tawbubby

Daphne had a big birthday party evening, so I decided to try sewing with Amelia and our neighbor.  They did a great job, and loved it!  Amelia and I shopped for three fabrics and three trims for pillowcases.  She picked everything out- great eye for color.  I did all the cutting and pinning.  I manned the foot pedal.  She did everything else.

She was pretty proud, and loved how soft it was (she picked flannel).  She loved the “back up” button for finishing a seam.

Amelia’s latest science fun was to mix glue and borax to make slime, and then a bouncy ball.

We made three.  The first was purple, just by adding food coloring.  Then she got the idea to use glitter glue.  The picture is the slime made from red glitter glue.  Pink glitter glue was our favorite!

I also brought some dry ice home from the lab last week.  It made me remember getting to play with the dry ice that came with Penn State ice cream my brother used to bring home!

Amelia loves food coloring.  This time, we added green water to the dry ice.  She predicted, incorrectly, that she would get green fog.  That was pretty cool for her to think about.

For some reason, Daphne wanted nothing to do with this!

We made pitiful music by touching coins to the little chunks of dry ice.  I think big slabs would have been better.  But, different coins did make different sounds.

Daphne liked this one!

Amelia loves rootbeer floats, just like her Grampy.

Grannie sent the girls a few dresses that my sister and I wore when we were little. This one fits Amelia and her neighbor-friend now! Aunt Melissa used to wear this one, around 1984, I think.  It was Lili’s costume for a play they put on last week.

And here’s Amelia in the dress.

Daph LOVES kindergarten.  She has a lot of homework this week!  She was game to get started- working on the letter Bb.

That blueish thing on her pencil is a pencil weight to see if that helps her hand writing.  I think so, but not sure yet.

Amelia has forsaken all other hobbies for science.  I was kind of sad that she doesn’t want to take dance this fall.  “I just want to take a break.” and “I don’t want to be a dancer when I grow up.  I don’t want to do something that won’t help me for my job when I grow up.”  She is so graceful, I wish she would dance.  But, I’ll run with this while I can- this month, she wants to be a scientist.  We just scheduled the Mad Science birthday party.  And today we pulled out a science kit Bebe gave (I think Daphne) for Christmas.

She’s measuring 10ml of water to add to some beads.  They’re made of sodium polyacrylate, and expand as they absorb water. We’ll talk about menicus next time.

Here she’s adding water to fake snow (also sodium polyacrylate).  You can see the swelled beads are in the other tube.  They are pretty cool.

Fake snow!  That was pretty fun.  She made 3 batches.  And ‘melted’ it with salt, too.  She put one plate in the freezer to see what happened (and forgot to check this evening).

Here’s a page in her notebook.  We shared the writing.

It’s o.k. if she thinks science is playing with squishy polymer balls and fake snow!  She’s not destined to be an entomologist.  Maybe a chemist?

Amelia the 1st grader and Daphne the kindergartner!

We stand on a precipice.

Ok, ok, it’s just the last day of fun for this summer.  School starts tomorrow for Amelia (1st grade) and Daphne (kindergarten).  We’ve been off for 5 days while their summer program gets ready for the new school year.  First thing we did was open a package from Grannie and Grampy.  The girls (especially Daphne) love their baby dolls they made with Grannie when they visited this summer.  Well, the package included matching girl and baby doll dresses! They were thrilled!

I took them to Busch Gardens on Thursday, and they wore their fancy dresses.  (Swim suits and something more casual were in the bag, just in case.) They were awesome.  I was a little worried to take them by myself, while Ethan worked, but we had a great day!

Girls riding the carousel:

Daphne loved getting a bird (lorikeet) to sit on her shoulder.

Amelia wouldn’t have anything to do with it, though she jumped at the chance to pet a snake.

We spent the rest of the weekend at The Cabin with our friend Chris.  He’s helping raise our girls into fisher-women.  Daphne got a new red fishing pole as a gift from him.  She really enjoyed her first fishing excursion.

He caught a small fish on his pole and let her reel it in.

They were so happy this morning when he gave them each some fishing gear- bobbers, fake bait, and sinkers.  We are going to have to practice!  Ethan even thought he might want to get a fishing pole.

The other highlight of the weekend was tubing on the Bullpasture River.  A first for the girls and Chris.  Here are the girls together on Saturday. They weren’t that happy to try it, actually, and then a thunderstorm rolled in.

Sunday was a different story. Ethan tubed with Amelia, and I tubed with Daphne.  They had a blast.  We went maybe 3/4 of a mile down the river, and walked back on the road.  Then Amelia, Ethan and Chris kept walking another mile, and tubed back to the cabin.  Everyone agreed it was their favorite activity. Head rests on a tube are brilliant, by the way.

The girls had a lot of fun and were asleep as soon as we turned out the lights tonight.