Sunday, October 31, 2021

What-What?! Week of October 31st

Just a few days ago was Saffron's birthday!  She's 14 now, making us parents feel positively ancient.  We had a good day with cake, presents, and lots of video games.  The cake she had is a Swedish princess torte, which was delicious.  We picked up a special musical spinning fireball of death candle thing this year, because it had 14 candles built in!  After blowing out the candles, we discovered that the only way to get it to stop making music was to cut a wire, so we also reenacted all those scenes from movies where you have to figure out which wire to cut, ha!




It really was a bit of a fireball at first!

But after that, it was quite pretty.  The "petals" flip out and then start to spin around slowly.


Yum!

Good haul of presents this year :)
 

This is a pencil case -- Saffron stopped and unzipped ALL FOUR zippers before continuing.

Some colored pencils.  She was delighted :)

Stuffed Isabell plush from Animal Crossing (current favorite video game)



Harry Potter perler bead set

Over the Garden Wall show (dunno very much about this one, just that it's sort of creepy cute, which is right up Saffron's alley)


This is a Hogwarts letter vaccine card holder



Kirby is another favorite video game -- it's been around for decades now and this is a collection of art from the franchise


Sunday, September 26, 2021

What-What?! Week of September 26th

Last week, I picked up a chemistry model set called "Happy Atoms" for the kids to play with and use for school.  It's like if you took the wooden sets that I played with as a kid and put them on steroids.  This is the introductory set, so it doesn't have all the pieces, but enough to figure out if we'll buy the (expensive) full set.  Mostly it's just been the boys using it, but they've had such a great time that I'm thinking we will be getting more.

It works with a piece of software loaded onto the kids' tablets -- you take a picture of the atoms that have been connected together, identify what they are through the program, and then it will tell you what you've made and some information about it, like hazards and how the chemical is used.  My boys have been very interested in the "hazards" information, like flammable, toxic, oxidizing, etc.  There are also special tasks and challenges other than "slap some atoms together and see what you get".  Oz was telling me that he'd completed several of the challenges just by creating salt, though. xD


The atoms fit together with magnets