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Boys and Handwriting
26
May
admin

Several years ago, when Dirty Harry was just beginning his homeschooling adventures, I attended a day-long conference on homeschooling.  I remember exactly three things about this conference.

First, I remember that the speaker asked a mom sitting near the front to please remove her toddler child from the room because his activity was distracting her.

Secondly, I remember the speaker recommending this book…

And then I remember buying it from her booth at the close of the conference, and I remember loving every moment of reading it.  Seriously, if you haven’t read The Hawk and the Dove  trilogy by Penelope Wilcock, you need to consider remedying that.  It’s so totally good!

Lastly, I remember her comments and suggestions about teaching handwriting to boys.

The sanctuary of the church where we were meeting was pretty full.  I’d say there was somewhere between 200-300 people in there.  We were mostly women.  The speaker asked us to raise our hands if we regularly wrote in cursive.  Almost all of us raised our hands.  Then she asked us to raise our hands if our husbands regularly wrote in cursive.  I’d say roughly about 10% of the women raised their hands.  She then went on to give an explanation of why that was.

Cursive is generally introduced in public and private schools in the second grade.  The instruction continues into the third grade, and by about halfway through that year, the child is expected to have it mastered, and cursive writing is required for written assignments from then until usually late middle school or high school.  By then most kids have access to computers and typewritten assignments are accepted and encouraged.

This timeline is usually fine for girls.  Girls are ready to trade in their sturdy block print and No. 2 pencils for purple gel pens and flowery signatures accented with hearts and butterflies.  Boys, usually, are not.  The speaker explained that there is a tiny muscle in a child’s hand that everyone needs to be fully developed in order to have success with handwriting and other fine motor skills.  This muscle develops earlier in girls, usually by the age of 7 or 8.  For boys, it develops fully later.  So, boys as a whole, will struggle with the skills they need for cursive writing simply because their hands and fingers aren’t ready for it.  If they could wait to learn cursive until 3rd or even 4th grade, they would have much more success and less frustration.

I was one of the women at that conference who kept my hand down when asked if my husband wrote in cursive.  Big D does not.  As a child, he struggled with it and hated it.  As soon as he was allowed to go back to printing he did.  Today he writes like this…

At times when he has a lot of writing to do, the large block letters get more and more undiscernible.  Big D’s signature is…ironically…a D, a big one. (…and that list is excercises that he was teaching to Dirty Harry’s baseball team, just in case you were wondering.)

I waited until this year, 4th grade, to start cursive for Dirty Harry, and it’s gone off without a hitch.

No complaints.  No fussing.  And believe it or not, he actually writes in cursive better than he prints….even if he didn’t dot any of the i’s in Philippians.  There are quite a few acceptable handwriting programs out there.  We used this one…

They have a transitional book, pictured above, that slowly and methodically introduces a child to cursive.  You can purchase it here.

Is cursive writing even necessary anymore?  I guess one could argue that it is not with computers being available to kids so prevalently.  Yet it was important to me that my children still learn it.  Call me old-fashioned, but I don’t let them do all their assignments on a keyboard.  Both of my older ones have taken pride in the accomplishment of learning cursive, and I’m sure I’ll continue the tradition with Cap’n Jack Henry in several years.

So, if you have a little guy coming along, you might want to save all those swirls and loops for a year or two longer and let that tiny, necessary, small motor skills muscle develop fully.  And I’m pretty sure he won’t need a purple gel pen either.

Category: Dirty Harry, homeschooling  Tags: , , ,  14 Comments
The Good Toy: Smart Globe
29
April
admin

A few years ago I bought a Smart Globe for Bonny Annie and Dirty Harry for Christmas.  To be honest, they weren’t jumping out of their PJs that morning with excitement.  But since then, it has been a fun (and educational!) addition to our home.  We have used it.  A lot.

Basically, at face value, the Smart Globe is just a globe.  You don’t have to turn it on to use it.

We keep ours near our school area.  This allows us to quickly reference the globe.  We might be reading a story and come across the Canary Islands for instance.  The kids can quickly get a visual for where they are in the world, and thus have a better understanding of our lesson that day.

The fun of the Smart Globe begins, however, when you turn it on.  It comes with an attached electronic pen…

(…and yes, I know my Smart Globe needs to be dusted.  Dont’ judge me.)

