Tuesday, October 23, 2012

Lime Squares and Periodic Tables

This past week I had the pleasure of staying with Jenny and Anders' five boys while their parents went away for a couple days R & R.

Now you might think taking care of five grandsons would be a hugely busy job.  Not so with these boys.  It was a real treat to spend time with them...five of them ranging in age from almost 5 to 16 years old. Feed them pizza and hamburgers, do a few activities, send them off to school, take them to Scouts, etc.  Easy-peasy.  For 2 days anyway.

As I usually do, I took my iPad with me.  I love my iPad.  So, it turns out, do my grandsons - the younger three anyway.  While I had planned to read a book I had downloaded to the iPad, James   and Micah had other plans.  Games!  Talking cats! Peggle! James even figured out how to buy new accessories for the talking cats!  So, with my main activity usurped by these little guys, I looked around for something else to read. 

Not to brag, but these are really smart boys - and they're all interested in science and the world around them.  They gave me a huge, book written by a science writer and beautifully illustrated with gorgeous photographs.  The topic - Elements and the Periodic Table.  They insisted I'd love it, and I did.  Not having taken the science/math stream in high school, I missed learning about elements and the periodic table.  Although I had heard of them of course, I had never seen the periodic table laid out like this book had it.  Each element was explained and demonstrated in a two page spread and the periodic table was explained in all it's parts so that even a non-science person could understand it.  I found it fascinating and learned a lot that I had never known before and which, by the way, these boys were totally familiar with.  Jonah told me that he credits that book, written by Theo Grey, for his 97% mark in grade 10 science.  So now I'm smart too ;)

James (4) helped me squeeze limes for the delicious lime squares we made.

Yum!

Micah (7), James (4) and Nathan (11) had fun doing experiments
featuring baking soda and vinegar, food coloring and sparkles

(Sorry about the baking soda Jenn.  You're just about out of it now.)

Sam (14)

and

Jonah (16)

 
spent a lot of their after-school time on their computers...
doing homework, of course!



Thanks, guys, for a fun couple of days.  Now someone ask me how many elements there are, and ask me what a half life is too.  You're never too old to learn new things from your grandchildren.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Really like Joe's glasses.

papa

JQ said...

Aw, nice Mum. And you got the ages right in the captions except for Nathan's. He's eleven. Thanks again for doing that. Seriously, invoice me for the cat accessories.

I'm mostly known as 'MA' said...

They are beautiful children and I'm glad you had a great time.

Greg said...

Looks like fun! I'd love to have a copy of that Science Book. I remember Jonah talking about the periodic table before he was old enough for school!
-Mary

Magpie said...

What an interesting time you had! Those lime squares do look delicious.