Clarey's Ice Rocks

Tuesday when we dropped the boys off at school, Clarey played in Aunt Sherri's room for a good little bit with clear rocks. She just loved them. As we were walking through Hobby Lobby 20 minutes later, she spotted some "ice rocks." For a $1.47 I couldn't turn her down.

We got them out this morning and while she was content to play with just the rocks, I thought she might enjoy the contract in textures between the rocks and carpet samples. I pick these up any time I'm in Lowes or Home Depot. I have all kinds... We use them for all different things... They cost nothing.

She really enjoyed placing the rocks on the carpet and was very deliberate about what rock went where.
She didn't enjoy me taking pictures. "No, Ma. No!" That's what she's saying here. So I left her alone to play with her ice rocks.

Research Project: A Lizard Mystery

This morning, the boys found a dried up lizard on our deck. They were convinced that it had just crawled up there and died. No lizard in it's right mind would crawl onto our deck - it's where the cats live. I finally convinced them that one of the cats probably killed it and brought it to the door as a gift.

I was busy baking cookies, doing laundry, putting Clarey down for a nap. The next time I looked out the window, this is what I see. They had gathered their Herps books from the Missouri Dept. of Conservation and were trying to identify this poor, little, dead, dried-up lizard. While those books are wonderful and have spent many hours occupying and enlightening my boys, they aren't a complete guide.

So Clayton found another resource. "This is DEFINITELY NOT our lizard."

Having no luck with the printed word resources available in our house, Clayton came in and very matter-of-factly declared, "This lizard is not in ANY of our books. It's time to use the internet." We had to do a bit of searching and found in a very roundabout way the Discover Nature section of the Missouri Department of Conservation's website. There we found the field guide to lizards. And in the field guide, there are 13 lizard species in Missouri, we found the broad headed skink. It was a perfect match to our dehydrated lizard. We read all about it. We learned that it eats insects and is Missouri's largest forest dwelling lizard. We also learned that it likes to live in trees and will often make it's home in abandoned woodpecker cavities. As I type, my boys are searching the trees in our woods for abandoned woodpecker cavities for broad headed skinks. The cats are with them. I'm not sure how much luck they'll have.

Super Sudsing Dinosaur Eggs

After seeing on Pinterest this fabulous idea from the blog Red Ted Art's Blog, I just couldn't resist making soap dinosaur eggs. The warmer weather has turned my kids into little mud balls and we already had our Jello egg mold out for Easter - the timing was perfect!

We gathered our supplies: melt and pour glycerin soap (bought 40% off at Hobby Lobby), a pourable measuring cup, tiny dinos, and our Jello egg mold

Can you feel the excitement?

Levi was really fascinated by the texture of the soap - before it was melted and after.

First we put our little baby dinos into the mold. Having never done this before, I started off by just making 3. One for each child.

Levi was really, really interested in this project. Clayton was semi-interested - he had already moved on to something else at this point. And Clarey, well she thought the solid soap was ice and wanted to eat it so I had already moved her and given her something else to keep her occupied.

After we melted the soap in the microwave, very slowly - per package directions, I very carefully poured it into the mold. A very tiny funnel would have been helpful. Levi just couldn't get enough of feeling the soap. The melted soap was so different from the solid pieces.

Then we had to wait. This was the patience portion of the lesson. Only an hour. But to Levi this was eternity.

After the soap had cooled, we unmolded them. Look! One is already trying to hatch!

The kids thought it would be easy to hatch them. They'd just pick away at them like they've done with other eggs. If only it had been so easy...

I gave them a tub of water in a very deep sink and let them play with these super sudsing eggs. My younger two played so nicely together for over 30 minutes as they squished and tried to grip and made bubbles and worked so hard to get those baby dinosaurs out. Clayton played in the bathroom sink, not wanting to compete for water. This did make for some very quiet time in our home. And I did get a lot done while they played. Yes, I did have quite a bit of water to clean up off the floor once they were done, but it was well worth it.

