explores

So it snowed last weekend, apparently. I don't know I was out of town on a date with my husband!!! Yeah, you heard that right. I have zero pictures of us watching five plays of the Humana Fest at the Actor's Theater of Louisville, nor any photos of us eating several amazing meals (tacos, duck cracklings and grits - wait, what is crackling? might just be too late to find out - and really late night sushi), so you'll just have to take my word for it that it was just what we needed. And while we were gone it snowed.

We have had spring, though, so just to prove it...my dad and his wife were here during a couple of gorgeous spring days, and we headed to Ash Cave in the Hocking Hills.

Whenever I see something of this magnitude, I just imagine being the first people here, following the slowly meandering, totally unassuming creek, when suddenly BAM it becomes a huge drop of a waterfall and there is this cave big enough for a small village before you. It was beautiful.

Rock Pigeons. In the rocks.

The fire tower, on the path to Cedar Falls.

We took the path above the cave, towards Cedar Falls, and immediately the crowd thinned and the woods were peaceful.

the family photo - look, everyone is smiling!

Eliza delighted in snapping these photos of me and my dad. We don't have many recent ones, so I'm happy to have them, but what exactly was going on? It looks like we're in a musical. A very funny musical. I love them.

I'm slowly working my way backwards through the spring, playing some catch-up, so a week before this visit we went up to Columbus with some friends.  When we moved here, it had been a long time since I'd not lived in a city-city, and I panicked a little bit, wondering what kind of homeschool resources we'd find, how we could be narrowing our options just as the girls were getting old enough to do things in the community (I'm no longer so worried), and I consoled myself thinking that Columbus was just a hop, skip and a jump away, we'd just zip up there all the time. We've hardly gone at all, so when our friends discovered we'd never been to COSI, the science museum, they scooped us up in their van and we went.

Our gaggle

The favorite activity: the wind tunnel

What thirteen-year-old doesn't love the jukebox?

YESSSSSSS! Such power. And physics.

Dan picked us up at the end of the day - after the girls made me volunteer for the electricity floor show, the one where they make your hair stand straight up and then send a small shock through a chain of linked hands? - and we had Ethiopian food, which is a huge treat. He was headed out of town for a conference, so the next morning we drove home, stopping at Clear Creek Metro Park, which was huge and beautiful and we'd somehow never been there before.

Can you spy the gnome?

I might have squealed when I spotted these plants. I've known that skunk cabbage grows here, but I've never managed to find it early in the spring, and here it was next to Ramona Lake, waiting for me. I haven't seen it since we lived in the Pacific Northwest, and they are just so cool looking.

This seems long ago in the early days of spring; as I write this, the sun is coming in the window, reminding me that the day has heated up to the predicted 80 degrees and early spring is quickly fading into the past.

the week

Ooh, did you know we have tadpoles? They came from a huge puddle in the middle of a non-road, our near our friends' house, and they are growing, growing, growing...I think some of them need to go home to grow, and a few will stick around a little longer to amaze.  We did this once, years ago, long enough ago that Ani has no memory of it, so I thought it might be time again to Wonder.

tadpoles on eggs, of course

The week started out with eggs - drawing Spring onto wooden eggs has become a bit of a tradition, and they come out to sit on the nature table at Equinox and get hidden at some point, because who doesn't like to find things?

I love this bird. On an egg. Wow.

We're having yet another bout of fluish cold go through the family, and Dan got it worst this time, with fever and everything.  I managed to get the two sickest out on a warm sunny day at the peak of their energy, but as you can see Dan didn't have much.

All the foolin' I  managed this year.
But it got a good scream from Eliza;)

We're doing some botany right now, pieced together from a few different places (trying out the free chapter of Ellen McHenry's Botany in 8 Lessons to see what we think, and reading about plant familes in Tom Elpel's Shanleya's Quest - so far so good on both accounts), so we played with photosynthesis this week, by which I mean I got out clay, and we made the molecules that go into and come out of photosynthesis.  Eliza made a comment along the lines of finding it funny that she's still learning things the way she did when she was little - playing and making things with her hands. I think she meant it as a good thing!

Products: H2O, O2 and Glucose

This was our sun that doubled as a hedgehog

Wednesday we got out to see what there was to see in the woods.  Not much yet: a lot of moss, some hepatica, and coltsfoot along the road as we arrived at the park.

Putty root

I wonder why so many early woodland plants are purple? The underside of the putty root leaves, many of the hepatica leaves, the deep maroon pawpaw flowers.  

That brings us to today.  I printed out a game from chemistry class at coop that Ani missed on Tuesday, and we worked our way through it over tea and toast.  I keep checking in with the teacher, as Ani is the youngest in the class, but she said she is really into it and holds her own.  I'm really enjoying the chance to learn chemistry all over again, and I think I get it this time in a way that I definitely did not when I took it in high school from a teacher I think you could call a "character" but who was not a great teacher.

And we end the week with eggs.  I pickled two dozen eggs today, and we drew on a few more real ones.  Maybe we'll dye them tomorrow...

Eliza with her '80's hair

making waves

Well, I'm going to call it "science" but really it was playing with "kabobs and jellybabies" and eating more gummy bears than you'd find us with on a normal day (Ani favors the citrus, Eliza the orange, and I like the white ones, whatever they're supposed to be).  Ani's taken to staying home to read while I run errands, but today she was incredulous that buying candy and skewers was top of my list, so I had company.  The cashier also got a preview of the day's events. "A wave machine, made from three elements: duct tape (which she says with distinct "t's" which I find fascinating, but she caught me today listening too closely and she asked, are you listening to me saying duct tape?), skewers and gummy bears!"  That about sums it all up.

Isn't it so pleasing? We played with it for a long time, making big ripples, and making it go for a video to send a friend.  We liked the spiny structure of it, the bony skewers with their colorful gem tips.

We also found this PBS animation online, which gave us some more information and good visuals about waves. It was a happy way to spend the afternoon...