Strawberry Season

I couldn't ask for a better sidekick!

Camp Week 2017

We found the perfect camp this year, the New England Science and Sailing Foundation Marine Adventures camp in Stonington, CT. In 5 afternoons Julia and Ben:

• took a boat ride to an island and used a seine net to examine marine creatures (Julia)
• paddle-boarded (both)
• examined a dead spiny dogfish (Ben)
• kayaked (Ben)
• snorkeled (Julia)
• dissected a scup
• boogie-boarded (Julia)
• examined live eels (slimy!!!) and eel babies (Ben)
• surfed (Julia who now wants surfing lesson!)

They were pretty much in heaven the whole time! And I got to hang out and enjoy this view:

and enjoy this adorable-ness upon pick-up!

shark day!

Quahoggers!

We kicked off our summer with a true RI experience - clamming! Our class was held at North Kingstown town beach and was organized by DEM and taught by a 20 year shellfishing veteran. We learned a little about the background of clamming in RI, the shellfish industry, and the teacher's background and then they handed us rakes and sent us into the water.

In the hour we spend searching we hauled up about 40 clams of all sizes! The kids had a hard time with the rake so we teamed up: they rake lightly and found the clam, I used my muscles to get the rake down into the seabed under it, and then we dug them up together. I had no idea what a workout it would be -- I could barely move my arms the next day!

But we were rewarded with our own locally caught dinner!

Our haul!

Jodie, the instructor, demonstrating how to shuck them and his method of cooking... our new favorite recipe!

the instructor's haul!

FLIP!

Julia's latest stunt off the Greenwich Club diving board!

Heard Around Our House

Julia's first word play(!):

Julia: Mom, why do some animals have eyes on the side of their head?

Me: Well, they were created that way or evolved that way for some reason. Having their eyes in a particular place served some purpose, or gave them some advantage.

Julia: Like what?

Me: Well, think about a flounder. Where are their eyes?

Julia: On the top

Me: Why? Where do they need to see?

Julia: So they can see up.

Me: yup. 

Julia: yeah, they can see up and then when they need to they can flounder off! Get it Mom??? flounder off?! because they're a flounder!

hahaha

***********************

Discussing Ben's experience with fish dissection at camp:

Me: So what did you think of the dissection?

Ben: It was disgus.... I mean it was sooo interesting!

Me: Really, it was interesting?

Ben: Well, they told us to say that it was so interesting.

Me: what? they told you to say it was interesting?

Ben: No, they told us that whenever we think something is disgusting that we should say "so interesting" instead.

Me: so how was it?

Ben: It was sooo interesting!

A good life lesson!

Ninja Time!

Watch out! Julia and Ben are now practicing ninjas! We recently discovered a class offered at a local gym that offers the kids a chance to try out all kinds of equipment along the lines of what you'd find on the show American Ninja Warriors. There are rope walls, balancing boards, lots of different equipment to hang and swing from, climbing equipment, jumping platforms, etc. And they basically get to show up and try it all out. 

The instructor helps them a bit if they're not sure how to use a piece of equipment and they ask but otherwise he just lets them explore and use their imaginations and muscles. We've only gone a couple of times so far but it has been a huge hit with these two!

Here's Ben climbing the rope ramp. The first week he barely made it above the incline at the bottom. His second week he made it all the way to the top and rang the bell. Four times! Of course, I didn't get a video of one of those times but this one shows you the idea!

And while Ben was conquering the rope ramp, Julia was mastering a jump to a swinging driftwood bar. And she made it!

I'm pretty sure this class will be in our regular schedule next year!

Science Fair 2017

Which egg replacer works best? This is the question Julia and Ben set out to answer in the science fair project this year.

They tested four options (applesauce, commercially-made egg replacer, aquafaba (the liquid leftover from cooking chickpeas), and ground flax seed) in their baked good of choice: traditional Tollhouse Chocolate Chip Cookies. All in all they ended up baking 8 batches of cookies, 4 for our initial taste taste with families members and 4 to bring to the fair because they decided it wasn't fair to display a project about chocolate chip cookies without offering people some! 

They hypothesized that the egg replacer would work the best as it is specifically made for that purpose. 

The actual results varied. Our first taste test had a clear winner - the aquafaba. In those batches the cookies were significantly different from batch to batch. But the second time around, the cookies from all four replacers were similar and the egg replacer won by a couple of votes. We think the difference between the two experiments was the outside temperature - the first time it was a moderate 60-something degrees. The second? Around 90. 

Either way, we now know our top 2 replacers and we all got to eat a lot of chocolate chip cookies. So no complaints here! 

The kids presented the project at the ENRICHri Science Fair which Andrew helped run. He did a fabulous job turning the fair into an interactive event with activities, experiments, and demonstrations to give the kids a hands-on experiment. 

Ben was quite thrilled with an experiment to build a boat out of aluminum foil and see how many pennies it can hold before it sinks. His design was very simple. It was so simple, in fact, that the adults standing around were all thinking that it would sink with the first penny. But we all watched in amazement as he kept adding coins.

A few people asked me if we had already done the experiment at home, but we hadn't and when asked Ben just said that he thought about it and decided that if there were more room for the pennies and they were spread out, it could hold more. It ended up holding about 200! It would have held more but towards the end he was piling all the coins in the center rather than spreading them out and the middle finally sank. He was ecstatic with his result and the rest of us were very impressed with his engineering mindset!