Vacation Bible School: Paul in Athens

It’s one of the weeks Schnickelfritz most looks forward to---a week of VBS in my aunt’s town.  This church really has a heart for reaching kids.  This time I got to talk to some of the volunteers and get some inside scoop.  They begin working on VBS as soon as the Christmas pageant is done.  They must have some incredible craftsman based on the columns to enter the market place.

I also learned that they keep all the props and decorations they make for other churches with less means or skills to borrow.   So far we’ve seen Egyptian Sphinxes, the Ishtar Gate in Babylon, and I’ll have to look back through my photos to see if these columns were used in Rome several years back.

The kids begin each morning with a time of praise singing and a puppet show.  One of the things I love about this church is they don’t divide kids up by grade/age.  There are twelve tribes (in this case they used city names rather than the tribes of Israel) made up of kids from 1st to 6th grades—just the way a real family would be.  Every morning they meet with their leader and have the opportunity to wear costumes just like the volunteers—sure it’s the same drape with a neck hole belted around the waist that they’ve worn for the last 4 years, but it really  makes them feel part of the experience.  And there are some servant ladies in the church who wash and repair the garments for the next year.

There are outdoor games, singing time, and visits with Paul, but the highlight every day is the trip to the market place.  The first five minutes is snack time and then the kids are free to explore the shops.  The volunteers have back stories—some believe in Christ, some are wondering who Paul is, etc. 

You may notice in some of the pictures that there are a fair number of male volunteers.  Some family men schedule their precious vacation time to serve at VBS and I think their presence makes a great difference –especially with the sixth grade boys.

If Schnickelfritz didn’t quite fill up at snack time there was always a possibility to sneak a marshmallow or two at Geometry School as they used them to build shapes with toothpicks.

Of course his favorite area is the petting zoo with puppies, bunnies, and baby chicks.

Pork in a Pan

Last month I reviewed Simplified Dinners, a cookbook that was more about teaching cooking processes than giving recipes with specific ingredients and measurements.  I mentioned that I didn’t have a problem with this since I cook on the fly most of the time anyway.  This is one of those dishes—I think I first saw it at a demonstration at the Indiana State Fair.

I begin with thinly sliced boneless pork—I’ve used tenderloin and loin.  If all you have is thicker cuts, pound them until they’re no more than 1/2 inch thick.

Then I grab a sealable container and fill it with coating ingredients.  For a base I’ve used flour, Wondra, breadcrumbs or Panko.  Then I add onion powder, garlic powder, pepper and salt—this is all done to taste and if you’re watching your sodium you can use salt substitute mixes.  Put in one or two pork pieces at a time and shake to coat.

I add a little olive oil to a frying pan over medium high heat.  When the oil starts to scatter around I put in the pork chops (at least that’s what I used when I took these pictures).  Don’t turn the pork until the top side appears to be getting moist.  Then I spoon preserves onto the browned side.  I’ve used orange marmalade, apricot preserves, and peach jam in the past but I’m thinks even raspberry or blackberry would work nice.  The preserves start to melt and I flip the pork again on each side to help the sugars caramelize.

Science of Disney Imagineering: Levers & Pulleys

 

All good things must come to an end and that’s the case here with our last DVD in Disney’s educational series. 

Asa’s Invention:  Asa has built a 600 pound Audio-Animatronic Tiki statue for a contest.  And while there are probably plenty of levers inside, the focus is on how levers and pulleys can help move the heavy statue to the judging. (And as the adult in the room, I did get tired of hearing him say “Boola, boola.”

Terms Defined: simple machine, mechanical advantage, lever, fulcrum, resistance, effort, 3rd class lever, actuator, electric servo 

Rides and Attractions: 

Okay, I have a special place in my heart for the first ride, Dumbo because I wanted to go on it as a 5 year old but it was closed and I had to wait thirty years until I had my own kid to finally ride.  For those not so nostalgic, Dumbo is a perfect example of a 3rd class lever—where the fulcrum is at one end, the resistance at the other and the effort is in between.  This way the motors and gears are hidden in the center of the ride.

Of course, I’m an adult now and my new favorite ride is Soarin’.  You may have heard the story how imagineer Mark Sumner  came up with the idea after spending an afternoon with his childhood erector set.  There are some pretty powerful pulleys to get the three rows of seats up into the air and give you the feeling you’re hang gliding over California.

This is probably the most iconic example of Disney Imagineering in the whole series. You just can’t think of a theme park without the Audio-Animatronics—from the original Enchanted Tiki Room to the Country Bear Jamboree to the Haunted Mansion.  Of course Disney works hard to preserve the magic of these figures so the samples shown on the DVD have already shed their skin—in fact they never mention who the characters are, but one appears humanoid.