Your child uses the pen to point out places of interest on the globe…

…and they can also interact with this little keypad, to learn all sorts of things about a particular country or continent…

One of Dirty Harry’s favorite activities is to listen to the various national anthems.  Unfortunately, China’s cracks him up for some reason.  He will play it over and over laughing hysterically.  I’ve had to ban him from listening to China’s national anthem.  He wasn’t allowed to watch the last summer Olympics because of his weird sense of humor.  Just kidding.

The Smart Globe also has a pull-out tray for US Geography.  The tray also interacts with the pen.

Dirty Harry also likes the games.  His favorite is a hunt-and-find timed game.  The Smart Globe will name a state or country, depending on which mode you have set, and the child finds and touches it with the pen.  They have a certain amount of time to find as many as they can.  Here’s a little thirty second demo of that particular game…

 

Okay, so we need to work on Louisiana a little bit.

I bought our globe at Costco, but here is the official site:  http://www.smarthome.com/19381/Smart-Globe/p.aspx

It looks like you can also find it on Amazon and other sites as well.

The Smart Globe is a good toy and would be a great addition to your home, whether you home school or not!

Category: The GOOD Toy (toy reviews), homeschooling  Tags: , , , ,  4 Comments
Biographies + Lapbooking = History!
19
April
admin

History is one of our favorite subjects to study together.  One of the reasons for this is because the personalities that pop up in the pages of our history books are so darn fascinating.  People are curious creations, which makes the study of them an engaging pastime.

While we study history chronologically, I am a great advocate of the biography, and I try to include many great ones as readers for the kids.  By studying a significant person of a particular time period, I think the child learns a lot about history in general.

Earlier this year, when we were studying early American history, Harrison read several biographies about Benjamin Franklin, as well as several short stories and little vignettes from other history books.  By studying such a large personality of that day, I felt my son had a better understanding of the making of our nation…better than if we had stuck solely to our history reader that just had a mere one chapter dedicated to the life of  Franklin.

Then, as your children read these biographies, it is a good idea to collect the information they’ve gleaned.  Sure, you could just have them write a book report, but we, more and more often, are doing our reports via lapbooks.

To make a lapbook, you simply refold a file folder, and then have your child fill it with little learning activities that you make for them or print from on-line or workbooks.

Lapbooks are especially good if you have a reluctant writer on your hands.  They are still getting good practice at gathering, collecting and reporting on information they have learned….just in smaller, more manageable chunks.

Lapbooks are good to use for subjects in which you don’t give tests.  For us, that happens to be history and science for the most part. In addition to biographies,  they make for good culminating activities for large units like the Civil War or the Industrial Revolution. 

You can find a healthy amount of printable activities that can be adapted for lapbooking by simply googling the subject that you are studying.  I’ve found that the site www.homeschoolshare.com has many lapbook activities, already grouped together by subject, that you can print for free.  Most of our Benjamin Franklin activities came from this site.

In my opinion, the best grades to use lapbooks is somewhere between about 3rd and 8th grades.  You can use them for younger kids, but you will end up doing a lot more of the work with them.  As Bonny Annie gets older (she’ll start high school this coming school year!), I am finding it hard to find lapbook materials that are challenging enough for her.

I think you’ll find that after reading several biographies and completing a lapbook on an interesting person, your child will be able to impress innocent bystanders with their amazing knowledge…or they should at the very least be able to answer some Jeopardy questions correctly.

Related links:

A treasure trove of information on lapbooking

Hands of a Child…a site where you can purchase downloadable lapbook templates by subject

A list of biographies and printables for kids

Category: homeschooling, lapbooks  Tags: , , , ,  4 Comments
Home Schooling with a Baby
15
April
admin

 

This is generally a hot topic among homeschoolers, especially newbies.  A large percentage of the time, people begin home schooling when their oldest child is early elementary age.  They either know they are going to try home schooling from the start and begin formal education in kindergarten, or they went the public or private school route for a year or two and then pulled them out and brought them home.  Sometimes there are other, younger kids at home already and them sometimes they might come a bit later.  Either way, at some point, most home schooling moms (and dads) will wonder how to continue to educate their school-age child(ren) with a dependent baby/toddler/pre-schooler needing their diaper changed or nose wiped or sippy cup refilled every five minutes.

For me, this dilemma came a little later in my home schooling adventure.  When I first began home schooling Bonny Annie, Dirty Harry was two, but I don’t remember ever having many problems.  I did strap him into a spare highchair for an hour everyday to watch Sesame Street.  This allowed me to do some math and language arts activities with my first grader, but he pretty much was right there with us for everything else, and by the time he was three, I was doing a little preschool program with him.

