Summer of Science

When X-man and I sat down in the spring to talk about our summer plans. I asked him what he wanted to do. He said he wanted to play t-ball, take swimming lessons (he can't go down the yellow slide at Sholem until he can swim the length of that part of the pool) and do science.

So each week I've been coming up with some science activities. We did the good old vinegar in a bottle, baking soda in a balloon, and then you put the balloon over the bottle and the gas inflates the balloon. We planted the garden together. We took a field trip to the Anita Purves Nature Center. We studied life cycles when Riley died.

We're also experimenting with new foods. Each week, X-man picks a new fruit or vegetable that he's never tried at the store. He's been kind of mellow about it. The first week he picked red bananas. The second week he had escarole. The third week he chose a pink lady apple. The trade off is that for trying it, he also gets to pick a snack of something we wouldn't normally buy... His favorite is to pick from the bulk bin. Week 1 was 12 gummi worms, week 2 was an ice cream treat, week 3 was yogurt covered pretzels. (I usually only buy those in airports. :-)

Today, we continued our lessons in nutrition -- and a little bit in food art. We made a watermelon cake. X-man got to practice a little fine motor skills by inserting the bamboo sticks into the watermelon like candles, and then he got to practice with a melon baller. He also used blueberries and strawberries.

Here's a sample of his effort. (Then we cut slices like a cake.)

Next time, he said he wants to make fancy pineapple shapes, even though he hates eating pineapple. :-) Maybe we can make them out of mango instead.