cell. The "chloroplasts" are suppose to be green grapes and not red - I messed up. But I think what saved me was me telling her, "pretend these are green". Ha ha! 

We had the chance to attend an event for Constitution Day with the author David Barton. It was great! I learned many new things. The most interesting thing to me was to learn that America is the only country in the world that has had only ONE constitution, and other countries that have had a constitution have had many, 10 or more. This is God's country for sure, those founding fathers created a solid and inspired country. May He protect it through the right choices of it's citizens.

W was the only child that came with us. His friend was the one who invited him and then we just tagged along. He actually listened the whole time and I was amazed. I know he paid attention because he remembered and picked up a lot more than I did. Ha ha.