 

If you’ve visited Catastrophe Canyon at Hollywood Studios you surely remember the70,000 gallons of gushing water coming towards you and over the tram.  It’s all controlled by levers opening the gates to the large reservoirs over your head (with the pretty powerful pumps to get the water back in place before the next tram pulls up). 

Our last stop is the Wave Pool and Typhoon Lagoon.  There are twelve 1-ton doors, working as levers, that open in a sequence to create the waves.  Computers control whether the waves break to the right or left.

 

Quiz:  15 multiple choice and T/F questions

Try It Yourself:   Household chores are seldom considered “fun” but Asa does his best by helping the kids use pulleys to create a laundry picker upper.   (We didn’t build this contraption in our science co-op.  You can read about our two experiments in Science Co-op Week 4 )

If you’ve missed any titles in the series click below:

Designs & Models

Electricity

Energy

Fluids

Friction

Gravity

Magnetism

Newton’s 3 Laws of Motion

Trajectory

Lego Robotics Camp

We’re fortunate to live in a town with a community college that reaches out to homeschoolers.  Every semester we get a course catalog with programs for our kids—Spanish lessons, science labs,  a children’s choir, etc.  In the summer, when all kids are available (and often bored), they break out the really fun stuff.  Two years ago Schnickelfritz went to Magic Camp to learn slight of hand and mental magic, there’s also a circus camp where kids learn to juggle and ride a unicycle.  There’s a forensics camp and photography camp and this year for the first time….LEGO ROBOTICS!  The interest was so great they had to add a second class.  Ever since we went to the FIRST Championships in St. Louis my son has been dying to get his hands on one of these robots.  There just hasn’t been anything in the county so far.  Know I’m thinking to myself if the college has these robots and they’re just sitting idle until next summer maybe we can get them to “sponsor” a First Lego League team and let us use their equipment. 

 

Schnickelfritz programming his ‘bot affectionately referred to as Frank

I was worried about Fritz sitting in a classroom for 2 1/2 hours since at home most of our learning is done with movement.  I was counting on the subject material holding his interest.  Fortunately, there was a lot of time spent in the halls testing the programs they had written and trying out the sensors.

Here Fritz and the boys are trying to get Frank to travel the length of the blue line.  Is it better to program the ‘bot to count revolutions of the wheels or use the timer feature?  Here’s a hint, as the battery wears down the robot moves more slowly.

This time Frank has a visual sensor to “see” the black oval.  Schnickelfritz wrote this program himself!

Rootin’ Tootin’ Reads for Boys

 

It’s has taken a long while but I’m beginning to believe I did bring the right kid home from the hospital after all.  How could a third generation avid reader have a child that hated to pick up books.  I suppose the difference is the previous generations were all female and I just needed to find books that would appeal to a 10 year old boy.  In order to get the most bang for the buck, I’m not going to focus on individual books.  Instead I’ll share three of our favorite series which encompass more than 95 together.

Hank the Cowdog 

Hank is the self-appointed Head of Ranch Security on a cattle operation in the Texas panhandle.  He and his assistant Drover are always working on a case: chicken murderers, raccoon thieves, and cattle rustlers to name a few.  These are my Schnickelfritz’s hands down favorite books.  Not only did they get him to read to himself but the boy who hates putting pen to paper has started writing his own Hank adventures—complete with illustrations. “If Mr. Erickson retires, I’ll be ready,” he says.  Fritz has also started tackling computer programming so he can create his own Hank video games someday.

Our local library has a standing order to buy each new Hank book when it’s released and the librarians put us down first on the reserve list.  One when he grew to impatient for the library to get the newest installment (there are 61 books so far), he spent his own money to buy a copy.

The Hank the Cowdog audiobooks have made road trips much more pleasant too.  I once drove from Indianapolis to St. Louis with my son shouting out each mile marker we passed—you cannot believe how long that trip was.  Now we listen to the author’s funny voices and original songs—try The Case of the Double Bumblebee Sting where Hank speaks with a swollen snout.  

Fair warning, Hank is a rather unrefined dog.  There’s a fair amount of burping and he’s been known to experience reverse peristalsis from time to time (kids ask your moms).  There is some name-calling (nit-wit, numbskull, moron) done mostly the cowboys referring to the dogs but when Little Alfred calls his Mama “stupid” he gets the spanking he deserves.

