Myrtle Beach

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Ivory Soap Explosion

It's time for another Pinterest idea.  This time we tried the popular ivory soap pin where you microwave it.  Here is where I got my original idea.  I was a little let down by the experiment, but the kids seemed to like it well enough.  It didn't last very long, but they still had fun playing and experimenting with it.

First we chopped the soap up into smaller pieces.  

Then it was microwaved a couple at a time until we got this It was hard to see into our microwave, so the girls couldn't actually see the process as it exploded.  The texture was quite like tissue paper.

Piper had fun squishing it, and later added water to it to see what would happen.  It came in handy later when we painted and we needed something to clean up with easily.

Fair Oaks Farm

Piper and I took a trip to Fair Oaks Farm with a couple of my teacher friends and their kids.  Fair Oaks Farm is a working farm- actually about ten of them combined.  They have an educational center filled with interactive exhibits, a birthing barn where you can watch live births, and more! 

 We started out in the birthing barn.  Everyone was anxious to see a baby calf being born.  This is the stoplight outside the barn.  It tells you what is happening inside, and how close the mama cow is to giving birth.  When we arrived, it was on yellow- which meant the birth was close to happening.  Hooves were able to be seen, and that is exactly where we started.  The first time we went we saw two births, one boy and one girl.

Mama gets some assistance giving birth this time.

Piper and her new friend watch as the mama greets her new baby.

Baby calves are taken from their mama soon after they are boon.  Piper expressed concern that he would miss his mama.  :( 

Next we went on the bus tour and saw one of the neighboring farms where the cows live.  We learned about the feed and how it is grown and stored.  I was surprised that although they pride themselves on being "green" they did not allow their cows to graze and only fed them "feed"

Cows are milked three times daily.  They are easily trained and line up on the carousel to be milked.  It literally turns with the cows on board, and they know how and when to get on and off by themselves.

  

 Exiting the milking parlor.

 Piper feels the pipes leading in and out of the tanker room.  One is hot and one is cold.

There was a large play area outside for the kids to interact with.

Sky Wheel

The SkyWheel is a 187-foot tall Ferris wheel in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, which opened May 20, 2011.

At the time of its inauguration in May 2011 it was the second-tallest extant Ferris wheel in North America, after the 212-foot Texas Star inDallas, and the tallest wheel in the United States east of the Mississippi River.

 

Baking Soda and Vinegar Science

This has to be the easiest activity to do with the kids.  You probably already have all the ingredients in your cupboard. All I did was cover a plate with a thick layer of baking soda.  You could use a pan or anything else that has a lot of surface area.  I knew my kids would want their own area to work with though.  Then I filled half of an egg carton with vinegar and food coloring.  I left one of the spaces without dye.  That one turned out to be Stella's favorite.

I didn't actually plan on doing this activity today, I was just browsing through the cabinets looking for something for the kids to do.  if I had planned ahead I would have had eye droppers, but instead I had to improvise.  Piper got to use a plastic medicine syringe, and Stella used a pipette from their science kit. Now comes the fun part.  

Per's looked pretty cool at the beginning, and then it turned into a muddy mess.

After a long time of experimenting and playing, they discovered that they could pick up clumps of the sticky baking soda paste and drop it directly into the vinegar solution.  It had some neat effects. 

After they were done we just hosed down the deck and thy jumped in the pool to wash up.  There was minimal staining on their hands, but I expect it will be gone after a bath tonight.