Quiet Book

The awesomest Craft project I have ever made is my children's little genius quiet book.



A few years ago,I was really annoyed by these "baby Einstein" toys that claimed to make your kid smart- but then offered a bunch of colored balls and blocks. No theory of relativity anywhere.

So I made a quiet book that fitting a true baby genius; full of basic scientific and mathematical principles, or atleast the ones that were easy to represent with felt and velcro.


Here Galileo is dropping 1lb and 10lb weights off the top of the tower of pisa. Kids pull the string to see which hit the ground fist, and ofcourse, they hit at the same time.



fractions and radions
This page features a circle and pieces of felt that are 1/2 ,1/3 and 1/4 of the circle. the circle is also labeled in radions.

Help Pythagorus show the pythagorean theorom.
Here kids use velcro felt triangles and squares to show a geometric "proof" of the pythagorean theorem. Here one of the four red triangles is missing, but the principle is illustrated. There is a pocket behind Pythagoreus to store all of the felt pieces.


Here kids lace a string around the circumference of the earth to help Eristothenes find its' circumference. The actual circumference (24,901.55 miles) is written on the back of the earth,
Eriostithenes actually used a well at the equator on the equinox and the distance to another point, as well as its angle to figure out the distance around the earth. He was accurate to within 1000 miles.



This is My favorite page. It is DNA transcription and translation.
First children are instructed to "unzip" the DNA ( there is a zipper at the top of the page) and then take out individual adenine, uracil, uracil, and guanine and match them up to the DNA,they all snap together to form an RNA chain, which is then taken to the facing page, and near the large black ribosome is a pocket full of amino acids, these match up with the RNA codons to form a protein.



Help the Mole find Avogaldro's numbers.
The felt mole can go over and under the felt bushes. Avogadro's number is under a rock in the corner of the page.
avogadro's number is used, along with an elements' chemeical number to figure out the number of molecules per mass.

Carl linaeus is known as the father of taxonomy. On this page we match several scientific names with their corresponding common species.



This page features a magnetic OH- and H+ they stick to eachother to make H2O!!




Help Marin Mersenne catch the prime fish. All the fish have prime numbers, and the page contains the formulas for both Mersenne prime numbers and perfect numbers.
Pick the Perfect Apples.... The apples have perfect numbers on them. Perfect numbers are ones which the factors except itself, add up to the number. As you can imagine, these are quite rare and are often quite large. The two smallest examples are 6 and 28;
6 = 3+2+1
28 = 14+7+4+2+1




Pick the Square roots! and then feed them to the rabbit.
the facing page features velcro flowers with petals in Fibonacci numbers; 1,1,2,3,5,8,13, etc


Help Galileo chart the 4 moons of jupiter. The 4rth moon is behind Jupiter.

I don't imagine that my kids will actually grasp the principles around all of this stuff, but some of it might sink in somewhere. I want my kids to learn that science can be fun, accessible, and interesting. A part of the natural world that we all love and enjoy.

Christmas

Christmas was really fun! The kids love a day devoted to opening presents and playing with new toys. Maddie wore her Santa Hat all morning.

I got a pair of VIbram 5-fingers. I will have to wait for spring to really try them out, as they aren't really suited for running on snow.


Everyone got lots of stuff. The highlight of the day was family tickets to a waterpark this summer (thanks Christi!)

Childrens' Museum

We recently visited the Childrens' Museum. Everyone loves the CHildrens' museum. The place is laid out pretty well, so The older kids can run around and I can keep track of them while I watch the younger kids more closely.

Caleb's favorite thing to do id paint with water colors on a giant window. The paint and then use a spray bottle and squeegee to clean the window and make another picture.

Maddie , Caleb and Martin love the climbing structure. Reed is too small for it, so he just gets to play on the Car and sit on the saddle on the slide.


Martin made a giant house, and Caleb and Reed played inside of it.


This place is fun for everyone, and better yet, it is indoors!

WINTER!!

It is winter! We have a lot of snow on the ground. This snow is from a storm in December. We all went out afterwards and built snow forts.

I made this big pile of snow, and Martin is burrowing out an igloo! I am so glad that He is old enough to build his own fort.

It was very cold, and perhaps this is why the sky was a brilliant deep blue. I know that Low temperatures as usually accompanied by high pressure systems- perhaps high pressure means more nitrogen in the air which makes the sky especially blue?

Or maybe When you are outside on a very cold day after a very big snow storm, you get to participate in a very special sort of day. Building giant snow structures is so fun, that even the sky appears to be more than the usual color of blue.

I love winter in Wisconsin.

