Day 4 Homeschool - Hunger Strike, Snow and the 49th State

 Its the perfect day to start our studies on Alaska, the 49th State, as it is cold outside and SNOWING!

In typical Monday form, Zach woke up late and grumpy.   

When I asked him to get dressed and ready for school,  he protested as usual.   The grumpiness and protesting got so severe that I kindly requested he remove himself from the downstairs.

"No, absolutely not!" he screamed.  "I am not doing school today. No, NO, NOOO!"

"That's fine."   I sighed.  " Just remove yourself from the living room so Lauren and I can do our work."

"No" he protested again.  "I'm NEVER leaving the living room.  And I'm not eating or drinking anything for the next week."

"Wow,  that's ambious."  I responded nonplused.  "People can't survive more than 3 days without water. Don't you think you should at least have some water?"

"Ok,  I'm not eating or drinking anything for two days!" he proclaimed proudly.

"That's doable. But can you not eat or drink anything upstairs please?"  I asked.  "Lauren and I are starting school."

Lauren and I spent the morning talking about Alaska and looking back on a very memorable vacation that we took to Alaska.

The most memorable part of our vacation was spending two nights in a dry cabin on the edge of Resurrection Bay.   We had a private beach as we had to take a water taxi to our primative location.   

We talked about enormous tides that would nearly trap us on parts of our beach.  Lauren remembered almost being stranded at sea with Dad in their kayak due to the tidal changes.

We did a fun Alaska Mad Lib that I made up last night.  If you haven't experienced Mad Libs with your kids,  you cannot go wrong with these silly stories!

Our Mad Lib (verbs courtesy of Zach):

Today we are farting to Alaska. Because it is cold up there we made sure to pack our shorts and t-shirts.  

I am so excited to pee on a glacier.  Alaska is surrounded by three oceans, therefore lots of people are employed in the selling shoes industry.

If you like to eat bananas,  you will love Alaska because it has lots of fishing and hunting.  Lauren likes Alaska because it has lots of deserts and clouds.  Watch out for the dangerous spiders that live in the arctic circle.

The capital, Juneau, is located on an island.  Bus is the only way to get to Juneau.  I love Alaska because it is small and there is so much football in the winter.  Native Inuit Alaskans like to poop inside an igloo. The sun doesn't shine very long in the winter causing many people to be sad and confused.

As you can see, our funny mad lib eventually engaged Zach into the school day.   Having his attention,  I suggested that we make Alaskan lego villages to destroy with a earthquake.  Of course,  in true Zach fashion, he made a Hawaiian village instead.

We tried to destroy our villages on the washing machine spin cycle,  as a earthquake simulator.  This was an epic failure.  We even upset the load so it rocked and walked across the laundry room.  Still no mass destruction.    Maybe we will have to take a hammer to the bottom of a table or something to get a good 7.0 earthquake?

Tomorrow we will be unmolding our frozen glaciers.    Courtesy of NCAR ( our neighbor is the education director),  we have a fun glacial experiment that we set up today.  We mixed rocks, sand and dirt with with blue water.   It sits in the freezer overnight and tomorrow we will watch it melt.