I didn’t have high expectations for this kit but was surprised at how much interest the kids had. They set it up quickly and checked in on it for 2 days before smashing it and throwing it out.
I think that because the crystals started forming very quickly and grew larger than expected the kids were pretty impressed. Obviously, this is just a quick one off but it was fun to check in on it through out the day.
Theo’s review: “not a scam at all!” You will have to trust me that is high praise.
We all love harvest season.
A lovely peach season
The kids help make peach ice cream
https://photos.app.goo.gl/53YhZ4MX1DgbD7Mi8
Erin Makes the peach version of our favorite summer salad
A lovely apple harvest
We make normal stuff, but also start to get weird as we need to use up so many apples.
We have two plants making a bunch of spaghetti squash this year.
Our favorite dish is spaghetti squash burrito bowls… basically make taco filling and put it in a spaghetti squash and bake it.
I was recently asked how I get such nice peaches and for tips on winterizing / care… I kind of laughed as I don’t really do anything in particular. I thought my response was kind of humorous so, here it is for others to enjoy, and I guess perhaps it might help someone out there.
I have crazy gardens both year round hydro-ponic and seasonal outdoors. I have what seems to be a very productive garden, but I treat all of it more as an art than a science. Too many of my hobbies end up very science, numbers, and on computer screens. So when I got into gardening, I basically made a rule of no book learning, just experimentation. So any advice I give needs that caveat, it might not be the best way to do it, but it works for me.
I distract the Japanese beetles by letting them eat all my roses, and some of my apples… So they really don’t have any time left to eat peaches. The squirrels sadly prefer peaches over apples, which is why I have two peach trees and one apple tree. When we have a boom havest I pull about 500 peaches and apples… Squirrels extract about a 20-30% tax on fruit…. Probably higher for the strawberries, which they seem to go nuts over, and I thought squirrels like nuts.
Occasionally I spray with a mint based organic bug spray, but I am not convinced it does anything, but it does smell nice which is a plus.
Anyways, happy to share anything that might help, but my urban farming philosophy can mostly be summarized as plants really want to grow, put them in the grown and give them water and sun.
I like to do various semi-education activities with my kids, most often on Saturdays. We call these Science Saturdays activities. I am going to post about some of the successful activities and the less-than-great semi-educational activities. Recently, we made a windmill generator that powers a light bulb.
Given how much the kids liked the Green Science: Eco Lightbulb I thought this might also be a hit… but it was not.
So what went wrong why wasn’t this as fun…
Basically, building it was fine but they couldn’t find a way to play with it to drive the light in a way that would stay fun. So they lost interest quickly and now we have a plastic windmill piece of trash to throw out at some point when I give up on it.
I like to do various semi-education activities with my kids, most often on Saturdays. We call these Science Saturdays activities. I am going to post about some of the successful activities and the less-than-great semi-educational activities. Over a couple days we explored Spain, in fact we still have some activities left.
We ended up getting this KiwiCo Explorer kit for free from a camp. It sat around for a while, which might be over their heads. When we finally got it out, both kids were drawn to building the boat, while Sasha was also very drawn to making the cubist art sculpture. I knew we had a hit on our hands from the initial interest.
The kids were both really into making the boat. They eagerly helped and quickly pushed forward the building to completion. They thought it was fun and played with it a good amount after first completing it. The longevity of this as a toy is low, but they really enjoyed the process and had fun with it for longer than I would have guessed (like 15m).
rocking boat 😉
Sasha, who is more into art, was very drawn to this sculpture and painting project. She needed a little help setting up the sculpture, which her mom lovingly did. She then pained and added all the decorations. She was pleased and proud with the result, which now sits in her room.
This turned out to be more interesting than I would have guessed.
We still have a cooking project from the kit and some reading, but this kit was a hit. A small warning from other parents who do kits like this often. One parent mentioned having a subscription to these, and after a few, they began to dread another arriving as it felt like a chore vs a fun activity with the kids. I get that, and if I had to do a new country every month, I would burn out, but if your kids are interested in some country or you are preparing to visit somewhere, these are great ways to explore and discuss another culture together.
I like to do various semi-education activities with my kids, most often on Saturdays. We call these Science Saturdays activities. I am going to post about some of the successful activities and the less-than-great semi-educational activities. In this case, we made a catapult.
This was a kit to make a Catapult… It does make a Catapult, but it is hard and slow for kids to build… I ended up having to build most of the kit. While the kit said 8+, aligning the wood straight to make things work is pretty difficult for a single adult… let alone an adult trying to do this with children… Also, many of the steps require applying glue, which means you have to wait 10+ minutes between steps. The kids really didn’t have the patience for that. While the kid was good, it wasn’t as kid-driven as I like some of these activities to be.
Yeah, the kids struggled to get into the building and wait for everything to dry. They thought it was pretty cool and enjoyed playing with it and asking questions. This will also have a longer replay value than many other kits or toys. We shot candy out of it to knock over toys, and you would get to eat the candy after hitting a target.
I like to do various semi-education activities with my kids, most often on Saturdays. We call these Science Saturdays activities. I am going to post about some of the successful activities and the less-than-great semi-educational activities. Today we made a light bulb.
This is a hand cranked or gravity powered light bulb. With a water bottle and a pull you can get around 60 seconds of light from the bulb. I know it sounds silly, but after an extended power outage the kids we very interested. After getting this all setup the kids played with it for a shocking amount of time and fight over who gets it in their bedroom. Now often before bed as all the other lights go out the cord on this light is pulled for a last minute of dim light in the room before bed.
Honestly, for how simple this was I have been shocked at the staying power of the light with the kids. They enjoy playing with it and asking questions about it. They show it to friends and they enjoyed the project.
While this kit is mostly put together and requires far less build time, it was still a win and I assume will be a science toy sticking around for a number of years in this house.
I like to do various semi-education activities with my kids, most often on Saturdays. We call these Science Saturdays activities. I am going to post about some of the successful activities and the less-than-great semi-educational activities.
This kit allows kids to put together a snap-together robot in Lego-like fashion. It doesn’t take long to put together, and they learn a little about the science of electricity and batteries along the way. It was an OK kit that the kids were able to follow from start to finish, but it didn’t hold their interest long as the final “toy” was too slow and couldn’t really be controlled, so they quickly lost interest,
I am giving this an OK rating in that it was able to keep them interested long enough to complete everything, but they lost interest fast and had no interest in returning to the robot toy. We built this when our kids were 4 and 6, and it did work well enough for the 4-year-old to follow along, which is nice.
In the end, at only $10 this isn’t a bad kit if you haven’t done many like it, but we already built a solar-powered soda can car, which goes much faster and can crash / drive off stairs. So that was a bit better and they have revisited playing with the soda can car much more. If you have already done some other battery / electric kits, this one would be low on my list, but if you haven’t done any others, this one is cheap and simple to do with younger kids… However, they also enjoyed a lemon battery light more than this as well.
Making the most of moving in a new couch and rug.
The kids enjoyed the living room as a camping chair setup for a few days…
Adventures of the Miller Mayers 