Visitors, etc.

The big news, I think, is that Sam has started reading on his own! Susan got him a collection of early readers put out by Usborn. The start nice and easy, with the parent reading the text on the left page and the child the simpler text on the right. He's on his twelfth of these and the words and sentences are more complex and he's doing all the reading. He felt very proud to be reading! I mentioned recently that I haven't wanted this day to come, but it's worth it to see how satisfying it is for him to sound out words on his own.

We have snow on the ground (not shown) and temps in the 20s. But it must be spring, as Sam keeps wanting to go outside and swing or play near the stream.

Last weekend Susan made ebelskivers, which are little pastries made in a special cast-iron pan. We all enjoyed them.

Jess and Lanse, our neighbors when we lived in our previous house, are visiting Rochester this week. Yesterday Jess came over and we had a great time catching up. (In the photo of Jess, notice the vacuum hose on the floor. Sure evidence we vacuum occasionally... right?)

More and more Sam plays by himself. Today after church we told him to go play while we prepared lunch. Yesterday Sam and Susan had made a cardboard "house" together. Today he attached a clear plastic... turret? Helmet? Observation tower? to it.

What else is there to say? Two weeks ago I went to Sam's school to do a science demo. Not a science experiment, exactly, but not just a magic show either. These lines get blurry. Last time it involved mixing chemicals to make them change color.

This time, at the end of the week, I have a hodge podge of loosely connected demos. I'll suck an egg into a glass bottle by dropping some lit matches in and using the shelled, hard-boiled egg to seal the opening just before the air inside cools and contracts. I'll also show how you can invert a full glass of water without having the water pour out, so long as you have a piece of cardboard over the opening. (No tape, glue, etc.!)

I had planned to show how you can pierce a balloon with a metal skewer without it popping, but despite endless youtube demos, I can't get it to work. Instead I will show how you can poke a large number of pencils through a ziplock bag filled with water without the water pouring out. (The concept here being, as in the case of the inverted glass of water, that unless air can come in to replace the water, the water can't leave. For the glass, adhesion makes a sufficient seal, as with a suction cup. For the ziplock bag demo, because the hole made by the pencil is the same size and shape as the pencil, water can't escape.

Finally, I will show that if you put a few tablespoons of water in a balloon before you blow it up, you can hold it over a candle and the flame won't make it burst. This is because the water inside the balloon (having a much higher heat capacity than the balloon or the air inside it) absorbs all the heat leaving the plastic intact.

These four ought to be sufficient to turn an otherwise drab 45 minutes on a Friday afternoon into something a little more interesting. I'd like to talk about siphoning, but I really need a 50' string of beads... anyone have a 50' string of beads? :-)