May 23 - 29

A week of discovery!
While reading this book:

 a self directed research project began. H spent many hours with Google and YouTube and discovered sea spiders, Niagara Falls, the Rainbow Bridge in Utah, Antartica and many interesting and creepy looking deep sea fish.
H also has become somewhat domesticated and enjoys baking and cooking, and feeding the guinea pigs (finally!).  Every day she diligently chops up their veges, tops up their water and coos devotedly at them.

Choc chip cookies - our yummy morning and afternoon tea

 R finished the last two episodes of Headsprout this week, and has been reading all the readers endlessly.  According to the Headsprout chart she can officially 'READ' now and is getting ready to begin the second part of the program.
As a treat (unrelated to work) the girls got new minifigs. Funnily they both picked identical figures - the cute little banana holding gorilla.  R promptly built hers a circus to perform in.

 

Our latest chapter in The Elements called for some experimenting.
The first used iodine to determine the presence of starch in foods (we used carrot, cheese, chocolate, a raisin, bread, apple, potato, a corn flake and a chocolate pillow):

 The second experiment involved dissolving MgSO4 (epsom salts) in water, then adding some ammonium solution. We watched as the cloudy solution gradually became clear due to the atoms rearranging themselves to form new molecules.
The final experiment used bleach (NaClO) and red food colouring.  We added red colour to water then added the bleach until the colour disappeared. This happens because the bonds between the oxygen atoms and NaCl molecules break and the oxygen atoms join up with the red colouring, changing its composition so that it can't reflect the light anymore.
Once we had a clear liquid the girls experimented further by adding more colours and we got some spectacular patterns:

All in all a very successful and messy chemistry lesson.

On the weekend we had another birthday party to go to - cousin B's 8th and Uncle P's 44th, and then we finished off the week with some Mini-Marshmallow fun for the whole family.

H also has mastered her 8x table. Three cheers!