A Slightly Smashed Finger

Clayton made it to 5 1/2 before making a trip to the ER for a true emergency. Honestly, I'm surprised he's lasted this long. A couple weeks ago, minutes after arriving at work, Cyle called. He said I need to either come home (I was 30 minutes away) or call Caitlyn (our fabulous next-door babysitter) because Clayton had smashed his finger really badly. Now, for Cyle to say it was smashed badly, I knew it must be bad. By the time I was able to leave work, Cyle and Clayton were already back home. I didn't see his finger until we had to change the bandage a few mornings later.

This is what happened: We had this really awful retaining wall along our driveway for a short distance. The previous owner had obviously collected rocks from around the property and stuck them together with some Quikcrete. It was falling over and looked really shabby.

Just after I had left for work, Cyle had started to break up this wall to remove it. The boys were playing with the rocks. Levi was up the hill rolling the rocks down to Clayton. According to Clayton, his hand got tired and he was resting it on rock. Meanwhile, Levi rolled another rock down. It just happened to collide with the rock Clayton was using as a hand rest. Cyle heard Clayton's scream and knew immediately that he was really hurt. - And this is where the chaos begins. -

Cyle asked Clayton what happened and Clayton replied, "Levi threw a rock and smashed my finger. You need to call 911! It's an emergency!" So Cyle took Clayton inside, wrapped up his finger and told him not to move. While Cyle was inside with Clayton, Levi thought he was going to be in trouble so he took off running into the woods. Cyle ran back outside, grabbed Clarey and set her inside the house so she couldn't go anywhere. Then he ran back out again to search the woods for Levi. Finally, he had all three kids in the house and Caitlyn came over. Cyle left her with two crying children and took Clayton to the ER.

One x-ray later and Clayton calmed down. His finger was not broken. They bandaged it up really well and told Cyle that he'd lose his fingernail. It could have been so much worse.

This evening, in the bathtub, Clayton's fingernail fell off. He was so excited to put it in his collection. His finger is healing really nicely.

A Dinosaur Dig

After reading about the Missouri dinosaur dig site, the boys have been so excited about digging for dinosaurs. I took 8 little plastic dinosaurs and put them in a sand dough. After letting it dry for 3-4 days, I created this dig site. I layered on play clay, sand, pea gravel and mud.

We also had a grid so we could record where on our dig site we found the dinosaurs.

We had a variety of tools. The boys thought they'd be able to just use their fingers, but quickly realized it's not so easy to dig out "fossils."

After getting through all the layers, the boys began chiseling out the dinosaurs. (At this point, Clarey had lost interest and I was inside dealing with her - so no pictures!) All in all they excavated 8. They recorded their find on the grid and washed up the fossils. They couldn't believe how long it took to get to the fossil layer and then how hard it was to get them out.

It was a great sensory experience, team work challenge and a test of their patience and persistance. Our next museum trip will be to the Bollinger County Museum of Natural History to see the Missouri dinosaur - the Hysibema, a hadrosaur - and all of the other fossils there.

How to Make the Boat Float

While watching Sesame Street, Clayton saw Elmo make a boat out of foil and pencils. He acquired all of the supplies and got to work building a boat for his dinosaur.

I was a little worried about it being so small. Clayton explained that the dinosaur was small, so he needed a small boat. I decided to just let it go.

In fact, it didn't float. It slowly, slowly sank further into the water. Amazingly, the dinosaur was still on top!

Heeding my advice, Clayton built this boat. While he thinks it is way too big for his dinosaur, he wasn't taking any chances this time around. The boys ended up taking two tubs of water to our back deck where they built more boats for most of the afternoon.

Nuts and Bolts - A Matching Game

It never fails - anytime we're outside, the kids end up in the garage. They are just fascinated by all of Cyle's stuff. We had a bit of quiet time this afternoon, so I pulled out some nuts and bolts I had already paired up and let the kids play a "game." I gave Clayton a baggie of mixed up nuts and bolts. First he had to sort and then he had to match up the pairs. Once Levi woke up from a long nap, he did the same thing. Even Clarey got in on the action.