But Cap’n Jack Henry has been a different story.  Continuing our educational pursuits with him around has been interesting to say the least. 

But we are doing it.  And so to that end, I though I’d share whatever wisdom and insight I have on the subject, hoping that it might help a newbie homeschooler to hang in there while their little monkey scribbles on their worksheets and eats their glue sticks.  Or, after reading this, some of you may log off your computers and head straight to your nearest school’s office to enroll your youngsters immediately.  Either way I feel I will have done my part to be informative and honest.

1.  Use the littles’ naptimes wisely.

This is probably the single most important piece of advice I can give.  Sure, you may think you need a little nap yourself or perhaps you have your eye on the five loads of laundry that need to be folded.  STOP!  Step away from those ideas!  Use the baby’s nap for the subjects that are hard to do when he/she is awake.  For us this is usually our history and literature read-alouds, science experiments, spelling tests, and language arts lessons.  I try to cram us much into that hour and half as possible and then usually I can still find a few minutes to work on my blog or, yes, as much as I hate it, fold laundry.

2.  Train your school-age children to work independently.

My kids know that when Jack Henry is up and needing some attention that they will need to work by themselves.  For us, this might be silent reading, handwriting, or math.  You might want to have a folder or a plastic tray set up for them to place their completed work, so that when you get a chance, you can check it later.  Establish specific assignments that they are capable of before hand, so that when the baby is fussy or is being fed, that the older ones can just fall into their independent routine without any drama.

3.  Provide the baby/toddler with age appropriate activities in your school area.

Our school area is the kitchen table.  This area opens right up into our living room.  I’ve pretty much made this area baby-safe so that Jack Henry can roam around while I read a history lesson.  You have to just allow the kid to wreck the place during this time though, or you’ll never get anything done.  Jack Henry usually has floor time for about an hour in the later mornings, and this is usually what my living room looks like at the end of that hour…

Nice, huh?

When he’s done pillaging and ransacking, I usually read him a story or two and then put him down for a nap.  The big kids then will pick up the room for me.  They are usually ready to stretch their legs a bit, and it really doesn’t take as long as it looks.  Everything  has a place, so it’s a pretty simple clean-up.  Magazines and books in the basket, blocks in the wagon, Fun-Dips back in the box and put away in the cabinets, etc.  Yes, Fun-dips.  We have a box leftover from Valentine’s Day, and they are one of his favorite toys at the moment.  He just likes to take all of them out and put them back in, over and over again.

Since the weather has been so nice, I’ve opened up the windows, and this has bought us even more precious time as he loves standing there watching the birds in our yard or the cars pass by.

3.  Use your highchair.

Our highchair is right at the table where the kids school, so it’s very convenient to pop Jack Henry in and give him something to do.  But if you do most of your home schooling away from the dining room, I’d suggest investing in another one or a travel booster or something like that.  There’s simply nothing like containment!  I’ve just discovered that Jack Henry enjoys watching old “Blue’s Clues” episodes on our laptop from his highchair.  Or if I just need about ten minutes for a lesson, I might just give him a snack that he can feed to himself.

Okay, strawberry applesauce is probably not the best example.

No, definitely  not the best example.  Give him Cherrios.

You could also make your age 1+ child some of these crayons for highchair time.

4.  Use a pack-and-play.

Begin putting your baby in a playpen when they first start sitting up, so that they will be used to it and not feel like they’re in jail.  Also try to never use the playpen for a punishment.  You may also want to switch the toys that you keep in there regularly so that they don’t get bored.  We’ve followed these principals, and we get about an hour or so of playpen time from him everyday before he starts throwing things at us.  See….he loves it…

Ha, ha.  I just threw that one if for visual interest.  Here’s a short video to show you how content Jack Henry is in his pack-and-play…

 

He’s got some moves, doesn’t he?  And, yes, you will just have to learn to tune out whatever musical toys they may have in there.

5.  Don’t take everything so seriously.

Some days are just going to be bad.  Your baby may scream through your child’s recitation of the first sixteen Presidents.  The toddler might color on your entryway floor while you’re giving  a spelling test.  He might only nap for thirty minutes.  It’s okay.  It really is.  These days do not mean that you can’t be successful at home schooling.  Your baby’s antics will not keep your other children out of college.  As a matter of fact, the baby will only be a baby for a little while, so just allow your family to slow down and enjoy this season.  They may even learn a more valuable lesson from this experience than what is within the pages of their textbooks.

