Chicken Mummy Follow-Up

Now that I've caught up on the highlights of our social events I want to back track to some school highlights as well. As with the social things, I'm not even going to attempt to blog about everything we've done this past year. I'm simply going to try and hit the highlights of our first year of homeschooling. I think it has been successful and we plan to continue going forward. We are now even firmer believers in the Classical education approach and we've joined a Classical Conversations homeschooling co-op. I can't wait to become a part of that group and even more dedicated to the Classical style of education. It has so many incredible advantages!

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For the moment I want to back up and start my school catchup by providing a follow-up to our chicken mummy. After changing the natron mixture everyday for the first week, we changed it every two days, then four days and finally we only had to change it once a week. At the end of seven weeks we cleaned the chicken off for the final time and prepared it to start the actual wrapping process of our chicken mummy.

We used wet paper towels to get all the salt off and then immediately dried it off 

 Our mummified chicken

 Next the girls rubbed spices and oil all over the chicken to help preserve the skin

 We ripped white cotton fabric into 1 inch strips to both stuff and wrap our chicken mummy in

 We also made a glue and water mixture (1-2 parts water to 1 part glue) to dip the strips in as we wrapped the chicken

 Mixing the mixture and dipping the fabric

 We had to strain some of the liquid off the strips so they weren't too wet for wrapping

 We wrapped the wings and legs seperately from the body. Once we started wrapping the body we included some amulets (coins and jewels) just like the Egyptians wrapped with their mummies.

 The girls with their completed chicken mummy

During the entire 2 month process the spices and freezer bags kept it from smelling bad. I couldn't believe how little it smelled! As much as it suprised me that the chicken didn't stink during that two month process as soon we wrapped it and let it sit it began to stink terribly! As a matter of fact, it smelled so bad (and I was newly pregnant) Tim and Grammy had to dispose of it because I couldn't go near it. lol :) I guess it finally began to decompose after being removed from the freezer bags and natron mixture. In anycase, this was such a fabulous project! The Story of the World has many great activity suggestions to learn about the region of the world you are studying, but this was an especially great learning experience and a fun way to begin our homeschool journey!

DC Museum Visits - 2012

 After New York we headed south for a week in DC. We began Sunday morning at the Smithsonian's Natural History Museum (http://www.mnh.si.edu/). I expected the girl's to enjoy it, but we were suprised how much Jackson enjoyed it as well. We had a great time and only wish this museum was closer to us to take advantage of more frequently!

It just so happened some of our good friends from Kentucky were in DC as well so we met them at the museum. The girl's loved having Nina to explore with!

Reagan and Nina were interested in the Egyptian exhibit and the mummies since they had both been studying the subject throughout the fall in Story of the World.

We saw a trantula feeding which is always interesting. As you can probably tell from her face, Missy K wasn't quite sure about posing with the spider even though it was in a container.

The kids had a great time playing in the "Discovery Room"

Jackson was completely enamoured with the magnifying glass and rocks

Ready to watch the IMAX film "Born to Be Wild" which documents orphaned orangutans and elephants and the people who rescue and raise them. This was a great documentary! 

So glad we were able to spend our day at the museum with good friends. A college friend of mine, Kalina Kwok, also joined us, but somehow I didn't manage to get any good pictures with her. I'll be sure to do that the next time we're in DC. We sure appreciated her driving down from Baltimore to hang out with us for the day! 

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We also visited the Bureau of Printing and Engraving (http://www.moneyfactory.gov/) during our visit. I had especially wanted to do this since we were studying money last fall in Math. Unfortunately we couldn't take any pictures inside due to security but I did snap this one outside with the girls.

We spent one day at the National Building Museum (http://nbm.org/) . This is one of the neatest museums in DC. It was recommended to me by a highschool friend shortly before we moved away from DC and I knew from our previous visit that it should be on the top of the list for this trip. And I was right, the kids had a fabulous time especially in the Play Work Build exhibit.

Play Work Build began with different building toys of the last several decades including a large table of Tinker Toys the kids could play with. Next came this enormous light table with all different shapes and sizes of foam blocks you could put together.

