Cocoa Beach

By 9:30 Saturday morning, when we left home for the long weekend, the tailgaters were already setting up all over our neighborhood for the first University football game of this season, even though the game didn't start until 7:00 p.m.



Our destination was The Holiday Inn Resort at Cocoa Beach. The hotel is right on the beach and very child friendly. Blaze even has his own little room inside our room. He was really excited about that.







Actually, Blaze has loved everything about this trip. Playing in the ocean with a new boogie board was his favorite thing,





But the pirate themed swimming pool came in a close second.

Unplugged Challenge: Container

This week's theme on Unplug Your Kids was "container", so Blaze and I went to Michael's craft store for inspiration and came home with two of these wooden boxes that look like books, which were on clearance for $1.49 each. Blaze has been carrying around a set of recipe cards for about a week now, so his box is going to look like a cookbook and be a storage box for his recipe cards.

Blaze chose red for his "book" cover, which seemed fitting for a cookbook, since two of my favorite cookbooks are red (my sister took a Psychology of Color class once, where the students were taught that red makes people feel hungry).



After the red acrylic paint dried, Blaze painted the "pages" white.

Whistle while you work


Also with the white paint, Blaze used the alphabet stencils to write cook book across the "front cover".





Finally, it was ready to hold the recipe cards.

Unplugged Challenge: Tiny

The theme of this week's Unplugged Challenge on Unplug Your Kids is "tiny", so Blaze and I made things for his bendy dolls. He built a log cabin out of his set of Lincoln Logs and I made a picnic set out of wooden dowels and wooden balls.







The cups are made from a 5/8 of an inch oak dowel, cut into 3/4 of an inch sections and then drilled part way through . The cup handles are made by drilling a hole in the center of the dowel and then cutting off slices. I then sanded off one side until it was the proper shape and glued the handle onto the cup with strong glue.



The submarine sandwich is made from the same oak dowel, cut length-wise. The sandwich filling is round and triangular shapes cut out of wool felt. Then it was all glued together.

Unplugged Challenge: Powder

This week's Unplugged Challenge topic on Unplug Your Kids was "powder". Since our history lessons are all about early American pioneers right now, I thought it was appropriate to grind our own flour using an old fashion hand-cranked coffee grinder, just like they did in the Laura Ingalls Wilder book, The Long Winter.
It wasn't easy. I think you may actually use more calories grinding the wheat, than you get from eating the wheat.

This is what the wheat looked like before we began:



Then it was poured into the antique coffee grinder and we took turns grinding it.





One time through the grinder was not enough. This batch had just finished it's third grinding and was finally ready for some sifting.



The sifting was necessary, because there were still many hard wheat berries that hadn't been ground.



We produced about a half cup of flour this way and then gave up and used the electric coffee grinder for the rest, and thought about how lucky we are to live in the age of electric power.

So, here is our powder, in the form of whole wheat flour:




We then used our whole wheat flour to make blackberry muffins, using the blackberries we picked ourselves.




Whole Wheat Blackberry Muffins


1 Cup Whole Wheat Flour

1 Cup Unbleached All-Purpose Flour

3 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon salt

3/4 Cup milk

1/2 Cup vegetable oil

1/3 Cup honey

1 egg

1 Cup of Fresh Blackberries


Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees F.

In a large mixing bowl, combine all of the dry ingredients and blend well. Next, add the milk, oil, honey, and egg. Mix.
Add blackberries and fold in gently.

Fill greased muffin cups and bake for 20 minutes.

Plant Projects

The Unplugged Challenge theme for this week was "science". The science unit we've been working on is "plants".

We've been having a plant race.
On Wednesday, April 1st, Blaze and DH planted 4 kinds of seeds, Snow Peas, Kentucky Wonder Pole Beans, Sweet Peppers, and Birdhouse Gourds. Then Blaze and I made a paper race track to tape to the window above the flower pots.

On Saturday, April 11th, the pole beans were in the lead. Actually, one pole bean plant was the only plant to begin the race.




On April 15th we had a winner, without anyone else even leaving the starting gate.



April 16th, The Birdhouse Gourd finally started the race!



April 20th, the Birdhouse Gourd looks like it will take second place,



But wait, there is activity in the other two pots as well, especially in the pot of snow peas. The snow peas had a disadvantage, since the first set of seeds planted in the pot were eaten by squirrels, while all the pots sat outside after the initial planting, so these seeds are a back up team. Snow peas are fast growing, though, so they might still catch up with the gourd.


There is also something that is not a snow pea, that has sprouted in the snow pea pot.

We should make ribbons for the winners sometime this week.





The other plant project we started this week was an experiment to see the difference between plants grown with sun and those grown without.

We started with a big round pot of dirt and spread basil seeds evenly over all the soil.



Then we made sure the soil was good and wet.



This part went on for awhile because Blaze was enjoying the waterfall created by the water draining from the pot and running off the end of the picnic table ( I guess that was science, too, because we talked about how water will seek the lowest place it can go).



Next, We placed a circle of dark colored wool felt, with a smily face cut in it, over all the soil. I chose the felt because water could get through it, but light could not.



The final step was to place the pot where it would get plenty of sunlight, so it is now sitting in the garden, next to the scarecrow.



If this works the way I think it will, we should have a smily face made of plants, while the seeds that do not have light, do not grow. Since nothing has sprouted yet, I'll have to show the results in a future post.

Keel Boat

We actually started this Keel Boat a couple weeks ago. We had been reading about Lewis and Clark using a keel boat on the first leg of their journey west, at the same time I found a bag of basketry supplies at a local thrift store. So, I came up with the idea of teaching Blaze about flat bottomed river boats and about weaving at the same time.

I prepared the base,


cut the reeds, and soaked them in warm water.



Blaze bent the reeds into arches and stuck them in the holes I'd drilled in the base.



I also drilled a hole through the front of the boat, so we could tie a string through it, to pull the boat through the water.


Then the boat sat unfinished in our living room.

It sat,

and sat,

and sat,

Until this week's Unplugged Challenged was announced, "Transportation". This seemed like a great time to work on the boat.






This would have actually been a good Easter basket if we had finished it on time, but we didn't work on it until Sunday afternoon.



Then we took the boat out to the little creek that runs through the University Gardens to see if it would float.




It floated very well and Blaze really enjoyed it, until the mosquitoes got bad ( this was the first time this Spring that we encountered swarms of mosquitoes).








Walking home from the creek, we saw this guy in the lake that the creek feeds into. This is the biggest, fattest alligator I've seen in the lake so far.

Easter Egg Garland

This week's Unplugged Challenge theme at Unplug Your Kids is "long", so we made a long string of colored eggs to use as garland to decorate for Easter.
I've been saving the eggshells for 3 or 4 weeks to use to make Easter decorations. To do this, I use a sharp knife tip to make a tiny hole in the top and the bottom of the egg and then I blow the egg out of the shell. Then I wash the egg out with water and set it aside to dry.
Before beginning our garland, I dyed some of the eggshells with food coloring and a little vinegar in water. Once the dyed eggs were dry, it was time for Blaze to string them.




We used decorative ribbon which we taped to a bamboo skewer. Using the skewer like a sewing needle, made threading the eggshells much easier.







We tied a double knot in between each egg to keep the eggs from moving around and bumping into each other.




All of the eggs got strung without any being broken, although some of the holes were widened a little as the ribbon passed through.

Blaze modeling the finished product:



And here it is hanging above the door to Blaze's room: