Joseph, Collin, Stephanie and their siblings enjoyed a day at the National Museum of the Navy!

Jack pulled the damper while Grace and Griffin tried to push. Collin had the right idea, supervisor in the cool shades!

Elinor

Jack turned 10 on January 8th!

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!

Bo is showing off his UV bracelet.
Miss Robin taught the children about UV light using beads that absorb rays and turn colors.

Robin the Spanish Explorer.

Douglas and Justin snacking.
Apparently the best part of dissecting starfish was all of the fun
you could have posing for pictures.

Joseph.
Notice the difference between Joseph and his sister Clara, above.

Joseph, Clara and Elinor are sleeping as part of their family play. When they wake up they find Christmas presents.


Soon after being given the presents Joseph and Clara begin to fight over their gifts. Robin, their mom, explains to them the meaning of Christmas. That we celebrate Christmas to say thank you to God for allowing His Son to come to us.


Their daddy, Paul, played role of Jesus on the cross.

This was my favorite part of their family play. When Paul came back from the dead his children forgot about their play and ran to their daddy. Much like God wants us to run to Him. It was absolutely beautiful.

Paul not only crafted each of the rocket launchers for our group but he also made the projector apparatus that enabled us to see the cow eye dissection on a big screen as we worked on our individual eyes. Thank you Paul, you have blessed our group.

Annabelle at work on her solar system.
Anya and Elizabeth working on there solar systems. Anya wanted to get hers just right.
Clara is very into her solar system.

Donna's Class

Dry Ice

Boaz discovers dry ice!





Katy was definitely as awed or even more than the children. I absolutely LOVE Katy's exuberance.

Classtime

Jordan presenting about his dog.


Daniel seems to love CC.


Boaz is giving his presentation on his pets. He is also wearing Boaz Boys Crocs! How cool is that!


Robert singing "this is the day..." with Donna and Caleb.

I love Donna's love for God and how she prays.

Menthos in Pepsi

WEEK 3: Mentos - this excerpt below will explain a lot better than I can. Skip down to the rockets if you really don't care!

Here's the question of the day... Why do Mentos mixed with soda produce this incredible eruption? You should know that there is considerable debate over how and why this works.

While we offer the most probable explanations below, we also understand and admit that other explanation could be possible... and we welcome your thoughts.

As you probably know, soda pop is basically sugar (or diet sweetener), flavoring, water and preservatives. The thing that makes soda bubbly is invisible carbon dioxide gas, which is pumped into bottles at the bottling factory using tons of pressure. Until you open the bottle and pour a glass of soda, the gas mostly stays suspended in the liquid and cannot expand to form more bubbles, which gases naturally do.

But there's more... If you shake the bottle and then open it, the gas is released from the protective hold of the water molecules and escapes with a whoosh, taking some of the soda along with it. What other ways can you cause the gas to escape? Just drop something into a glass of soda and notice how bubbles immediately form on the surface of the object.

For example, adding salt to soda causes it to foam up because thousands of little bubbles form on the surface of each grain of salt. Many scientists, including Lee Marek, claim that the Mentos phenomenon is a physical reaction, not a chemical one.

Water molecules strongly attract each other, linking together to form a tight mesh around each bubble of carbon dioxide gas in the soda. In order to form a new bubble, or even to expand a bubble that has already formed, water molecules must push away from each other. It takes extra energy to break this "surface tension."� In other words, water "resists" the expansion of bubbles in the soda.

When you drop the Mentos into the soda, the gelatin and gum arabic from the dissolving candy break the surface tension. This disrupts the water mesh, so that it takes less work to expand and form new bubbles. Each Mentos candy has thousands of tiny pits all over the surface. These tiny pits are called nucleation sites - perfect places for carbon dioxide bubbles to form. As soon as the Mentos hit the soda, bubbles form all over the surface of the candy.

Couple this with the fact that the Mentos candies are heavy and sink to the bottom of the bottle and you've got a double-whammy. When all this gas is released, it literally pushes all of the liquid up and out of the bottle in an incredible soda blast. You can see a similar effect when cooking potatoes or pasta are lowered into a pot of boiling water. The water will sometimes boil over because organic materials that leach out of the cooking potatoes or pasta disrupt the tight mesh of water molecules at the surface of the water, making it easier for bubbles and foam to form.

When a scoop of ice cream is added to root beer, the float� foams over for essentially the same reason. The surface tension of the root beer is lowered by gums and proteins from the melting ice cream, and the CO2 bubbles expand and release easily, creating a beautiful foam on top Next question... Why should you use diet Coke or diet Pepsi? The simple answer is that diet soda just works better than regular soda. Some people speculate that it has something to do with the artifical sweetner, but the verdict is still out.

More importantly, diet soda does not leave a sticky mess to have to clean up. Hey, that's important.