The next section was a larger version of the same blue blocks.

In this section they also had blue balls so the kids could make tracks and roll the balls on them. It was fun watching them discover what did or didn't work and how long they could make there track(s) and still keep the balls rolling.

In the final section the blue blocks were gigantic!!! You can see from this picture it was a challenge for Reagan to even move the block.

Kennedy lounging on their creation :)

In this same area there was a giant wall that would identify your shape, build you in blocks and then explode apart. As you can imagine the kids had a fabulous time with this!

Next we headed to the Building Zone exhibit

Reagan is obviously a mailman, but I'm not quite sure what kind of an astronaut Kennedy is...

Such a fun day at the National Building Museum!

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After Tim finished his training on Friday he met us at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum (http://airandspace.si.edu/). We started out in the Wright Brothers and the Invention of the Aerial Age exhibit where I use to volunteer.

Next we went to check out some information on Amelia Earhart since I thought it would be good for the girls to hear about a female explorer/pioneer. Here Reagan is trying to line up a plane for the trip across the Pacific Ocean. After you think you have it lined up correctly you push a button which shoots a laser to show you how close you were to being on course. It's amazing how difficult it is to correctly direct the plane even on this small surface! It's a wonder anyone made it anywhere, let alone across oceans, in the early days of aviation!

Jackson touching the moon

We spent a good portion of our visit in the How Things Fly exhibit. There are so many great activities for the kids to do and explore how the many aspects of flight work and effect each other. 

They had a demonstration while we were there and since there were so few children the girls enjoyed getting to help with several experiments.

Missy K flying a plane! :)

This had to be the most precious moment of the day and probably the trip. Even random strangers were commenting on it as they passed by. You can walk through the Skylab Orbital Workshop in the Space Race exhibit (it is huge and pretty impressive). We were already downstairs with the stroller and getting ready to leave when the girls decided they wanted to go thru Skylab. Tim took the girls back up stairs to go thru it while Jackson and I stayed downstairs with the stroller. I naturally took a picture of them at the level you enter which is what intially drew Jackson's attention to Skylab. He stood looking up at it completely mesmorized. He had enjoyed our time at the museum, but Skylab literally stopped him in his tracks. It was as if he didn't know how to react and so he just stood frozen to the spot trying to take it all in. I wish I could have gotten the entire Skylab in the picture, but even so you can see how tiny he looks staring up at it in the first picture. It was priceless watching him try and absorb the sight. One of the best things about kids is definitely getting to see things thru their eyes and experience things like this with them for the first time.

I don't miss DC traffic but I do miss these incredible museums!

Chicken Mummy - Day 7 & 11

We have discovered to make enough Natron for proper care of our chicken mummy we need approximately 4 boxes of salt

2 cups of baking soda and 2 cups of baking powder

1 full container of cinnamon and a sprinkle of either nutmeg or cloves

I don't know if the girls have more fun dumping or mixing

Reagan decided our Natron mixture looked good and she wanted to try it. I told her I didn't think it would taste very good but since she insisted I decided there wasn't really any harm.

She decided it didn't taste so great...

Then it was time to get busy with the chicken and Reagan has really started to warm up to helping clean off and refill/cover the chicken.

After needing to keep up with our chicken pretty consistently the first week we were able to take a few days off the second week. Having said that, we've done the mixture enough times now the girls pretty much know what they need to do on their own and can accomplish it in a relatively short amount of time. Our day 11 change probably took 10-15 mintues to complete.

Busy mixing

 Reagan has become much braver in her interactions with our chicken mummy during this process. On day 11 she decided on her own she wanted to smell the chicken. I have to say that surprisingly this chicken does not smell bad. I'm not saying anyone is going to be producing a chicken mummy fragrance anytime soon, but it really doesn't give off much of a smell. It smells more like cinnamon than anything else at this point.

 Kennedy decided she could move the chicken from the bowl where we clean it off into the bag to be covered all by herself. Way to go Missy K!

 These girls were using great teamwork skills while working on their chicken mummy!

 Re-covering the chicken with our Natron mixture

So far so good with our chicken mummy so we'll keep on going!