Pumpkins, Pumpkins, Pumpkins

Lots and lots of cute pumpkins.

On stage at the program.

Cool Dudes!

Pumpkins from Mrs. Abraham's class. Second Grade program.

A cute picture at the pumpkin patch.

Getting pumpkin tatoos.

Getting tatoos and little pumpkins.

This one was about 13 pounds.

Weighing big pounds on the big scale. This one was about 16 pounds.

Weighing little pumpkins on the pound scale.

Weighing little pumpkins on the gram scale.

Rock Show Rocks

A few weekends ago, I took my grandsons to a Earth Science Fair at Bookhaven College in Dallas.

We saw amazing examples of things found on Earth.

They got to pick out some free rocks.

Colin was facinated with these huge purple crystals. We were told that these crystals formed during the eruption and then cooling off of a volcano.

Inside one of the volcanic rocks.

Someone takes crystals and then polishes and then forms them into these cool looking crystal balls.

Jackson looking at crystals.

These rocks had lots of mica and pryite and quartz in them.

This is a large geode. I'd never seen one so big.

When the geode was turned over the beautiful inside was revealed.

Here is a bucket filled with splices of actual rock. The colors and designs were beautiful and each one different and unique.

Someone at the show has taken photographs of actual rocks and then sells them as artwork to be framed and hung on a wall. I was very impressed with how beautiful these pictures came out.

A different display of rocks that have been arranged and shown as natural works of art. They were expensive to buy, but free to look at. They really were unusual rocks polished and mounted as a artwork.

This was a tray of spiny looking seashells. These shells were from different countries around the world.

Each rock in this box is from a different country. Most were for sale and each was more than $200. My knowledge of the variety of rocks around the world increased by attending this rock show. Some of the most beautiful rocks I saw came from Texas, but I did see rocks from Australia, South America, Mexico and Morocco.

Just look at the bright colors in this rock from Australia. It was so unique.

I liked this fossil in the rock found in Morocco.

Jackson is standing next to this black rock. We were told that is is acutally petrified wood found in East Texa. It was filled with hundreds of tiny crystals. The rock expert told us it was about 250 million years old.

Rocks that have been cut and formed into these perfect spheres and then polished were on display for people to purchase.

My grandson Colin wanted the biggest rock there. He loves balls and he wanted to take this one home. However, just imagine how heavy this rock must have been.

Here is what copper looks like in its natural state. Copper is what pennies are made from.

I thought these rocks had been painted, but that is the way they are formed with all these veins of colors.

Can you see the fossils in this rock? It had also been cut, polished and set out for someone to buy.

This is a fossilized rock of a sea creature.

The Dallas Zoo had a display on animal skulls. Can you guess what this is? Would you say camel or croccodile? It is a camel skull.

Here is a pictue of an alligator with a turtle in it's mouth.

Ca you guess what this is? I'm not sure, but it does have some small tusks.

Jackson got to pick this bone sample up and try to guess what it came from. It was not heavy, so that was the first clue that it was a bird of some kind. We couldn't guess what it was so we were told it was from an ostrich.

You are looking at the skin of a snake that reached the whole length of this table. I think it was an anaconda. Wow! That was a big snake.

We had a great time at this Science Fair. There is another one at this same location in February.

We are planning to go because we learned so much the first time we went.

Johnny Appleseed Teaches us to Love Apples

Johnny Appleseed's birthday was September 26th. This week we studied about Johnny and also all about apples, including our study with a bowl of schoolmade applesaude.

This is Colin, my cute grandson telluing us that apples taste good and are good for you.

We did alot of Science this week about apples. We put our apples into groups to classify them according to their properties, including size, shape, color and kinds of apples. One day we measured the circumference of an apple.

We took our measuring tapes and put them around the middle of the apple.

Another part of our study we had to dig in the apple and removed all the seeds. Then we compared our number of seeds. Later we took our seeds home to plant.

Digging for seeds.

Studying our apples.

Being very scientific. Observation is the first concept in the scientific method.

We weighed our apples and compared the mass. We used a pound scale for some.

We also used a gram scale. Many of the apples weighed around 200 grams.

This apple weighed 212 grams. The sudents enjoyed using the gram scale.

Using the gram scale.

The next step was to cut up all of the apples.

Here we can see all the parts of an apple: core, stem, flesh, skin.

Cutting the apple into equal pieces.

more cutting

The worms in the worm farm enjoyed all the extra pieces we had left over. Worms love apples.

We attemped to weigh all of our apples to see if they weighed more as a solid, or as a liquid after we cooked them. Here they weighed about 5 pounds.

We read our recipe before we started to make the applesauce.

We gathered all our ingredients. We needed wather, salt, cinnamon, sugar and lots of apples.

Cooking our apples in a big pot.

Observing the changes which occured as we added heat and cooked our apples for about 3 hours.

We discussed that the matter had changed. We called it an irreversible change, because we can't put this pot of applesauce back into a pot of apples. The best part of this whole science experiment was eating our experiment! We enjoyed our applesauce. Some students ate three bowls of delicious applesauce. Thanks to parents for sending us so many good apples. Thanks to Johnny Appleseed for teaching us to love apples.