How do you get kids interested in homeschooling after such an epic road trip? You don't...
Today was a jumble of activity, courtesy of ADD Mom's post vacation brain... we started the day watching Oklahoma! the musical, as it was the only thing I could think about (in a pinch) of this lovely state. I've never seen this musical before and it is absolutely riveting. I even got Zach and Lauren to watch it for awhile.
"Okay, mom, when are we starting school?" Lauren naively asked after watching most of the musical.
"Ah, yes, school... let's do that thing. How about you spend a hour on Prodigy Math while I get my Sh*t together?" Ok I didn't say it quite like that but you get the gist.
Since Thursday is typically our science experiment disaster day, I asked Google for a bit of help. I was able to find a great YouTube video on creating your own Oil Well Experiment. I was fascinated. I've always wondered how wells work.
So in this cool experiment, you layer small gravel, clay and sand in a glass. Your "well" is a glass straw and your "oil" is funneled into a tube that adds it to the gravel. Done correctly your well will spout oil!
So we had to improvise a bit. We didn't have any clay so my industrious mind says, let's use cookie dough - its kind of like clay. (No, not really - actually NOT at all.)
But nevertheless, the kids go along with it. We layer our rocks, sand and clay into a glass and then pour yellow dyed water into the rock bed. A tiny trickle comes up our glass straw well before the whole cup is saturated with "oil" from the rock bed below. Epic FAIL.
"It's okay." I calmly say. "All experiments are failures at first. Let's see what we need to change to get this right."
I can see in Zach's face that I better get this right the second time or he is going to disengage completely.
So we redo our experiment using a much larger layer of sand and cookie dough crust. But the result is another disappointment.
"Ugh, maybe the cookie dough wasn't such a great idea." I suggest. "Why do you think they use clay?'
"I don't know, Mom. This experiment is stupid." Zach says - totally correct.
An hour later I try the experiment again with Lauren. We watch the short YouTube video together and THEN, I have an aha moment.
"Zach! We were supposed to put the sand on top and not the clay! That's why our experiment didn't work." I revealed.
So Lauren and I concocted a new "oil well" out of rocks, cookie dough and sand. We poured our "oil" into the rocks and watched our well spout like a fountain. Success!
As I cleaned up our science experiment mess, I breathed a deep sigh of success and relief.
"Good lesson, Mom" I thought to myself. "Now your day is done. Wait, a minute, its only 9:30 and we've watched a musical and played with science. Is that really a school day?"
No, it obviously isn't since I have two sets of innocent eyes staring at me and asking what are learning about next. Ahh...ok, time to call Grandma and read books to her while I get my sh*t together once again.
Somehow we hashed out a school day. The kids wrote stories about their trip while I typed out 4 blog posts. We read stories about Oklahoma and tomorrow we will make Chicken Fried Steak - the state meal of Oklahoma. What is Colorado's state meal?????? Probably Rocky Mountain Oysters...
What do think the Colorado State Meal should be? Some say Steak - Others say Rainbow Trout? Please comment below..
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