Industrial Pittsburgh

On our way out of Pittsburgh, we all went to Braddock to see the amazing locks and steel mill. Our timing was very lucky: we got to see a large tug loading 7 huge coal barges into the locks, then they closed the massive gates, flooded the locks, and then pulled the barges out with a smaller tug (the Joe T). Oh yeah, it was a gorgeous day.

New friends

During our trip to Pittsburgh for Thanksgiving, Aaron and Claire made some new friends: Sophie and Evan. The kids haven't spent much time with dogs and being around these loving dogs made the kids much more comfortable.

It's dissolving!

The other day, we did some experiments to see how different things reacted in water: salt, sugar, corn starch, soil, flour and oil. After seeing which things dissolved or became suspensions, we tested if we could filter the water using a coffee filter. We were all surprised that the oil hardly passed at all through the filter. To top it off, we watched some Skittles dissolve. A morning of water fun!

Fall garden

It's late November, but we still have quite a few greens (mostly chard) thriving in the garden. The cold frame has its share of greens (mustards, tatsoi, mache, mizuna, a hardy lettuce, spinach, radicchio, and even parsnips) that we hope will last through the winter -- we had pretty good luck last year despite some really cold days (-12!).

The tunnel has only a little stuff showing. We are hoping that it will give those sproutings a head start in the early spring.

Leaves, leaves, everywhere!

Hanging out with friends

After swim lessons, we had the chance to spend a pleasant afternoon on campus with Kim, Sarina and Anthony: Mirror Lake, the amphitheater, the Geology/Fossil museum and the new library.

Graduation at the pool

Aaron and Claire now both move up a level!

Claire's chapter books

Claire has been interested in chapter books for bedtime stories. Here are some of her favorites.

More books

Other kinds of books we commonly get from the library are big books about cars and art and bodies.

What we've been reading

We've been reading the Warrior books to Aaron at bedtime-- he's very excited by them.


The others are ones the kids pick up, either to ask us to read or, probably more often, to read themselves; if Claire knows the story, she flips slowly through the pictures, I guess retelling the story to herself. It seems the theme lately has been trickster/spooky tales...

Who are those elves?

I've never loved mowing. So you can imagine the pleasant surprise when I discoverd that some elves were trimming the grass after sunset, with scissors. They've been back several times!

Feather tree

Claire's small group at SYC does a lot of crafts - and she loves it. For this feather tree, they gathered sticks and other things from some nearby woods and then crafted these fun projects. Her friends in her small group are Mikala, Julia, Andy, Will and Hank.

What we are listening to

Pandora. It's an amazing "free" web radio that uses the Music Genome Project.  One picks a "seed" song, composer, etc., and Pandora starts passing down lots of great music related to your seed.  For instance, this morning we've been listening to our "Phillip Glass station" and besides Glass, we also heard John Adams, Terry Riley, Meredith Monk, Steve Reich, Arvo Part, Kevin Volans, Joby Talbot.  Some of it was familiar, but a lot of the stuff we heard was completely new to us and much fun.

tanagram tiles

David and Liz gave Claire some tanagram tiles with boards to suggest patterns.  Here is a train that Claire made from the guide, and a face that Aaron created without a guide!

What's that?

 

Aaron and I thought of these a few weeks ago.  They still make us giggle.

Scary Food

We made some scary breads to take to the Lopez's Halloween Party to go along with their spookghetti.  Fun to make, though a little to hard to eat.  Crunch, crunch.