Freddy the Pig

With his enthusiasm for all things Hank the Cowdog, it wasn’t too hard to sell him on another farm full of talking animals.  More than 75 years ago Walter R. Brooks  wrote a series of books about an upstate New York  farm with characters like Hank the horse, Jinx the cat, Mrs. Wiggins the cow and Freddy-- a pig who emerges as the star of the series.

Not only do these animals talk amongst themselves, but in the wonderful world of children's fiction they also begin communicating with humans and nobody blinks an eye.   And it goes far beyond just talking--Freddy runs an animal travel agency, a bank, a newspaper, a detective agency, and a political campaign.  He writes poetry, rides a horse, goes camping,  becomes a magician, plays football, and learns to fly a plane.

Freddy is a character from a kinder, gentler age- one in which ladies still wear hats and gloves.  In one of my favorite books, Freddy and the Popinjay, a robin earns money to pay for his new glasses (he was so near-sighted he mistook Freddy's tail for a worm) by posing on a lady's hat during a wedding she was attending.  The worst problem involves stopping a bully from hitting the animals with rocks from his sling shot (the answer is find him a friend to play with).

That's not to say they aren't bad guys in the stories.  Freddy's chief nemesis is Simon the rat who lived under the barn stealing corn until he's banished from the farm.  He still finds ways to cause mischief in several of the volumes.  There are also humans that try to put the animal newspaper out of business or cheat Mr. Bean their farmer/owner.  It's nothing that a clever pig can't handle though.

There are 26 books in the Freddy the Pig series.  If you kids like to listen to audiobooks, several titles have been read by Mr. John McDonough.  He reads in such a pleasant and soothing voice that it's easy to lull my son to sleep at bedtime.

The Great Brain

This is the latest series I’ve introduced to my son for some fun summer reading.  I read these books as a young girl when they were first published.  They are told in the first person by author John D. Fitzgerald about growing up in Utah in the late 1800’s.  John’s older brother Tom describes himself as having a “great brain” which he usually uses for get-rich-quick schemes.   For example, in the first book of the series he charges the neighborhood kids a penny each to see the flushing of the first indoor toilet installed in the town.  Don’t worry parents, in these books Mama & Papa are still wiser than the kids and the idea that  “cheaters never prosper” still applies.   Tom also uses his great brain for good—catching robbers, helping find kids lost in a cave, and helping a young boy cope with the loss of his leg from amputation.

This brings up my only word of caution—the boy who lost his leg considers killing himself.  He enlists the author’s help to tie him up in a gunnysack and toss him in the river like a litter of unwanted kittens, but the author isn’t good at tying knots.  Then the boys try a hanging, like a convicted outlaw from the back of a horse but the horse wants no part of the deal.  I can remember the controversy about exposing kids to the concept of suicide (although I think it arose after the movie based on the books).   It occurs in the final chapter of the book and you could just skip it if you were reading it aloud to your kids. 

There are eight books in the Great Brain series.  The final one was taken from loose notes after the author’s death nearly 20 years after the other books.  I have not read it personally.

Be sure to visit the Blog Cruise (June 18th) and see what books others are recommending for boys.

Science of Disney Imagineering: Friction

Here’s our next (and next to last) DVD in the Science of Imagineering series.



Asa’s Invention:    Asa wants to help everyone wet their whistle at his Old West Soda Saloon where he struggles to slide glass mugs of root beer along the countertop.

Defined Terms:  friction, tribology, asperities, adhesion, drag, skin friction, static friction, kinetic friction, lubricant, rolling friction.

Disney Rides and Attractions that exemplify the theme:



I’ll admit this one totally surprised me—friction in the water?  The first example was the hull of the Disney Wonder cruise ship.  Asa explains that the ship has been painted with a special slippery paint.  I researched this a little more online and found that the paint keeps barnacles and other build up from adhering to the hull.  Those things would create more friction or drag in the water which would require more fuel to keep the ship moving so it’s more about energy conservation than making it look nice. Then we move onto the decks of the Wonder to see friction in action in various sports and games, culminating with shuffleboard.



Like most slides, Slush Gusher  relies on potential energy (starting high) and gravity to work.  The slope would have to be much steeper if water wasn’t there to help overcome the friction of your body on the slide surface.  While it’s easy to glide over water, it’s difficult to move fast through water (we just covered that with the cruise ships) so there’s a deeper pool of water at the bottom to slow you down.



Friction can be good or bad as we learn at the Richard Petty Driving Experience.  The movement of  parts against one another can lead to engine wear and tear.  And rolling friction causes heat and deformation of the tires.  On the other hand if you want to go really fast you need good brakes to slow down.  The brake pads are using friction to slow down the wheels.



