The weather was great again this past weekend, so we went for another nature walk in our nearby natural area, Edworthy Park. We saw (and heard—“wick! wick! wick! wick!”) oodles of Northern Flickers: I quite like this shot I got mid-flight; it is not until you see their showy colours and white undertail “flickering” when [...]
Jim did a couple of really simple science activities with the boys on the weekend, using just ice cubes, salt, and string. He emptied an ice cube tray into a large bowl, and then put one cube in each of the boys’ blue bowls, along with a piece of string, asking: “How can I use [...]
Jim took the boys to the zoo last Sunday morning, giving me (and my ankle) a chance to rest. This was our first visit to the zoo since our decision last year not to renew our memberships, something we decided to revisit in light of the zoo’s recent decision to invite an independent inquiry into [...]
On Monday night Jim and the boys put together this tin can robot kit that we’d bought for the boys ages ago (and hidden in the closet, and promptly forgotten about!). Here’s the finished product. I quite like how the opening of the rootbeer can looks like the robot’s mouth: Jim said it was quite [...]
Jim and Daegan did some simple activities last night about probability. If you’ve got a pair of dice, paper and pencil, and some kind of counter (we used cuisinaire rods, but anything from pennies to beans to bingo chips will do), you can do this too. I found it interesting how Daegan would form hypotheses [...]
I mentioned in yesterday’s post that Jim did a neat science experiment with the boys on Sunday night, building on an experiment I did with them last year. I loved the simplicity of this experiment, and that it uses items most folks have at home already. Here’s what you’ll need: a large (mixing) bowl, [...]
We had a lovely weekend. Friday night I took the boys swimming at VRRI, where the pool is wonderfully warm. They do lots of rehab stuff there, so I am not kidding when I say the pool is kept at the temperature of a warm bath. Ahhhh! The boys had lots of fun splashing, [...]
Like many parents, Sunday was Jim’s last day of holidays, so he took the boys skating in the morning. The boys are in fact signed up for skating lessons Sunday mornings, and everything was all set to start, except the folks running the program forgot to tell the skating coach that the first lesson was [...]