Tuesday, November 6, 2007

Biology, pizza, and then, engineering

Biology lab went well and very quickly. Two kids were absent and the other 4 just went to work. We were modeling DNA transcription to mRNA and then translation into amino acids. Twizzlers and colored marshmallows were involved. You know, colored marshmallows do NOT taste good. The kids like Twizzlers, though. And I have MANY left over.

University of Utah has the coolest website for DNA information. There are lesson plans and virtual labs. You can replicate DNA and there are visually appealing explanatory sites. It has really been a mother lode for me as I mined for labs and prelab instruction websites for the kids to look at.

After lab, as always, the teens headed outside to socialize. And we moms chatted. Someone mentioned getting pizza on the way home and, the next thing I knew, we were all at ZPizza. I recommended ZPizza because they have generous-sized, cool-ingredient slices at $1.50 for lunch. They were only $1.00 when they first opened but they are a tasty bargain at $1.50. Yakov met us there as he was coming home from GTCC classes.

We had a great time lunching with our friends. Another perk of homeschooling.

I had volunteered to help Noach's Webelo II den meet the requirements for the Engineering activity badge. So off we went to Cub Scouts at 6:30. Shoshie went with me. The boys got to build an electrical circuit with a Dcell battery, lightbulb and on-off switch. They also built a block and tackle and saw how that decreased the energy needed to lift a weight. And, best of all, they built catapults out of shoe boxes and launched marshmallows at the wall, and inevitably, at each other. Nasty tasting colored marshmallows were ideal for this. I even sent some home for boys to launch at their big brothers at home. Good riddance.

It was a good day. PRM


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