The Mad Scientist

I think the kitchen science experiments rock.   Honestly, I don't know who loves this more.  It's so fun to teach her.  Even when I have my moments, and I do...like yesterday...and that's when I imagine I'm one of her old teachers at school.  I know they wouldn't say:  "Use your common sense, Zoe."   Okay, maybe they would, but she doesn't like to be spoken to like that and I don't like how it sounds either.

I'm a good teacher.  I'm not going to beat myself up here.  I work my tush off reading and planning lessons.  So much material out there that sometimes it's hard to know when to turn it off.

I'm still learning to juggle this while keeping up with the daily grind of raising all three kids, without the help of a housecleaner.  That's about to change. I need a clean house.  I can't keep up with it.

I started laughing at my schedule yesterday.  I think I was starting to lose it.  Wednesdays are my crazy, busy days.  I was in and out of the car driving Zoe to tennis, the cooperative, picking up Hank and Lucas at school, taking Lucas home, picking up Haleigh at school, running back to pick up Zoe, and then back to middle school so Haleigh can go to the first evening football game. In between that,  a food run to Food Lion, donation drop-offs, gas, and getting dinner together.  I started planning out the dinners.  The crock pot is in use.  Tomorrow, "Shredded Chicken Tacos".  Made Shepard's pie tonight.  It was delish.  Nothing like homemade Yukon Gold potatoes mashed for the pie.

We started new classes at the Learning Cooperative yesterday.  This time I get to assist in one of Zoe's class.  It's a physics class for the 7-9 year old level.   We learned a ping pong ball and a tennis ball will always land at the same time because of gravity.  Maybe most people already know that, but if you asked me that on a quiz show, I'd stammer.  The class is led by another homeschooling mother named Sheri.  She was fantastic.   And so were the children.  Again, the same observations about these homeschooled kids.  Doesn't seem to matter which age I'm with.  I'm seeing the same thing here: bright,  thoughtful, happy and curious children.  They're so confident and comfortable with themselves.  Always a ton of interesting questions and observations.  Like this one by a 7 year old boy named Noah: "What if we went all the way to center of the Earth?  Would we still be held down by gravity?"
Three Noahs in a class of ten.  What's up with that?

So this above picture was taken Tuesday afternoon.   We learned you get a chemical reaction when you mix bicarbonate sulfate (baking soda) with ascetic acid (vinegar or lime juice).   Carbon dioxide gases are released.  We captured the gases in our balloon.   How cool is that?