testing bridges

We continue to progress through our Engineering is Elementary: Designing Bridges unit, this time testing out the strength and failure modes of various bridge designs. We tested three different designs, and then improved upon the strongest design to make it even stronger! Our strongest design, using just cardboard bricks as the abutments and card stock as the span, supported over 1 kilogram! Pretty cool.

Here are the three designs we tested:

 It was such a gorgeous day, that after building bridges and learning about Helen Keller, we had to go outside and play!

wordless wednesday: structures and heroes

garden love

The gardening season is dying down. In a few weeks we will get our first frost, and many of the plants will not survive. For now, the harvest is abundant and colorful beyond belief!

Here's another recent photo as well:

Oh how I love my garden! The kids are such wonderful harvest helpers. They also help count and weigh the strawberries and tomatoes we pick. In 2013, we have picked 38.5 POUNDS of edible, delicious strawberries (or, 1670 strawberries, if you like to count by berry instead of by weight)! It would likely be over 60 pounds if I counted the ones that have gotten tossed straight into the compost due to slug holes, mushy berries, or squirrel bites. The kids at at least 95% of the good strawberries. Here is the most recent chart:

As you can see, most of the strawberries were picked in June. It's nice to have a small amount to snack on almost daily at this point. I know we missed several days of charting, but I think it's still fun to look at our graph. What's growing in your garden?

wordless wednesday: chess building

I guess there is some benefit to having so many chess sets.

not-back-to-school weekend

Tomorrow, the local schools are in session. Last week, school started for several friends. I thought we would mark this year's not-back-to-school weekend with a special trip! Last year, we went to the Bronx Zoo. There was a LEGO exhibit at the time that was a bigger hit than the animals. This year we saw this beautiful green lady:

Not a great one of H but it was so hazy it was hard to keep our eyes open!

At the NY Public Library.

Oh yeah, I'm a homeschooling dork.

Our big trip to the big city was on the short side, as these two were up at 4:30 and 5am for the day, and they were quite tired. It was also 100% humidity. Gross! I wonder if they will ever learn to sleep in. It's not like we have to *be* anywhere early in the morning most days! H, my 7 year old, was very excited to go to Liberty Island and see the Statue of Liberty. I hope he will remember it for years to come.

Our weekend didn't stop there! H had his first chess tournament this weekend. He was so excited and had lots of fun:

Round 4!

I don't know what we will do tomorrow. I'm guessing there will be a lot more chess!