Category: Cap'n Jack Henry, homeschooling  Tags: , , , , ,  11 Comments
How to Build a Volcano
06
April
admin

Or “How to Make a Complete Mess of Your Kitchen Table for about Ten Seconds of Excitement.”

Dirty Harry has been studying the earth for a while now.  For a culminating activity, we built a little volcano in our kitchen.  It was a fun project for a kid who likes to build things, and we did ours on the cheap.  Sure, you can buy a kit for about $20, but I’ll bet you have the materials to make one just behind your kitchen cabinets.

Here’s what you’ll need…

  • vinegar
  • baking soda
  • a small glass (we used a shot glass, but you could use any size)
  • clay or Play-doh (optional)
  • a cookie sheet or some other flat pan to protect the surface of your table or counter (optional)
  • other objects to create a scene such as Lego figures, grass, rocks, etc. (optional)

First, if you’d like your volcano to look authentic, you will need to cover your glass with the clay, leaving an opening at the top.

Then, if your child wants to be creative, allow them to make a volcanic scene on the cookie sheet.  Dirty Harry used Lego people and grass and rocks from outside.

Oh, and look…Indiana Jones has made an appearance to watch the eruption…

To create the actual eruption, you fill your glass half full with the vinegar.  Then you will spoon the baking soda into the glass until the mixture starts to bubble up and out.  You can continue to add vinegar and baking soda alternately until your child has had their fill of volcanic activity.

Here’s a little video of ours…

 

Then have your child clean up all the mess so that you can put dinner on the table.  They will grumble, complain, cry and gnash their teeth.  Then threaten them with a grounding from their Wii.  At this, they will probably comply, but you can probably still expect a dirty look or two.

Of course, you will probably want to remind your student that this project differs very much from what happens beneath the earth’s surface.  This eruption is caused by a chemical reaction of the vinegar and baking soda and is simply a fun visual of a real, live volcano.

Related links:

A cool site with various kinds of homemade volcanoes and videos  (Please note that while the volcano material is completely fine, that there are links to some questionable videos that may appear randomly in the sidebars.  So, please use caution if you’re viewing with your children nearby.)

Information, stories and photos of real volcanoes

Category: Dirty Harry, crafts, homeschooling  Tags: , , , , ,  2 Comments
Pride Cometh Before the Apple Falleth Far From the Tree
30
March
admin

The other day I gave Dirty Harry a spelling test.  I’m a homeschooling mom.  We do that.  He missed one word:  apples.  It’s not that big of a deal really.  With the spelling curriculum we use, your child only studies the words they miss on a given week.  So studying one word takes less than five minutes a day.  No sweat, right?  Wrong.

Dirty Harry was mad.  He launched into a hot tirade, proclaiming that he knew how to spell the word apples, that he just made a little mistake, that he wanted a do-over.  I agreed with him on the point that he knew how to spell it.  He was probably just rushing through, but that’s the consequence of rushing, and I told him so.  He fumed and complained some more.  I told him to get over himself and move on.  He misspelled the word apples on his test, so he would have to study it throughout the week and be tested again on Friday.  Period.  End of discussion.

On Wednesday our spelling curriculum dictates that the student do some sort of fun activity to study their words.  Dirty Harry likes to use the site www.spellingcity.com to play games and take little tests on this day.  But apparently he was still a little sore about the whole apples ordeal.

Dirty Harry:  Mom, I can’t think of any fun activities to do with apples.

Me:  Just go use the Spelling City site for a while.  With only one word, it should only take a few minutes.

Dirty Harry:  It doesn’t work well with one word.  This is stupid!  I know how to spell apples!  Can’t we just forget this whole thing and move on???  Blah, blah, blah, blah….

Me:  No, we can’t.  You missed the word on your test.  If you knew how to spell it, then you shouldn’t have been in such a hurry and made a careless mistake.  Why don’t you just take a piece of chalk and write apples on the chalkboard five times for your activity?  That should be extremely simple for you since you know how to spell it and all.

Dirty Harry grumbles and sulks but finally picks up the piece of chalk and writes the word five times.

“That was too easy,” he says, “so I’m going to just go ahead and write the whole alphabet for extra cursive practice, okay?”

