At the Roller Rink

We have been studying about the Chinese and the Great Wall of China this week in history.  We painted with watercolors again and they wrote the Chinese characters that went along with their pictures.  Josiah painted a dragon and wrote the characters for: sun, day, and dragon.  The three of them also painted a waterfall theme.  I have no idea where it came from because we read about the Great Wall and the unification of the Chinese states.  Somehow they got waterfall from that.

In recent history, Josiah wrote a letter to former President George W. Bush some weeks back telling him he was sorry that his dad died.  He just got a response this week.  Josiah's loving all the presidential letters.  He's a big letter writer.  Right after he saw Mary Poppins Returns, he drafted a letter to Dick Van Dyke, and when he was really into Garfield he wrote to Jim Davis (asking him to mail him a signed, blank comic book so Josiah could color it in - we never did mail that one off). 

Caroline read I Can Run to me! Yay!  When we go through all the words she's learned so far, it's up to 97 words.  She has also been using her phonics tools to sound out words on signs or cars when we drive around.  It's so neat when she figures a word out.

This week our CC group went on a field trip

to the Health Museum in Houston. The older kids were able to participate in a cell lab.  After getting suited up, they were put in groups to do three different experiments.  I helped out in Henry's group, so most of my pictures are from that.  First they isolated the DNA of wheat.  That one was neat, but it sort of stopped at the coolest point.  After all our mixing and adding of ingredients, we had a little glob of clear stuff in-between our wheat and water (?if I remember correctly?).  The DNA was in that glob.  The next experiment was to look at our cells through a microscope.  The kids all did a cheek swab and then wiped it on a microscope slide that we had already put blue ink on so we could see their cells.  Then we looked at them through a microscope.  That was really cool.  We saw real cheek cells and could definitely see the cell wall and nucleus. 

The last experiment involved working with real blood, which the kids were quite excited about.  We chose to isolate blood type (there were choices on this one).  We ended up figuring out that the blood we had was type A+.  It was also sheep's blood.  They really liked the whole experience, so much so that Josiah was the last to leave the lab.  He liked being a scientist.  The scientific field is definitely open to him.  However, the medical field still seems to be a closed door because after the cell lab, they had a cow eye dissection demonstration.  We were in a theater and the lady up front dissected a cow eye and it was projected onto a giant screen for us all to watch.  Now, it was pretty gross, but she gave so much information about the eye that it was incredibly interesting.  Halfway through, Josiah, in the third row, stepped up and walked out.  I was in the back with Caroline and I asked him what was up.  He said, "I don't like this." and walked out.  I thought he was going to go vegetarian after that, but he had some chicken for dinner.


The Health Museum also had a virtual reality area where you could look around the city of Houston from above (I think you were in a helicopter or something).  Henry spun himself around the city and made himself dizzy.

This weekend our neighbor friend turned seven.  She had her party at a roller skating rink, which shocked Todd and I that they still existed.

When we walked in it felt like we were 12 again - neon carpeted walls and benches, the exact same brown roller skates, and a nice disco ball over the rink.  Our kids have never been roller skating.  If they've done the kind that strap-on to your shoes, it would have been so long ago that I don't even remember.  Basically they walked in skill-less.  After lacing up his skates, and no longer being able to stand upright, Josiah was eager to get himself a wheeled walker.  The other two kids were too proud.  I got them on the rink, told Henry and Caroline to hold onto the side while they got used to it and I walked to the other end of the rink to wait for them.  They laughed, they fell, they walked, but they did not skate.  Caroline was not real happy because she didn't want help, she didn't want a walker, she just wanted to magically know how to do it.  In her mind she's always a ballerina twirling gracefully about.  We finally convinced her to try the practice area where there were less people.  She figured out how to glide there and then we got a smile.  Then she practiced jumping and I told her she better figure out how to work with her skates on the floor first.  Henry naturally got better as the afternoon went on.  Josiah cracked us up, though.  He picked the concept up the quickest with his trusty walker as a help.  He was zooming (as fast as he could) around the rink.  Later he told us that he was skating around helping people.  He passed one girl and told her her shoelace was untied.  Another teenage girl was having trouble and he let her hold on to his walker while they skated to the exit.  He is one-of-a-kind and we love his desire to help others. 
Their first steps in the rink:

Towards the end:

They had fun and they've been asking to go back ever since. 
This coming week, Josiah is moving up to the more advanced karate class.  I have a feeling the kids are going to be a lot bigger than his current class, so instead of being one of the oldest, he may be on the other end.  He says he wants to make blackbelt, so this is how he needs to do it.