anyone want some seed cake?

Here it is...
It's sitting on my kitchen counter right now along with this sad specimen...
For the past 8 weeks Alex has been in a homeschool science class at the Notebaert Nature Museum here in Chicago. It's been a fabulous experience! It was a small class (started with 10 students, ended with nine), so there was lots of personal attention. They partnered for all of their projects, changing partners each week. So, it was good experience for them... learning to work with others.

They did all kinds of great thinking experiments... like the seed olympics. They had to study the different ways that seeds travel and then design and built their own seeds to compete in the different events. Alex stayed up way too late one night drawing prototypes... he was so excited about that project.

They also studied trees which tied in nicely with our trip last week to go maple tapping (the same mom who arranged the science class also arranged the maple tree tapping trip).

They studied soil and earthworms too.

If you're wondering about the seed cake above, they gave the kids certain materials to work with and a certain volume to end with and let them create their own "recipe" for the perfect growing medium. I can't remember all of the choices but there were pebbles, sand (I think), clay, plant material, etc. Then they planted seeds in them to see how they grew.

Like I said before, it was a fabulous experience... one I hope we get to be a part of again next year!