“Ummm-hmmmm,” I answer.  I was busy in the kitchen, so I wasn’t really paying attention to what he was doing.  Later, however, I went to check his work, and this is what I saw….

Bwahhhhaaaahaaaaaahaaa!!!!

I’m sorry.  Please excuse my maniacal laughter, but something in me always finds great humor in my kids’ failures when they’ve persisted in giving me such a hard time about something.  It’s a character flaw, and I’m working on it.

He has since taken his spelling post-test and earned a hundred.  I don’t think he’ll ever spell the word apples incorrectly again in his life. 

But if he does, I hope I’m there to laugh my head off and remind him of this story.

Category: Dirty Harry, homeschooling  Tags: , , , , ,  10 Comments
Field Trip Magnet Board
03
March
admin

We started collecting magnets from our home school field trips several years ago.  Big D made this board for us out of an old piece of scrap metal that he had just laying around in the garage.  It used to be white and hang in our school room.  Now we don’t have a school room anymore, and the board is some kind of psychedelic mix of red and blue, and it hangs in a little hallway entering into Dirty Harry’s room.

Despite the alterations to the board’s appearance and location, we have a had a fun time with this collection over the years.  Whenever we go somewhere that has a gift shop, the kids look forward to choosing the magnet that will grace our board.  It’s a fairly inexpensive way to commemorate the trip, and storage isn’t a problem either, like it might be if we had chosen to collect…oh, say posters or snow globes or even shot glasses.

We’ve procured some of them from local trips…

…but mostly we’ve picked them up at places we visit when we travel.  Like most good, dutiful homeschoolers, we try to mix business with pleasure and learn from the places we tour.

Like Chicago…

And Kansas City…

and Alabama…

It’s even better when we can visit family and score a field trip or two while visiting with them.

Like in Charleston, SC…

Or in North Carolina…

Or Georgia…

Every time I look at that magnet I remember that I almost died trying to hike all those wretched stairs.  See how pleasant a magnet board can be?  Helping you to recall near-death experiences?

And then, of course, there was the mother-of-all-field trips…

Don’t laugh.  Parts of Animal Kingdom and Epcot Center are very educational.  At least that’s what I keep trying to tell Big D in my attempts to talk him into taking us there again soon.

I encourage you to start your own field trip magnet board.  Or if you don’t have wall space for a psychedelic painted piece of metal, then just use your handy-dandy refrigerator.  It is a fun way to look back upon your on-the-road educational experiences!

 

Category: field trips, homeschooling  Tags: , , , ,  4 Comments
Bonny Annie’s Dream-Come-True
21
January
admin

Last week Bonny Annie went to a weekend camp with our church.  She was soooooo excited.

Why was she excited?  Well, there were many reasons.  The fact that this was her first time to go away to camp was at the top of the list.  Other reasons included…

Being able to meet new friends…

Praise and worship sessions…

The challenge to draw closer to God…

Hanging out with and getting to know better some of the adult volunteers from our church…

Getting to be on the same Foosball team with Pastor David…

Yes, all of  these reasons caused her to anticipate the trip.  But do you know what she was most excited about?  What she was most looking forward to experiencing?

Her first ride on a REAL school bus!

I tell ya’…these home schooled kids are so deprived…

…and weird.

(A special thanks to Big D for going on the retreat too and providing all the photographs seen here.  There’s nothing quite like going to youth camp with your photographer dad trailing you like the papparazzi.)

Category: Bonny Annie, homeschooling  Tags: , , ,  7 Comments
Shop Class
19
January
admin

Last Thursday turned out to be a doozy of a day at our house.

Thursdays are always a bit of a challenge anyway because it’s Bonny Annie’s long tutorial day, so I can never plan much for her school-wise since she’s gone from the house from about 9:00am until about 1:30.  But on this particular Thursday, our friend, Mr. Vern, was showing up to work on our dining room floor, and since the dining room is also our classroom, I thought serious schoolin’ for that day was going to be a wash.

But I was wrong.

We’ve known Mr. Vern for a number of years.  He goes to our church.  And he recognized Dirty Harry’s interest in the job right away, and he tapped into it.  He casually just started giving him little jobs, running him back and forth to his truck for odds and ends, even taking him on a quick run to Lowe’s.  The next thing I knew Dirty Harry was chest deep into our crawl space, thinking that this was even better than Legos, and my plans for attempting a math lesson on the living room floor were abandoned.

