From the Inside Out

 This week we learned about basic nutrition and the digestive system. Of course we made food pyramids. The girls also cut out food from magazines to put into categories. The challenge was getting them to understand they had to cut out enough of the food to be recognizable. But no matter how I explained it or demonstrated it, they would proudly show me a tiny sliver of cheese or mysterious green vegetable they just snipped and ask "like this?" : )

 Colin, being 4, needs constant entertainment. Doing worksheets is obviously not on his radar, but he was interested in gluing food pictures on a paper plate. After that, some tape and a box entertained him for quite awhile. The girls and I looked at food labels comparing ingredients, noticing that those items from our fridge and pantry with less ingredients were indeed the healthiest. I showed them how to look for the sugar content and we briefly touched on calories, mainly to let them know that your body needs a certain amount and it also needs to burn a certain amount. I heard them later analyzing their lunch and on another day they checked the package of a snack they were eating. Not that all this information deters any child from eating sweets, though, of course. It doesn't always stop me either unfortunately.

 We had a super fun time learning about the digestive system. It's just the sort of icky stuff kids like. We read a couple of books and filled out a diagram of the basic organs. I had even more plans to use string to measure the length of intestines, etc. but time wasn't in our favor for extras last week.
Our science project was moving through the steps of digestion I found online. We cut up bread with scissors imitating teeth.

 We added water and milk to imitate saliva and a drink to go with our bread. The potato masher is our molars.

 We put the mixture into our stomach (ziplock bag) and added soda for acid and green food coloring for bile. As  you can see, it's getting pretty gross.We shook it all up and then poured it into panty hose! We squeezed the hose to get rid of the liquid that our body absorbs back into the system. Now the kids started to figure out what was next and got excited. On most sites I found, the parents said they explained what the waste was but they certainly stopped with it still inside the panty hose to avoid the whole "pooping" imagery. Not us. I say go all the way! Let's be real! Really we cut open the panty hose to see the final result. I think they were fascinated.

 Except for this girl. She insisted on distance learning and wanted no part of it. Haha.
She stood like this for most of the experiment.

Also this week I played a concert performance of Barber of Seville, which turned out well. Dax has been super busy at work with extra classes and a leadership program, and we're very much looking forward to October! Today is our first cool day and the kids are outside- and staying out there!

 The girls have been drawing like crazy. Oh, to live in Chloe's happy little imagined world of color!

Hannah is very much into drawing collections of people. She's getting very detailed about makeup, clothing, jewelry and shoes. I'm glad they love creating so much. Coming up, this last week of the 6 weeks we're studying Ireland, so I look forward to sharing about that.

KID CONVERSATIONS-

H-  I know why a library is called a library. Because it's a brary full of lies!!!!
(She was so excited, I just had to let that one go).

C- Will you play a game with me? It's called find my Lego.

M- Do you want me to put you in the trash?
C- Nope.
M- Aw. I wanted to throw someone away today.
C- No, you love me!!!

C- I wish I was God.
M- What would you do if you were God?
C- I'd make things simple and fun. (sounds good to me)

Someone complimented the girls on their dresses.
C - Thanks. Thanks for sharing.

One of those unanswerable questions -
C- Is this the same place as where we are?