Holidays

For Thanks giving we dressed up as pilgrims!
It was originally Maddie's idea, but eventually we all dressed up - except Ben and Reed.

I am especially proud of the Pilgrim hats.

Maddie and Martin made a ginger bread Egyptian pyramid and entered it in a Gingerbread house contest. The gingerbread men who are working on the pyramid have frowns on their faces. Maddie tried to draw X's on the eyes of some of the workers. Some of the gingerbread people are holding little gingerbread chisels.

I think that they did a great job, and I think that the gingerbread contest is going to be our holiday tradition!

Ice age Trail

This weekend we went hiking on the Ice Age Trail. It was cool and cloudy- perfect weather for a walk.
The older kids loved running up and down all of the rolling hills. They also got to look for the yellow paint on posts and trees that marks the trail. There was even a hand-pump operated drinking fountain along the trail. We brought plenty of water, but it was just extra fun to pump your own water. Even though , according to Maddie "it tastes like a penny".

This is a great place to hike with kids. I love that we have lived here for three years, and we are still finding new fun places to explore.

Valerie's Running Update

I have been training for a marathon October 30th, but I tried to register and it was already full. However I do not care because my training is going great. On Friday I ran 18 miles and I felt great.

I have been running pretty well recently, but it is easy to get off track. To train for this race (which I am not doing) I am running 50 miles a week, and that was difficult at first, but now I am 3 weeks in and I can actually see improvement. Amazingly, regular training results in better running.

To run quickly a person must incorporate speed workouts, hills, and long fast runs. I will probably do that eventually but right now I want to cover distance and the formula for that is simple; Run lots of miles.

I am not doing any intentional speed or resistance runs right now, but I run with my double stroller a lot, and I think that the extra effort counts as something. I have awesome ankles. They are virtually untwistable. Kind of like that special metal in eyeglasses that can be twisted around and not break.

So, this is my little fitness update.

CAMPING

we went camping this week, for the express purpose of viewing the Perseids meteor shower. It was incredibly hot this week, so we were able to sleep in our tent with out the rain cover, so we could actually see stars through the screened roof of the tent.

The sky was perfectly clear and we got to look for meteors at 9:45 and 2:30am. At 2:30, we all went out and watched meteors. We saw more than 50. Some were surprisingly bright.

Maddie told me that she would spend most of her time "roasting and eating". We had roasted hotdogs and marshmallows for dinner. This fulfilled a requirement for Martin to 'prepare and cook an outdoor meal' for scouts.


I loved camping with the kids. They were all excited about the meteorites. I was even able to teach them a few constellations. I will do this again next year.

tenney beach ----vilas beach

tenney beach is adjacent to tenney park on lake mendota. This is an awesome park.

This is a popular madison beach, complete with concessions and lifeguards. The larger lakes hav waves on windy days, and that was the case today. My kids were surprisingly confident in the water. The enjoyed jumping over adn diving under the waves. There are large concrete steps near the edge of the swim area, kids are allowed to jump (feet fist) off of the large concrete blocks into the water. There is a nice sandy bottom to the swim area, but there are also a few giant rocks to trip over, so we have to be careful. This is a good beach and I will come back here again when we are on the isthmus and need to swim.

Vilas Beach is very near our home. It is probably the busiest of the Madison Beaches. There are multiple lifeguards, concessions, boat rentals, and of course we are near the Zoo. Our favorite activity, next to swimming, is pouring water down the beach and making dams, rivers, and reservoirs.

Vilas beach is a great place, but it is usually too crowded for me. I like to go here in the early morning of evening when there are fewer people.

scavenger

I am good at getting stuff on the cheap, or free. Here are things that I have accumulated that are incredibly useful as well as free.

I made this rug out of old tshirts left over from a large yard sale. I am so proud of this thing!

Free off of craigslist.... My friend Alisha Peterson co-wrote book with Jon Schmidt called '67 fun songs primer' It is a piano teaching book for parents to teach their kids piano even of they do not play themselves. I am trying it out, so we got a piano. I plan to recover the keys ($100) and I looked up the value of this great white thing, and it has no real value, but it can hold a tune and it is fine for us to learn on.

We got this really great futon out of someone's basement when they were redecorating. It is really nice. We sit on it when I am in the basement supervising the kids. Also, it is where the kids go to hide whenever the tornado sirens go off. I like it in the basement but Benjamin keeps pointing out that it is much nicer than much of our upstairs furniture.

I got this couch when someone was moving out of student housing. I recovered it and we have had it for 4 years now. recovering a couch is pretty expensive, but originally it was free so it counts.