Nature Center Hike

In spite of how grey and windy it was this past Friday, the boys wanted to get outside and so did mom. Enough paperwork! Time to go out and see stuff.
And play with the telephoto. Sometimes saying “thank you” for a gift means going out and having fun with it.
So off we went to the [...]

Magnets and Water and Compasses, Oh My!

I should have blogged about this much earlier.
At the beginning of the week, the boys worked on making their own compasses using dressmakers’ pins, magnets, pieces of foamie stickers and bowls of water.
They learned how to make a magnet by taking the pins and rubbing them a another magnet a few times but rubbing in [...]

Fun Four-Day Weekend!

Yes, it was even in spite of the cold.

Friday
We took Abba to see the Bob Bullock Museum of Texas History. Verdict: FUN! Since we wanted to get gas, we opted to take the longer drive through down town on Congress Avenue.

Congress: one of my favorite street views. Well, I can’t think of any other [...]

Advent of the King

You know, last year I was quicker on the draw with the Christmas decor. Day after Thanksgiving, we pulled out the tree and put it up. This year we are slacking quite a bit. Mind you, getting the tree out of the storage over the garage is no mean feat: it involves a ladder and [...]

Our Thanksgiving Decoration

Idea from Family Fun magazine. You just use cotton muslin (very inexpensive), white glue and acrylic paint. Draw the design on the muslin, trace with a bead of white glue (these areas stay white). Get the fabric wet, add paint. When dry, soak the fabric in water until you can peel off the white glue [...]

Hamilton Pool

Working at a desk on worksheets can get really boring, let’s be real.
A friend had mentioned they went out to Hamilton Pool for a hike and swim and said it had the actual falls falling into the pool. Wow! It had been a wimpy falls the last time we visited so I thought that [...]

Nature Explorers Go Spider Hunting

You can, if you want, skip straight to the photos.
Last Friday, our group headed out to Barton Creek Greenbelt, starting the trail at the Zilker Park access point. We were on the hunt for spiders! Or that is, we were supposed to be.

The kids gave a good effort towards the hunt. But, seriously? The challenge [...]

Last Weekend’s Antics

It was busy, that’s all I can say. On Friday, we had our morning hike with Nature Explorers. Funny, though, we were supposed to be hiking Barton Creek Greenbelt trails but it turned out they were all closed that day, probably due to recent rains. So we opted to head to the Zilker Park Nature [...]

Rockin’ Out

So, this past couple of weeks the boys have been studying a little bit about rocks. We delved a wee bit into the different kinds of rocks (sedimentary, igneous and metamorphic). We thought we’d share a bit about how we made our own sedimentary rocks.
Sedimentary rocks are formed when earth is eroded by water [...]

Liquids!

So, inspired by an episode of DragonflyTV, J decided to do the recommended “Do It!” experiment. After all, he reasoned, we do have a little dropper.
So we did. They asked the kids to try dropping different amounts of fluids, drop by drop, onto pennies and see how things came out.
First was water:

The fine motor skills [...]

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