So if soft rubber tires cause rolling friction and deformation why don’t we make harder wheels?  There are vehicles that use hard wheels—like the trains on the Walt Disney World Railroad.   The low rolling friction makes trains very energy efficient for moving heavy loads over long distances.  The tradeoff is it requires a lot of energy to get the trains moving in the first place.  In fact the trains at Disney have a special nozzle to apply sand to the track to give it a little extra friction when they pull out of the station.  The Big Thunder Mountain Railroad hard wheels on a steel track.  It relies on lift hills to get the trains moving and the imagineers must make sure the coaster is streamlined enough to not be slowed or stopped by the drag of the air before reaching the next lift hill.
 


Finally we stop at the Lights Motors Action Extreme Stunt Show.  Have you noticed all the wheel burns and slip-sliding the cars do?  The cars use very powerful motors meant for motorcycles (so they’re much lighter).  Because the cars don’t have the normal weight pressing down on the tires, the tires can slip and slide more easily.

Quiz  15 T/F and multiple choice questions

Try It Yourself 

Asa makes a musical instrument involving rubbing strings.  (If you appreciate good music, you’ll probably want to skip this.  Here’s the experiment I substituted in my science co-op).
Visit back next week for our last topic,  Levers & Pulleys.

If It’s Tuesday, It Must Be Pizza Night

I confess that there are plenty of days that I hit the kitchen around 4 pm and start rummaging through the fridge and pantry trying to figure out what’s for dinner.  Those days never fall on a Tuesday though.  Just as soon as Schnickelfritz wakes up on a Tuesday he’s reminding me that tonight is pizza night.   And it doesn’t matter if he just had pizza Sunday afternoon with his grandparents or finished the leftovers of said pizza on Monday.  He expects homemade pepperoni pizza for Tuesday night dinner.

Big deal, you say. You’ve a got a kid that could eat pizza for every meal if you’d let him.  I used to feel that way to until I attended a workshop by Kirk Martin of Celebrate Calm at our Homeschool Expo.  Now I understand that it’s more about the tradition of pizza night than the food itself.  I hadn’t even realized it had become a tradition—my husband doesn’t care for pepperoni so I'd fix it on Tuesdays when he comes home late and stops for drive-thru.  Mr. Martin gave me some insight into my son’s brain and all the thoughts, emotions, and impulses tumbling around inside it like a dryer on steroids.  Since it’s so hard for him to control what’s going on inside, Fritz is trying to control his outside world.  It’s a calming constant for him to know there will be pizza on the table on Tuesday nights.

Now as I look back through the years I can see other traditions that Fritz has developed.  When we lived in Indiana, he had a set sequence of exhibits to visit at the Indianapolis Children’s Museum or the zoo with Grandpa.  Nothing about them had changed besides the surrounding visitors, but if he’d skipped one it would be like he’d missed seeing a very dear friend.

When Fritz was perhaps three years old I once found him lying still under my blankets.  I pretended not to notice and acted as though I were going to sleep, carefully applying some of my weight on top of him.  When he shifted I said “I can’t sleep on such a lumpy pillow, I guess I’ll have to fluff it up” and I proceeded to just that.  The whole shifting/fluffing was repeated twice and then I through back the blankets to “discover” him underneath.  It’s ten years later and he still loves to play that game at bedtime—not every night but often enough.  And his father and I will get in trouble if we move the blanket before the third cycle.  This game not only fills his need for tradition but also a need for pressure on his joints (more about that in a future post).

On the other hand, I also have to be careful that trends don’t grow into traditions.  So occasionally we do school in our pajamas (a perk of homeschooling), but if we do it everyday for a week then Schnickelfritz will want to keep doing that for the rest of the year.

I left the Homeschool Expo with Mr. Martin’s complete series of CD’s: Calm Kids Parenting, Straight Talk for Dads,  Straight Talk for Stressed-Out Moms, 10 Secrets to Motivate Unmotivated Kids, Enjoy Calm 24/7,  Straight Talk for Kids,and  Brain Boosters School Success (it’s directed to classroom teachers but I’ve found plenty of helpful hints).  It was a sacrificial purchase (we’ll muddle through without a science lab kit this year).  But I’ve known for years that my son was wired differently (not just differently from me) and it’s more important to me to learn how to help him cope and thrive with his life than teach him to dissect a frog.  If it’s still beyond your means, I found a number of BlogTalk Radio shows  on the Celebrate Calm website.