Life with five kids, my soul-mate, a bunch of books & a dog.
While many of us were still sleeping, or thinking about shoveling out of the foot of snow dumped on us over the past 24 hours, guess what? There was a 3.8 earthquake in Illinois! See here for more details. Did you feel it? Apparently, some did…
Let us renew our prayers for the efforts in Haiti.
It was a highly tactile day in our house!
This “Make Your Own Snowman” kit allows you to build snowmen and igloos indoors, when it’s too cold to play outside!
Four differently shaped (snowballs, snow cubes, snowman powder, snow base) polymers soaked overnight in H2O give the appearance and feel of
REAL ICE & SNOW! (Except not as cold.)
Would you believe it’s reusable? We’re going to dehydrate it, then “just add water” to use it again. (I’ll report back on how that worked out later.)
I’m hoping one of the kids will get psyched up to build a big snowman tomorrow, so I can post more pictures of it… I think today we were all just mesmerized by the texture of the stuff!
(p.s. It’s totally non-toxic and safe)
Some years ago, my husband was inspired by G.K. Chesterton’s metaphysical thriller The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare, to adopt a new code of names amongst our family members to settle our nightly chaos resulting from the ritual question “what should we do together as a family tonight?”. While our former system used to end in several children in tears or frustrated that no one ever wanted to do what they do, the new system solved the problem by assigning each person a “night” of the week (Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, etc. depending on the childrens’ birth order), in which the assigned child gets to pick the family activity which everyone participates in. The most popular choices are watching movies or playing video games, however, occasionally we do something different like we did tonight for “Tuesday’s” (Clare’s) night: Blue Light Chemiluminescence experiments.
A cheap kit purchased at our local American Science & Surplus shop (in addition, a good site to visit for some comic relief) provided hours of entertainment tonight. A little more advanced than our ordinary kitchen science (like Gianna’s adding vinegar to the juice remaining after boiling a head of red cabbage, producing a color chemical change: purple to blue), this kit used “real” chemistry to produce its results.
Do you know what you get by mixing Luminol, Perborate (Clorox 2) and Copper Sulfate? Lights off for a cool blue glow! This isn’t me – but this is what chemiluminescence looks like. The kids enjoyed the experiments and are glad they now know where “glow sticks” come from.
Hopefully, there’ll be more experiments to come!
The kids have been really excited to see all the BIG boxes arriving with the mail. Gianna (age 5) claimed this one for herself! On one morning, when she particularly didn’t feel like completing her schoolwork, I allowed her to do her work in this “big box”. As usual, she started the day by writing her name, then her numbers; today directly on the box. And when her mind wandered, she just started drawing pictures. I wonder if the local public school could provide each child with a box like this?! It did wonders for Gianna, who today especially needed her own little space to think and work.
Did you know that two phone books can adhere together as if cement were applied to each page?
This is what my children learned from Mythbusters’ September 10, 2008 episode, “Phone Book Friction”. If you interweave the pages of two phone books, they are impossible to pull apart, except with well, a tank, maybe!
They kids tried it out yesterday. At dinner, they tediously weaved each page on top of the next, the next on top of that, etc. until they replicated the original shown on Mythbusters.
The result: they pulled and they tugged; they fell on the floor from trying so hard to get it apart. The phone books would not release themselves from each other!
Here’s a couple pictures of them in action!
Eventually, they did get the two sides of the phone book apart – but it was because the covers ripped off – NOT because the pages slipped apart!
One may be surprised to know that it is a fairly recent practice in Catholic homes to celebrate birthdays. In our culture, birthdays seem integral to the celebration of a person’s years on earth; but let us not forget the Catholic custom of celebrating “Name Days”!
Today is the name day of one of my children, Teresa. We are remembering her patron saint, St. Teresa of Avila. At the age of seven, St. Teresa of Avila wanted nothing more than to give her life for Christ. So, she ran away to Africa to attempt martyrdom amidst the Moors. Some may say it is fortunate that her uncle retrieved her from this, or we wouldn’t have the volumes of writings St. Teresa gave us.
This morning the children woke up to the smell of incense wafting through the air, the icon of St. Teresa of Avila prominently displayed at the kitchen table, fresh cannolis and hand-dipped chocolate covered strawberries from the local Italian market.
We celebrate Name Days “in style” in our family, perhaps more so than birthdays. Lest this tradition be misunderstood, I found an excellent article on the practice of celebrating name days.
What this article says in a nutshell is that while it is not necessary to ignore or do away with customary birthday celebrations, we should try to restore the meaningful celebration of the feast of the saint whose name was given to us in Baptism, “our personal patron, loving and helping us whether we observe or neglect his veneration”. As a parent, I have found that my children typically do not object to this practice – any chance to get treats! They also like it because it is unique to them. Every one in the family has a birthday every year, but the child celebrating his/her name days enjoys a day which is exclusive only to him.
And the best part about it is the celebration of Name Days doesn’t end with childhood. It continues for older children, adolescents, and adults for the rest of their lives. As timeless is the life of faith, is as eternal the celebration of our union with God. And this is truly something to celebrate.
Proud Member
Click Here to Join
Heaven Help Me! is powered by WordPress - Theme by BytesForAll Web Hosting & Design - This Page's RSS Feeds: Entries / Comments
Copyright 2007-2009, "Heaven Help Me!", All Rights Reserved.