When we bought our house new a little over eight years ago, the builder installed a French door that had already been fitted and installed into another house into ours, since ours had sold and we had a fast-approaching move-in date, and the other one had not.  We had always noticed that the door had some minor problems since we always had to slam it to get it to shut properly, but we didn’t know, until just a couple of years ago, that the seal on the door was faulty and that the floor all around the door had some water damage.  Fortunately, the damage was not severe or widespread, but we had reached a point where the floor had to be fixed and the door replaced, or someone was going to fall through into the crawl space.  The only family member that possibility appealed to was Dirty Harry, and at under 65 pounds, he was not likely to make that happen.

Here you can see where the floor had gotten spongy all along the door jam…

So, Mr. Vern’s job, along with his trusty helper, Dirty Harry, was to cut a whole in the damaged floor and put in a temporary, but functional, patch of plywood flooring.  Eventually we’re going to lay Pergo flooring on the whole downstairs.  Maybe over the summer….  (Did you hear that Big D???  The summer???)

Dirty Harry’s favorite job was using the hammer and other various tools to whack away at the damaged flooring.

I love the above picture because, for some reason, Dirty Harry looks five instead of nine.  Not that there’s anything wrong with nine, but if you’re a mother reading this, then you probably understand.  There’s just something special about five….

I also love that while this project was going on I heard Mr. Vern having Dirty Harry work relevant math problems as it pertained to cutting the floor.  I also loved that at one point they were having a scientific conversation about the results of friction.  I also loved that Mr. Vern shared a gruesome story about an eye injury he once suffered in an attempt to scare Harrison into leaving on his work googles instead of wearing them on his head.  I also loved that Dirty Harry was working so hard at one point that he was sweaty.  I also really, really loved that Mr. Vern noticed in time that Dirty Harry was, at one point, pounding away at a non-damaged floor joist and stopped him.  And, of course, I love the fact that my floor is temporarily repaired…

…even if it is a bit unsightly at the moment.  I love that, even now, Big D is planning the door replacement and permanent flooring project.  (Pssst….Big D?  Still listening???)

So, the next time your school schedule gets turned upside-down by….whatever….don’t fret!  Embrace the situation as a school elective, and let your child learn something of a different nature.

Trust me….they won’t be worse for wear.

Category: Dirty Harry, homeschooling  Tags: , , , ,  7 Comments
“Happy New Year!”, Brought to You By Mentos and Diet Coke
04
January
admin

A few months ago, Bonny Annie came home from her home school tutorial wanting me to run to the store to buy Mentos and Diet Coke.

“Why?” I asked.  It’s a fair question, don’t you think?  Especially since neither of those two items ever make it onto my shopping list.

“Because some kids were telling me today that if you eat Mentos and then drink Diet Coke, that foam will come shooting out of your mouth, and I wanted to try it,” she answered.

“Oh, well, hmmmm….we’ll see,” I said.

I never bought the Mentos and Diet Coke.  If you’re  a parent, and you’re reading this, I think you probably understand.  But Bonny Annie shared the information with Dirty Harry, who was also interested in having foam shoot out of his mouth, and they both harassed me half to death about it.

So one time I was in Wal-mart, looking for a birthday gift for Dirty Harry to take to a party, when I stumbled upon the above.  I bought four of them:  two for birthday gifts and two for the kids’ stockings.  They were ever so excited to find them on Christmas morning and wanted to shoot them off right away, but I made them wait until New Year’s.  I thought it would be a celebratory way to ring the year in because you know balls dropping are waaaaay overrated.  Now, Coke geysers….that’s something to write home about!

Apparently the idea here is that the candy goes right down into the soda bottle causing the geyser to shoot straight up, instead of out of your mouth.  Much, much more appealing, I thought.  The little package, which cost less than $4, came with everything you need except for the  soda (and we went cheap on that and bought Kroger’s generic brand).

Here are Big D and Bonny Annie, setting up for the explosion…

And then here’s a quick video of what happened after they pulled the cord and ran…

 

Not only can you still eat the Mentos after all this, but what is left of the soda is fine for consumption as well.

For you scientific types, here’s the explanation on the back of the package…

Truth be told, Dirty Harry still wants to try it in his mouth.  And I’ve tried to tell him, that if he’d just once and for all brush his teeth really, really well that he’d create a foam that would rival the most rabid of dogs.

Category: homeschooling  Tags: , , ,  8 Comments
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