Science Fair 2011

Well, it's that time of year again, science fair time! As you know we love these and even though this year it wasn't required for Sarah, she still participated - with my encouragement. (O: We looked online for several ideas and she liked the idea of doing ocean science. We found this idea on sciencebuddies.com It's called, "Can Water Float on Water?" And we both were fascinated with what we learned. Basically we inverted different water substances on top of each other in the water bottles. We made different solutions - fresh water, salt water (various amounts of salt), warm water and cold water. We tried salty on top of fresh, warm on top of cold, etc. It was very cool. The ones like below that didn't mix colors seemed to be happy right where they were.




The one above, was an example of different solutions that wanted to switch places. The cold water on top was more dense and wanted to be on the bottom. The warm air wanted to rise up. The colors mixed to green in these cases.

Sarah worked so hard on this. I helped her lay it out, but she did almost the whole thing. This year was also particularly hard because the science fair is more demanding than the ones we participated in in Oregon. Here, you have to not only make a poster, but put together a binder with all kinds of information. It took hours to put just the folder together.

When Sarah came home from school the next day, she was sooo excited. Her project was chosen to go to district! This will be her third year in a row doing a district science fair. Way to go Sarah!

Science Guy

For Science Club in March, one of the dads came (apparently, this is tradition) and brought some liquid nitrogen and froze a bunch of different things. One of the moms said this has nothing to do with his job, it's a hobby. Liquid Nitrogen - that is unique!

The kids and adults enjoyed watching this dad and his son freeze marshmallows, a feather duster, a barbie doll and all kinds of other weird things and then smash them.



My girls always love a good "explosion" and this definitely fit the bill!

Family Pics!

I wanted to post this one for Kaylynn. I finally got our beautiful pictures up in a frame. I should have taken a shot of the 2 8x10's I have framed on the wall too. I wanted family pictures of us in Oregon before we left and my very talented friend Kaylynn Matteson (a little plug for her!) took these for us. It was weird being on the other side of the camera. I am sooo not a natural on that side of the lens. It was fun to hang out and is one of my last memories with a good friend before we left. So these pictures are a little bittersweet to me. She did a fabulous job of making us look good! Thanks Kaylynn. (o:

Guess What We Put Out?

When we told the girls last summer that we were moving to Utah, the first two questions they asked were, "Can we bring Twilight?" and "Can we bring the trampoline?" Those were their two main things they wanted if we were going to uproot them from everything they knew.


When we moved into the house last November, it wasn't the time to set it up. So the girls have waited anxiously for several months and finally were reunited with their beloved yard toy. If only we could have brought our awesome swingset too.

Angela's Bi-lingual Adventure

Recently, our school joined in a new Chinese Immersion Program that sounded really exciting to me. Our nephew participated in this same program at his school and has had a great experience so far. I attended the informational meeting at our school to decide if we wanted to have Angela participate. I came away from that meeting so excited about the program I couldn't wait for Ang to be a part of it. The state is really working hard to create a future work force that is ready to participate in the job market with China. They are investing in teaching the children Chinese.

I think it is a fantastic idea and it's exciting to see the how the program works. When school starts, she will spend half the day with a Chinese teacher learning mostly math. There is no speaking English allowed. Usually, the kids don't even know their teacher can actually speak English. Even when parents come in to help, the teachers don't speak English to them. The other half of the day is with a regular teacher who works on their English reading skills and writing. The parents who have been in to help say that they have even learned some of the Chinese words while volunteering.

The children already participating have actually excelled in mathematics when it is taught in Chinese and the teachers hired are native speakers so they learn the correct pronunciations and intonations which is the hardest part of learning Chinese. The other thing that I thought was really cool was that the grant, as of now, pays for the children entering to continue through 6th grade. They are working on programs that will continue through jr. high and high school. BYU and the U of U are also working on college level courses that can be taught in the high schools, so that if students are interested, they can actually achieve a minor in Chinese before they graduate from high school. How cool is that? When I told Angela the day we got a phone call letting us know she was accepted into the program, this was her reaction . . .

She is excited to learn and is constantly noticing Chinese characters. Whenever she hears about China or Chinese she tells people, "I'm going to learn that!" I bought her some Chinese flashcards and a CD and she loves to look at them and listen to the CD. She will also get to participate in a special summer Chinese camp where she will get to meet her teacher and do some fun cultural activities to get her ready for this big change.

The day we found out Angela was officially in the program, we went to celebrate at a Chinese restaurant. It was fun because we could hear the workers speaking to each other in Mandarin and we reminded Angela that she would understand that someday!

Ang didn't really eat much at the restaurant. Hopefully, she'll learn to appreciate things like the food. (o: I couldn't help but tease Angela that the students in the Chinese program have to eat Chinese food for lunch. Her face was priceless! She was having second thoughts on the whole thing. When I told her I was teasing, it was one of the most relieved looks I've seen on her little face. (o: