Clouds in a jar.

Since before Strong man and I were married we have agreed we would home school our children.  Way back then we thought that meant from start to finish.  How hard could it really be? Now that we're older and know our kids we've decided to take it year by year.  Last year we sent Man of the woods to school for kindergarten and thought we would do the same for Laughter.  Turns out even that plan changed and both are home being taught by us.  Well, mostly Strong man.

Making the sun out of paper meche, mixing primary colors to paint with.

The plan has always been that we teach together, but I would be the primary teacher.  That is up until last July when I took a full time job, 48 hours of weekly work to be exact.  While I love my job, honestly it's really hard to leave everyday seeing the boys sit around the table doing there school work with Strong man.  For so many reasons it's good that he does the bulk of the teaching.  I've always said he's the better parent.  I think that because he has far more patience then I do.  But still it's very hard to watch life play out differently from my dreams.`

Turning the dining room into a weather system to show the water cycle.  Our pond in the right hand corner, with water evaporating.  Today we made clouds.

Tuesdays are my one day a week that I get to be teacher while Strong man heads off to work.  Since it started off as an art class I don't use any curriculum I take the questions they had last week and turn it into this weeks lesson while throwing in a few things they forget are part of school, such as writing, vocabulary, and spelling.

Today for science we put hot water into a jar with ice sitting on the lid at the top.  We let it sit for a few seconds then we lit a match and threw it in the jar replacing the lid.

We tried this more then once and found that if we added food coloring to darken the water then the contrast made the cloud easier to see.

A cloud began to form moving in a circular direction.  After a minute or so we took the lid off and watched it escape the jar.

Next week we make rain.