Miss Robin taught us about bacteria today.
She explained how we preserve foods with salt, dehydration and sometimes alcohol.

We talked about bacteria and viruses today. I told the children that I'd send you a link to show them how small they are: http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/begin/cells/scale/ Just move the scrubber to zoom in and make sure you zoom back out too. Very cool.

We talked about needing beneficial bacteria in us to break down food, and eating things like yogurt to add more beneficial bacteria. We discussed the food chain with bacteria being part of the decomposers and that without bacteria we would all die in one big trash heap. However, we like things decomposing after we're done with it, not before, so we discussed the science of food preservation. Here is a good article on the different methods of food preservation:

http://recipes.howstuffworks.com/menus/food-preservation.htm
You can read this article with your children while looking in your food pantry for all the different methods of preservation. Make it a challenge to find all of it...although it might be hard to find freeze dried.

For a demonstration of chemical preservatives, we also looked at the bread we used in the densities experiment for Week 7 which was October 20. I bought the cheapest white bread at Target since we weren't eating it and it still hasn't molded! It has been sitting in my kitchen for over two months. Scary. Stay tuned for the end of the year when we check back in to see if it ever will mold.

Your children also received a petri dish with bacteria that they collected from themselves or the church. Please take out the paper in the baggie and read it carefully and record your colony counts daily. Please be careful not to open the petri dish. PLEASE BRING IT BACK NEXT WEEK!! We want to compare all the fun, gross things we collected. Hmmm, is Boaz's nose more germy than a toilet seat?

Miss Robin brought a MRE in for us to try.
Brian, Bo, Elizabeth and Elinor all prayed for Major Shaw and his troops.

Miss Tiffany shows her class how a loom
works and discusses how much more efficient a power loom is.

Miss Jen discussed lighting techniques in art today.
Douglas and Justinian the Great show off their masterpieces.

Logan's mom shot the pictures this week.
Lisandrea's photographic artistry is as beautiful as Logan's oil pastel.

Brian's apple had beautiful shading.

PINK!

Logan is back. We are so glad!

Justinian The Great dissects a starfish.


Roberta, donning finger-less gloves -- the penultimate fashion statement of the hour -- is horrified that we dissect ANYTHING. The fact that she was expected to participate elicited a "Mooooommmmyyyy" and her mom came over and helped.


Anya was much more willing to dissect. Her poor four legged starfish. Anya learned that the starfish's stomach actually protrudes from its body to digest food. Cool and gross all at the same time.

Collin was a trooper. He did a great job dissecting his starfish. Good job Collin!

Roberta!

Logan brought his dad today!

Donna's Class

Our Masters class completed their last presentations outside on the stage today! Brian joined in with the best presentation of all!


Orator Amanda captivated the crowd with her award-winning speech.


Isaac!


Kyle!

Melissa and Jessica!

Anna!

Gracie!

Claire tapped Brian's feet to classical music.

Nathan and Boaz building a first class lever.


Princess Madison

Jill teaches us ballet during Muscles in Motion. Here we were exploring Japanese music and how we could move to it.



Yep, everyone in CC helps clean!