martinzoo

Godzilla Boy was sad today

His fish, Mr. Wiggles, died. It was quite sudden. We don’t know what happened. He was fine, then he was struggling, then he was dead. So we had to have a funeral. It came complete with a prayer for the safe passage of Mr. Wiggles into God’s arms…. in our back woods, on knees. I hate this part of parenthood. We now have 6 past pets (his first hamster, Herbie, 4 baby toads that didn’t quite make it to maturity, and Mr. Wiggles) buried in our woods. I’m starting to worry about the likelihood of the Steven King novel, Pet Cemetery.

We had Science today, and it was fun. I had to make up for the pall that Mr. Wiggles cast on the day. So, we started with our curriculum. We are working on a rock unit. We learned about how rocks are formed, how they change with wind, water, and plants. And we learned how they are used in the building industry.

After our curriculum, we went outside ~man, it was nice out~ and worked on creating a volcano. Since igneous rocks are formed from heat and pressure, such as you would get from a volcanic activity, I thought the volcano creation would work well into our day.

First we took a pizza box and glued a small water bottle to the center. I had cut the top off to make the opening wider.

Then we poured half a cup of vinegar into the water bottle, along with a few drops of dish soap (makes the lava bubbly), and a teaspoon of red food coloring.

Then we mixed the clay: 6 cups of flour, two cups of salt, and 1 1/2 cups of water.

Then we built the volcano around the water bottle.

It is now drying out, waiting to be painted tomorrow.

We will erupt it on Saturday. I’m hoping to get a video of the eruption.

After lunch we examined our rock collection. We sorted them into three groups:

Igneous

Sedimentary

Metamorphic

Then I showed him how he could use a simple chart to help identify his rocks.

Is it smooth, or rough?

Is it soft, or hard?

Is it shiny, or dull?

What color is it? Is it black, brown, red or a combination?

So our Science day ended much better than it began. I guess tomorrow we will have to go get a new Mr. Wiggles. Because the sadness of losing pets is not enough to dissuade him from wanting them.