Popcorn on the Cob

March Madness

March Madness has passed. We did our brackets again this year. Adam and Jeff both pick North Carolina as the champion. But Adam had more points, so he was the official winner and he's ready to go shopping. His prize is a $20 Wal-Mart gift card and the child can not hold onto money (or gift cards) for any length of time. He wants to buy a basketball game for the Playstation, despite the fact that we already own multiple basketball games.

But Adam wasn't the only winner. Evan, whiner-extraordinaire, has been writing. He refused to fill out the brackets because it involved picking up a pencil and making marks on paper. Pencil and paper are his enemies. And then one day, I saw it. He was making his own brackets with his own made-up teams! I grabbed my camera because I knew no one would believe me. He was writing without being forced and without whining. I guess basketball is good for something.

Magic or Science?

First take a tissue, or in our case, a few squares of toilet paper and push it into the bottom of a small plastic cup. Make sure it gets wedged in there so it doesn't fall out when you turn the cup upside down. Fill a deep container with water, but leave room at the top for water displacement.

Now invert the cup and push it down into the water. Make sure to keep it level so you don't get bubbles. BUBBLES ARE YOUR ENEMY! Push it all the way under the water. It's so easy that even a three-year-old can do it.While you hold the cup submerged under water, talk about what is probably happening to the tissue. My kids were convinced the tissue was getting wet. And why wouldn't it? It's totally under water!

But when you pull the cup up (again, no bubbles!), you'll find a dry tissue! I promise ours was dry. I just didn't take a picture for some reason. Now it's time to figure out why and how you have a dry tissue!

Here's a hint: It's not magic! It's 2nd grade science so you should be able to figure it out. :)

Where I've Been

In the land of giants, where my 5'6" twelve-year-old is the shortest player on his team.

Yes, they play a lot of defense.

We've Got Grackles

Our bird feeder hung outside most of the winter with no hits. But since it started getting warmer, we've had some regular cardinal visitors, a few robins and tiny little titmouse or two. Until one day we saw a black bird, shaped almost like a crow but smaller and with an iridescent blue head.


Then there were two crow-shaped black birds with iridescent blue heads... then three. They chased off the other birds until we were only feeding crow-shaped black birds with iridescent blue heads and raspy annoying caws, no melodious songs from these little bullies.



I spent some time on-line and found out that our bird feeder was hosting grackles, and lots of them. A few days after we noticed the first one, we've got a whole flock in the yard... and no other birds dare enter. I'm kind of afraid to send the little guy out to play. Those grackles are MEAN.

Worse Than Wallpaper

We've spent the past two days trying to take the linoleum flooring out of the hall bathroom. We pulled up the top layer, and the layer underneath, and now we're down to the back breaking labor of scraping off the paper backing and the massive amounts of adhesive that are stuck to the floor. This picture is about halfway done and it took hours to get to this point.

I will never ever ever do this again. I don't care how badly the floor may be curling at the edges or how much pee is leaking under the floor around the toilet. If they can't hit a target that big, they deserve to brush their teeth in a room that smells like a parking garage stairwell!

But we're going to get it done! Sharing my bathroom with all these boys is a great motivator!

Weekly Wrap-Up

We've had a great week. It started off freezing cold but today it's seventy degrees! I hope we can keep the nice weather. I don't mind the snow on the ground but I'm so tired of gray, snowy skies.

In honor of spring, we signed up for The Great Sunflower Project. We'll be growing sunflowers and counting bees and they'll provide the sunflower seeds. It's a great way to have some fun while learning and contributing to bee health. Follow the link to get your own sunflower seeds so you can get counting!

Adam and Ryan finished this year's grammar book. We loved Advanced Winston Grammar, well, as much as you can love a grammar program... which is a lot of love from me and not so much from them. But despite their lack of enthusiasm, they learned a lot. I just now realized (when I found that link) that this program is way above their grade level. Now I'm even more impressed with how well they did. I even learned a few things myself. Now, it's on to composition. They're already missing their grammar books.

We finished our science chapter on the atmosphere and have moved onto a study of the weather. We just happened to get a weather station from a friend a couple weeks ago so we took it outside and attached it to the play set. It measures precipitation, temperature, wind speed and wind direction. That's four of the seven descriptors of weather. It's even windy enough today that we could measure wind speed and direction.

Adam had his first basketball game of the season last night. He had a blast and made a great three point shot. Unfortunately, he would have had to make seventeen more three pointers to win the game. They lost by fifty points! We're going to call this a building year because his team has only one returning player from last year. The other seven kids have either never played before or haven't played in a while. Adam is one of those who hasn't played in a couple years. But it was fun and we feel fortunate that he gets to play at all. There aren't very many city leagues for middle school age kids.

If you'd like to read more Weekly Wrap-Up, visit Kris at Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers.