Homeschool Science: The Physics of Temperature and a Homemade Working Thermometer

We weren't meant to spend more than maybe a month, tops, on this meteorology unit. What we really want to be studying is astronomy, and we'll have to get to it soon if I want to have us set up to watch the total solar eclipse as our culminating activity, but meteorology has never been something that's interested the kids enough to study before, and so we just need to zip through it just so the kids have some basic background information, and some context for relevant bits of knowledge.

There will be no weird gaps in our homeschool curriculum!

This unit is kind of taking forever, though. Like most of our studies, it's heavy with hands-on activities, but since they're hands-on weather activities, they keep either requiring specific conditions outside that we have to wait on (can't identify clouds if there aren't any!) or take days and days to complete (this week, the kids are working every day on a temperature-gathering experiment, and it's a huge pain in the butt).

Even this particular lesson was kind of a pain in the butt, because we had to put it off when we discovered that the little kid had used up all of our clear straws on a huge, messy (though delicious) milkshake project. We finally got it done this week, though, and happily, it was so awesome that it was worth the wait!

In order to understand how a thermometer works, you have to understand the physics of temperature. This Crash Course Physics video gets too hard for the little kid less than halfway through--



--but does contain plenty of reinforcement of the main takeaway, that heating expands solids, liquids, and gasses, and cooling contracts them. The rate and intensity depend on the substance, but if you know that rate and intensity of a particular substance, you can use its expansion and contraction to then measure the temperature around it.

And boom! You have a thermometer!

We studied how to physically use a thermometer as a measuring tool in a previous lesson (I probably should have told you about that lesson first, but bizarrely, I chose not to. I'll tell you about it later, I guess!), and the difference between the various scales of temperature measurement. So when we finally scored some clear straws (at the movie theater, in partial recompense for the ridiculously high ticket prices for Guardians of the Galaxy 2), the kids were all set to make a working thermometer for themselves, using sugru, a Starbucks Frappuccino bottle (I bought some different types of coffee drinks to test out for an upcoming camping trip, and this one was NOT a winner--it tasted weirdly chemically and...oily, kind of?) and this tutorial:

The kids were able to follow the tutorial independently, although I'd advise you to let the thermometer rest for a couple of hours before you use the eye dropper to add a couple of inches of water to the straw. Our rubbing alcohol was already at room temperature, but the water that the kids got from the sink must have been cold, because just by sitting on the counter the thermometer soon maxed out its temperature reading, with the colored liquid all the way at the top of the straw and dripping down.

But yes, after you fix that the thermometer works just as you'd like it to, and you can move it inside and out, around to different parts of the house, put it in the refrigerator and then take it out later and watch the water level rise while you're eating dinner, etc. 

P.S. If that Physics of Temperature video wasn't too hard for you, you should also check out this second video on the subject, and then this video on thermodynamics. If we were going in a different direction with our study of heat, the kids would have LOVED to spend some time burning and melting stuff to determine melting and boiling points, etc., but I'll save that fun activity for another time.

P.P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, road trips to weird old cemeteries, looming mid-life crisis, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!

We're the Cotton Ball Fireball Fail Army

Only eleven more days left in February, and I haven't cracked yet! I've got 12 hours of cookie booths this weekend, with transportation and cookie stock micro-managed only slightly imperfectly; I have the muslins made for Syd's Trashion/Refashion Show garment, and all of the reclaimed fabrics ready to cut out and sew, AND a plan for the wearable twinkle lights; the kids are happily working their way through the last readings in the National Mythology Exam bibliography, with the understanding that they'll need to re-read them before the Tuesday test, AND I should have a lesson on test-taking strategies before then; school is otherwise progressing smoothly, even though I've given up our other units for the time being to focus on the NME, Science Fair, and the kids' regular daily work, AND even though their computer has been malfunctioning again and we've all been sharing my laptop for all of our various projects, meaning that sometimes I get left messages like this--

--both kids know exactly what they want to do for Thursday's Science Fair, and Syd even has her presentation written, AND Will has made the spare plaster of Paris volcano and the rocket candy fuses and should be ready for her first experiments tonight.

You'd never look at Will's Science Fair topics and think that she was anything but *that* kind of homeschooled kid. Last year's Exothermic Reactions was just a cover for learning about explosions, and led to us making a bunch of homemade smoke bombs of varying non-success. She again was given free reign this year, leading her to come up with the topic of Fire Volcano.

She wants to build a plaster of Paris volcano, then fill it with a variety of flammable materials, from the usual to the unusual, then burn them and see what happens.

See? That's SUCH a homeschooled kid topic. But so what? It's not following the Scientific Method, exactly, but I've always thought that's forced too early, and that it takes the fun out of a lot of experiential learning. But what her topic IS is self-selected, and it interests her. It's made her enthusiastic about planning, and goal setting, and hand-building, and researching, and she's willing to write a presentation and build a display. These are activities that my kid is normally not enthusiastic about. She's also learning chemistry and physics, building her STEM skills and her practical life skills, and its made learning into an exciting adventure.

Shouldn't learning always be an exciting adventure?

I should tell you, though, that my Secret Mom Goal is to gently focus her presentation on Flammable Materials (that just happen to be tested in a Fire Volcano), with comparisons between the reactions of different materials to the same fuse, and recommendations about to properly store and dispose of flammable materials. Perhaps even a bit about first aid for burns? Maybe the formulas for some of the chemical reactions? We'll see...

Lofty goals aside, Will's first foray into research led her to the following discovery: "Mom, nail polish remover is highly flammable! Also, look at this video!"

The video stars a tween--who clearly, based on his nervous glances out of the room, should NOT be doing what he's doing--making a cotton ball fireball using nail polish remover and a lighter, and gently tossing it from hand to hand.

My Mom Response should have probably been horror and disapproval. Instead, without even looking away from the video, I shouted "SYD!!! Do you have any nail polish remover?!?"

Reader, she did. And I had cotton balls. We also had a lighter.

In other words, we were all set!

Well, except that it turns out that Will is more chicken than the chickens:



Fine. I'm more chicken than the chickens, too! Our demonstration quickly devolved into... ridiculousness. Just ridiculousness:



Thank goodness for Matt!

Will is bummed that we can't actually do live performances of any of her Fire Volcano experiments in the meeting room of the public library during the Science Fair, so even though the nail polish remover's real demonstration is going to be done tonight, on the driveway, inside the plaster of Paris volcano, I've told her that we might be able to swing taking some families outside the library onto the sidewalk and maybe demonstrating the cotton ball fireball there.

Of course, she'll have to actually be able to bring herself to actually do it by then...

Homeschool Field Trip: The Tulip Trestle Beam Bridge

The kids really enjoyed the physics of bridges study that we did in honor of the Golden Gate Bridge. Although they're going to see (and possibly walk across!) that marvelous example of a suspension bridge later this summer, I knew that we have quite a marvelous example of a beam bridge right here in Indiana, so last weekend Matt and I forcibly shoved the children into the car and took them to see it!

This is the Tulip Trestle, a long train beam bridge in Indiana that spans an entire valley: 

Check out this view of it from directly below. From this perspective, you can see how little there actually is up there! Can you imagine crossing this bridge on a train? Shudder!

Although there is a pretty great Little Free Library--

--and some wildflowers just a short trespass away (ahem...)--

--there's little else to do at Tulip Trestle but simply admire it. One child in particular found this... unimpressive:

Self-Promotional Note: Do you follow me on Facebook? I wish you would!

But do not worry, Friends--mere minutes later, she'd been tempted into picking flowers with her sister, then testing her hypothesis that surely she could climb the outside of the Observation Deck without incident:

Conclusion: She could not.

You're not supposed to climb the Tulip Trestle--I mean, obviously--but there is a gravel parking lot just at the base of one of the supports, so...

We only climbed it a little:

This kid who is NOT into having her picture taken was VERY interested in having her picture taken on rusty metal beams (!) sprayed with graffiti. She insisted that she wasn't going to smile, however. Oh, child...

This one enjoyed tromping around, too, even if she wasn't quite as into the particular industrial stylings of her environment:

This was an especially good field trip because all of the study materials that we used for our bridge unit were very clear that beam bridges are the shortest and least strong of bridge types. From that, it's easy to fall into the misunderstanding that beam bridges are only used for very short spans, like overpasses. It's important, then, to see some examples of really great beam bridges, to realize that they, too, can be impressive both structurally and architecturally.

Or, you know, if you're 11 years old, unimpressive. Whatever.

Homeschool STEM: Build a Popsicle Stick Truss Bridge

No work plans this week! The kids are day camping, which means that I have five full days to mark off every single thing on my to-do list--you know, the one that I last caught up on last year when the kids were at camp.

I always think that while the kids are gone, I'm going to take an entire day and just drink coffee and watch movies and read, but I don't. The temptation to do ALL THE PRODUCTIVE THINGS is far too great.

Anyway, before I do my first mile on the treadmill and read some of my Abraham Lincoln biography over breakfast and work on my freelance assignment (craft projects that you can do instead of setting off fireworks with kids--tough one, right?) and paint the frame to the magnetic memo board and see if my repair to the bread machine is functional and... well, I'm boring you just telling you about my productive day.

tl;dr: Before I get to the rest of my day, let me tell you all about how awesome truss bridges made with popsicle sticks are!

A truss bridge can be a cost-effective way to span a distance, because those cross-beams provide a LOT of support for their size. And once you've discovered the genius of the triangle, you'll find yourself using it in all sorts of designs, not just bridges, to increase stability. On our day trip to the Indiana State Museum a few months ago, I discovered that my K'nex pyramid was undefeatable at the earthquake table--all the other little kids with their non-pyramid K'nex structures were so jelly!

To explore truss bridges, the kids and I built models as illustrated in this tutorial. Syd and I built one bridge, and Will built her own, slightly simpler, model:

Again, although it would be more accurate to distribute the load for the weight testing across more of the bridge's deck, testing this way still gives you a good basis for comparing the different bridge types, which is all that we need:



You can see that this simple bridge took a pretty good amount of weight before it went down! If you were super careful with your construction techniques, made each component of your bridge as accurately as possible, and tested it in a controlled environment, it would stand up to a LOT more stress before buckling.

For bonus points, compare your truss bridge to a beam bridge and a suspension bridge!

Homeschool STEM: Drinking Straw and Twine Suspension Bridge

I know that I've been boring lately and just posting our homeschool work and school-related tutes and not, like, thoughtful essays about life and parenthood and whatever, but frankly, I'm actively avoiding introspection until my emotions feel a little less gut-shot, soooo...

Here's another tute!

The kids and I have been having a fine time, the past couple of months, working on a California unit study that I created for them. They (or I) pick something in California that they'd like to see or do, and then I create a week-long unit based on that thing. We won't have time to get to everything, of course, just as their grandparents won't have time to take them to everything when they're actually in California, but it's fun for the kids to anticipate all of the adventures that they'll have, and I've been pleased at what a lovely cross-curricular study this has naturally become, especially when it fills in some subjects that we haven't studied previously, like coastal geography, the Gold Rush, or this week's unit on bridge engineering in honor of the Golden Gate Bridge, which the kids will certainly see (many times) on their trip, and which their grandmother has already promised that they can actually walk across, as both kids deeply desire to do.

To understand bridge engineering, you need to understand the forces of compression and tension. We discussed these forces, and I showed the kids some diagrams, but I could see from looking at their blank little faces that it really was not sinking in. Good thing, then, that my plans also included building a model of every single bridge type that we discussed!

I'll show you the models in more detail, but let me just say now that as soon as the kids made their models of each bridge design and tested them, they immediately, naturally, understood how compression and tension work. You could see the very moment that it came alive from looking at their bright little faces. THAT is why I'm so obsessed with hands-on, project-based learning!

To understand why a suspension bridge works so well, you should first explain a beam bridge, and then build one and test it to the point of catastrophic failure. The way that you test it will undoubtedly not resemble the way that a real bridge experiences live weight (on account of you don't really hang a giant hook attached to a giant bucket filled with giant pennies from a real bridge...), but it's adequate for testing and comparing a bridge's strength, and examining its points of failure.

The kids built beam and arch bridges out of building blocks, but also built them out of drinking straws, using the tutorial in this Scientific American article. Even though you can make beam bridges in endless ways, for the purpose of comparing its effectiveness to the suspension bridge, you want to have the kids make it just the way the article says:

Most of my photos of this project are crap, because apparently I don't know how to work my camera anymore.

I had to help the kids with this a little--it's something I don't usually like to do with their projects, but it was that important in order to make the comparison work.

Our bucket was also heavier than the Styrofoam cup the article calls for, but as cool as this project is, it cannot make me waste both five drinking straws AND a Styrofoam cup!

Have the kids gently drop pennies into the cup, one at a time, until the bridge fails:

Our beam bridge held 31 cents before it reached catastrophic failure. Note where and how it fails and how many pennies it held. If I'd been thinking, I'd have made the kids take notes and draw diagrams... oh, well!

Next, build the suspension bridge. You'll see that it's built almost exactly the way the beam bridge is built--

--except with the addition of that twine:

That twine, my Friends, is what is going to make all the difference!

Doesn't the completed suspension bridge look elegant?

Test the bridge the same way that you tested the beam bridge. Don't tell the kids in advance, but it will hold more--WAY more--money than the puny beam bridge did. We're talking $2.53 worth of suspension bridge awesomeness!



That's because the main cable pulls, or provides tension, in the opposite direction from the beam's compression, and that force is balanced by the cable's placement over the tower and anchored on the other side. The cable pulls the beam up, the tower takes the weight, and the force is balanced on both sides.

I'm not ashamed to tell you that before this unit, I didn't understand how suspension bridges work (I was also in my twenties before I could reliably spell "refrigerator," so there's also that...). Like the kids, I've seen the Golden Gate Bridge tons of times, and the way that the cable drapes, as if it's simply resting there, always threw me off. But it turns out--and you can model this, as well!--that the cable is held that way because it's not just attached to the deck in the middle, but by suspender cables all the way across. That drape is simply the way that the cable looks when it's got all of those points of attachment.

We had a playdate with friends instead of most of our school yesterday, but we're stuck home today with the second car in the shop because the Lord doesn't want us to have any money, so hopefully we'll have time for both our bridge-building challenge and the computer modeling that I wanted to do to finish out this study.

And those kids better take TONS of pictures of themselves on the Golden Gate Bridge for me!

Homeschool STEAM: Whole-Body Pendulum Painting in an Aerial Hammock

Why, no, I DIDN'T write lesson plans for this week--hooray for me! The kids will still have Math Mammoth, a page of cursive, a Book of the Day, their Memory Work, and a hands-on project of my choosing each day--more crystal-growing, perhaps, or more chemical reactions, or maybe some craft projects that I've had in the back of my mind for a while--but we have so many BIG things going on this week that it just didn't make sense to block out half of each day in advance.

Our homeschool group's STEM Fair is tonight. I anticipate that the kids will spend fully half a day on finishing their prep and refining their presentations for this.

Their grandparents arrive for a visit tomorrow night. I'm sure they'll want to do things with them other than watch them color in maps and make salt dough models of the spleen or whatever all week. Not to mention that we should probably tidy the house at least a little before they get here.

Oh, and the Trashion/Refashion Show is this weekend! Not only do we have to practice and figure out runway shoes and hair/makeup, but, um... yeah, I also still need to sew the belt and the petticoat that Syd wants for her garment. Oh, and hem the skirt. Nothing like waiting until the last minute to get super productive!

But that's for later, as soon as I get off my butt and outta this chair. For now, I want to tell you about the STEAM project that I did with the kids a few weeks ago, on account of it was so awesome!

You know that we have an at-home, DIY aerial silks rig, right? Several months ago, the kids asked if I would re-rig it into an aerial hammock. I did, and we all love it. I'm about to rig it back because Syd has been wanting to do some actual aerial silks on it, not just lounge around in it and read all comfy (silly girl!), so before I did, and concurrent with Will's Math Mammoth unit on geometry, I set up a whole-body pendulum painting activity on the aerial hammock.

You, yourself, don't have to have an aerial silks rig to do this, of course. You can do it from a tire swing. You can do it with your feet from a playground swing. You can take your regular hammock, double it, and hang both ends from one hook in your ceiling beam or from one carabiner latched onto a rescue rig and looped around a strong tree branch. Hell, you could do it from an actual hammock if you didn't care about having a full 360-degree range of motion. As long as your kid can comfortably reach the ground with a paintbrush while lying in the rig that you've set up, you're good.

Along with the rig, you'll also need this stuff:

• large-format paper. Giant sheets of newsprint work well (we have this exact thing), but you could also use actual sheets of newspaper. This project is about the process more than the product, so who cares that there are already words on it? An alternative to large-format paper could be a drop cloth, tarp, or huge canvas or curtain, etc.
• paint. Use something cheap, with a good flow. We used Biocolors for this particular project, but I can also recommend tempera. I put the paints into separate pots, each with its own brush.
• giant paintbrushes.
• duct tape.

1. Duct tape the large-format paper under and around the rig. You don't want the kid to feel like she has to reign herself in so as not to paint on the floor, so really cover the area.

2. Settle the kid in and make sure that she gets herself comfortable with facing down in the hammock, extending an arm. This is a pretty heavy core exercise for some kids, and they structure it for themselves in different ways. Will chose to lie prone in the hammock, while Syd chose to crouch and lean--both ways exercised their muscles in ways they weren't used to.

Since we were using our aerials silks for this, and aerial silks are quite expensive, I also emphasized at this time that no matter what, they were not to touch the silks with their paintbrushes. I'm sure I'll wash them before I re-rig them, but I just do NOT want to deal with paint stains. Fortunately, the kids both know already to be careful to not soil the silks--no shoes on the rig, no food, no filthy hands--so this wasn't hard for them to remember.

3. And off she goes! You've got to play facilitator for this entire project, as the kid can't swing herself, nor can she reach the different paint pots without you. The kids took turns in the hammock (Syd nearly beside herself in anticipation for her turn), and I sat right next to each when it was her turn, pushing her and handing her the paint colors that she requested. 

Both kids had SO much fun with this! It was interesting to see what a different approach each had to the activity, as well. Will was completely abstract from beginning to end, enthusiastic about simply swinging and letting the paintbrush move with her:

Syd, however, had a goal from the start. First, she tried to paint a face while swinging, and even managed to do so, but even when she moved on from that to painting in the abstract, she wasn't content just to swing, but really wanted to cover all of the paper, not missing any corners:

Regardless of the differing intents, and my emphasis on process over product, both kids' paintings turned out absolutely gorgeous, and they're both hanging in the kitchen right now, where they'll stay until I get around to buying the giant piece of sheet metal that I want to make the giant magnetic display board that I want to live in that giant space.

So... geometry, art, body awareness, muscle strengthening, maybe a little engineering, some of that spinning that's so good for the inner ear. Not a bad way to spend an hour on a Saturday afternoon!

We played with pendulums some during Will's History of Video Games unit study a few years ago, so if you're interested in exploring more with pendulums, have I got some great resources for you!

• Pendulums are fun for knocking things over! Build up a collection of cardboard boxes and toilet paper tubes, and your kids will probably never want you to put this set-up away again.
• Giant pendulums paint on the driveway! If you happen to have a portable coat rack, this would be a fun way to explore pendulums outside. 
• Pendulums are fun for painting! There are several different depictions of pendulum painting online, all with mostly the same basic set-up. I like the PVC pipe rig the best, though. A kid isn't going to knock it over the way that she will a lashed-together bamboo tripod, and yet PVC pipe is nearly as light to transport and just as easy to disassemble. Here's how to build the rig, although I'd put a hook or a carabiner at the end of the string, not a cup. Don't you want to attach a whole bunch of different kinds of pendulums, not just one?
• Here's how Foucault's pendulum works. I know that you've always wanted to know!

Kitchen Science: Density Cake

You'll excuse me, I hope, if this reads as a bit scattered today, but I bolted awake before dawn this morning to a phone call telling me that the big kid's chicks were at the post office waiting for us!

The kids and I took a field trip to the fire station a few months ago, and during that trip a firefighter lectured us on the importance of middle-of-the-night fire drills, because when people are awakened from a sound sleep, they awake confused.

Friends, I awoke confused.

I tossed the room looking for my pants, gave up (I found them a bit ago, tangled in the sheets), couldn't find new pants, found pants, forgot where I put my phone down, spent ages looking for it, found it, woke the kids, remembered that the brooder wasn't completely set up, had a right panic about it, couldn't get the heat lamp at exactly the perfect height to emit exactly the perfect temperature and was completely unable to troubleshoot this, tried many things, gave up and went to lie down for a few minutes, remembered the ladder and dragged it in from the garage to serve as a heat lamp stand, couldn't find the address of the post office, set the phone down and lost it again, etc.

Fortunately, by the time the kids had found a height that worked for the heat lamp and got the brooder temperature approximately correct, the fog of sleep had somewhat lifted from my brain (the coffee that I drank as the kids worked was crucial to this process), and I only had to go to the wrong building, call the post office and get directions to the right building, and then go in the wrong doors of the right building once before I successfully located our chicks.

They're safely home now, drinking and eating and bopping around their brooder, and I've declared today a Chick Holiday, because who can be expected to do math and spelling and history when there are FIFTEEN CHICKS BEING CUTE?!?

Therefore, the science project that I'm going to tell you about actually occurred earlier this week. I'd told you that we were finished exploring density for a bit after the Great Density Experiment, but then I realized that the kids had really only explored the density of liquids, so I thought that I'd set up just one last little project so that they could note to themselves that density also applies to solids.

The goal of this experiment is to determine which cake toppings are less dense than cake, and which are more dense. Instead of measuring mass and volume to determine this, the kids let the substances themselves illustrate their density, by placing all toppings on top of the cake, baking it, and then examining it to determine which toppings fall to the bottom of the cake and which toppings stay up top.

To do this experiment, you will need:

• cake mix. The kids are capable of making cake from scratch, but that's another project in itself, with different variables (Did the kid put in enough baking powder and soda? Did the kid put in the correct amount of flour?), so to make sure that the cake itself would be a neutral substance, I let the kids pick out a boxed cake mix.
• toppings. Guide the kids just enough to make sure that they're choosing substances that will float and substances that will sink.
• paper to record the experiment. Lab notebooks would be ideal, but I'm still working the kids up to those.

1. Have the kids prepare the cake mix and put it in the baking pan.
2. Lay out all possible toppings. The kids used frozen tart cherries, candy-melt wafers, caramels, chocolate chips, almond slivers, pecan pieces, M&Ms, and dehydrated marshmallows.
3. Have the kids grid out the cake on a piece of paper, and as they place the ingredients, they should record each location on their grid, along with their hypothesis of the substance's behavior during baking. The grid will look like this:

Pop the cake in the oven and bake it according to package directions. When it's finished, you can evaluate your hypotheses based on observation--

--and core samples:

I was pleased that the kids hadn't correctly predicted the behavior of every single substance, because surprises are fun. And the little kids who came over to play "mud kitchen" with my own little kid that afternoon quite enjoyed helping us eat our density cake!

P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, homeschool projects, road trips, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!

Autumn and Electricity

Autumn is my favorite time of year on our university's campus, and we've taken full advantage of it, finding ourselves playing among the leaves in the woods and around the creeks before and after opera performances, during Girl Scout field trips, on the way to and from ballet classes, and on this particular afternoon, just for Will and I, during her sister's Nutcracker rehearsal:

Will and I were rushing across campus to catch the tag end of our university's Science Fest--normally we spend several hours at this event, but this was also Fun Show day, so a brief stint in the electricity lab was the extent of our science enrichment:

Riding a bicycle generator and lighting lights! We also got demonstrations/explanations of solar- and wind-powered generators.

 And yes, I say "our" science enrichment, because it was me that pestered the poor undergrad supervising this gadget--it's scanning for wavelengths in the air, picking up, on this afternoon, wi-fi and cell phone signals and a few other little unidentified frequencies:

I asked him if the cell phone spike would spike higher if I held my cell phone right up to the antenna, and got the go-ahead to experiment--it did! Would my Nook also cause a spike on some frequency? Nope! My car remote triggered a loud clicking on another antenna that had been quietly emitting static. It was so cool!

What it's actually for, I don't know, but I totally want to build one for myself now.

Will Demonstrates Centrifugal Force

Here's another activity from the Girl Scout Entertainment Technology Junior badge that Will has technically earned probably thrice over by now, but that has such enjoyable activities that she just keeps coming back to it:

(Note of oddness: Lately, my videos haven't been playing with Youtube's Safety Mode on, although I assure you that they are all quite appropriate for all audiences! If you're logged into Youtube, you may have to scroll down to the bottom of any page, where you'll find the Language and Safety Mode menus, then turn Safety Mode off.)

I think I've mentioned before that I create a list of additional activities (I have a whole Girl Scout pinboard!) and a reading list to go with each badge that the children want to earn, and I leave at least one schoolwork slot each week solely for work on these badges, on top of the work that the kids do on them by choice in their free time. I've often wanted to push the kids to finish the last couple of lingering activities that make up a badge, just because I like to be organized and structured that way, but so far I've resisted the impulse by trying to remember that, even if they pick and choose among sixty random activities for twenty disparate badges, working on something totally different every time, the self-directed activity that they're engaged in is still useful, academic (mostly. Some of the Brownie badge activities are a little soft), and enriching.

And I hadn't otherwise planned on having Will study physics this week, so there's that!