Art, Technology, Science!

It was a fun week at the AoA this third week of January!  We began with an art fix, continued to get more use out of our computer lab, and enjoyed science with our BrainPOP website and a cool experiment.  Take a look at our week!

We added some new tunes to our karaoke line-up and began the week on Tuesday morning singing along with our friends!  Thanks, again for the machine, Dev B.'s family!  We are having fun with this and getting "into it" more and more each time!

Some would rather dance, but that works, too!

Xavier was particularly interested in singing "Hakuna Matata" today, and he doesn't usually show such enthusiam! 👏👏

Learning about bald eagles is something we enjoy each year on Save the Eagles Day (which was January 10).  This year, we learned that the oldest bald eagle ever found was in New Jersey and lived to the age of 32, and that 20-25 is an average lifespan.  We also learned that the largest bald eagle nest ever found was in Florida, and was bigger than one of the vans we borrow from Parks & Rec!  We did some brain work on the topic of bald eagles, too!

After an early lunch, we headed toward the Art Museums with a stop at Quarterpath Park to look for pine cones, which we need later this week for making bird feeders.  

We found plenty of pine trees, but the cones were too small.  Luckily, Lexi's Grandad said he could gather up lots for us from his yard.

We did find some mud, so Lisa used one of nature's brushes to clean off Devin's shoe!

Christina was happy to see us after a couple of months away.  She planned a fun activity for us today.  First, she told us a story about a couple from the mid-1800s who wanted to travel between two towns in upstate New York, a trip that would take us about three hours by automobile.  She read an account from the diary of the woman, who said they had to travel by horse, packet boat, train car, stagecoach, and steamboat to make the trip!  After hearing about their traveling adventure, we looked through the galleries for artwork that depicted the many modes of transporation the couple used.

Next, Christina taught us a game from the 1800s called "Stagecoach."  We all took on the roles of different characters, and as Christina told a story, we had to do different things when she got to our character.  But when she said the stagecoach turned over, we all had to run around and find another seat!  It was fun and we had to be good listeners.

After the game Christina told us that sometimes players would have to perform "forfeits," which she described as a kind of fun or silly consequence if they found themselves "out" of the game.  For fun, she gave us a forfeit...to laugh out loud in three different galleries!  (She could only pull this off in the middle of a Tuesday in the middle of January when there weren't very many visitors in the museum!)  Here we are, enjoying our forfeit! (We bet none of our readers have ever laughed out loud in a museum?!?!)

Christina had even more fun planned for us when we got to the Education Room.  She taught us a game (from the 1800s!) called "Shut the Box."  This is a fun game that uses number sense, addition, and strategy, and is played with dice.  

After a few rounds with Christina's game, she helped us create our own version using handkerchiefs, ink stamps, and buttons!  

This is a game we can play back at the center in our small groups.  It's definitely a good thinking game!  Thanks, Christina, for the great time today!  We really look forward to our visits with you and always learn some pretty cool stuff!

Look at the birds at our feeders on Wednesday morning!  The sun was out and the temperatures were a tad higher than the day before, so they decided to have a social!  Some are hard to see, but we counted 8 of them...and there were several more in the bush.

It was Rotary Volunteer Day and this week we worked with Dave.  He helped our friends hone their internet navigation skills.  Here, he works with Dev and Liz using BrainPOP to watch a video on football and then take a challenging quiz about what they learned!  (Liz and Dev are big football fans!)

 

Now that our internet is stronger, we are making Wednesday mornings group computer lab time.  While our Rotary volunteer works with one or two at a time in the lunchroom, Lisa, Carol, and Nan work with the others in our main room.  Today we explored the National Geographic Kids website.  Here, Annmarie uses her finger to touch the screen and select purple as her favorite color.  We were taking a "personality quiz" to see which dinosaur we would be!

Xavier, Alexis, and Patrick each took the dinosaur personality quiz.  Xavier would have been a T-Rex.  Lexi and Patrick were tickled to find out they each would have been Triceratops!

This was Laura's reaction to finding out she would have been a T-Rex, too!  Who knew they had an "easygoing personality?"  Devin's personality matched Spinaosaurus, which was described as "easily adaptable," and that is definitely our Devin! 

Bo's group had moved on to another part of the website when we took this picture, and whatever it was, it had Drew and Liz very interested!

Cameron and Kate found a cat matching game that looked like fun.  Hopefully our group lab time will lead to our friends using some of the same websites during Choice Time.  😊

Wednesday was Hat Day!  One activity we did was make a list of as many occasions for wearing hats as we could think of.  We came up with a pretty good list!

Hat Day photo!  It's hard to tell from some of their expressions that we really enjoyed talking about hats.  We also watched a video that showed how hat styles have changed over the years, and everyone enjoyed that, too!

Later, we used newspaper to make hats.  It was tricky getting all the folds correct, but we seemed a bit cheerier for this photo!  Most of them were trying to balance the hats on their heads, since they turned out to be a little small!

Both Patti and Becky were not feeling well on Wednesday, and we missed them.  Without Patti for yoga, we turned to Jaime.  She has a new routine out and it's Pokemon Yoga!  In it, she temporarily turns into a cartoon...but was still able to show us yoga poses while telling a story about catching Pokemon.

Look at Liz in what Jaime called "squirt gun" pose! 

Our guys do so well with Jaime!  Her stories catch their attention and the poses just naturally follow.

We combined Popcorn Day (January 19) and Bird Day (January 5) to make a fun day on Thursday.  Everyone gave popcorn samples a thumbs up!

These were the flavors we tried after looking at the nutritional values.  We compared them to other popular snacks, like chips and cookies, and understood that popcorn is a "healthier" choice.  Of course, that's when snacking on veggies just won't do!  We actually saved the parmesan garlic for lunch, and used it in place of croutons in our soup.  It was pretty good!

We had some leftover packs of microwave popcorn on hand that we used to make popcorn ball bird feeders.  We mixed it with corn syrup and bird seed, then rolled it into balls.  It was a sticky situation, but adding cooking oil to our hands made it easier to handle, as Annmarie and Xavier demonstrate.

We hung the popcorn balls outside in a few areas, and by the end of the day, we saw some birds visiting the ones outside our main room window.  We're curious to see if the squirrels are interested in them.

When we got to the community garden, Mr. Rob was there working and he was happy to see us.  It had been a while, as he has been dealing with some health issues, but is much better now.  He welcomed us in to hang some feeders, and we told him we hope to send some of our friends out to help with the garden when the weather warms up.  

Our guys were surprised at how much of a workout they got without leaving their chairs!  We found an online routine that took about 10 minutes and got our hearts beating.  

While it wasn't freezing cold on Thursday, it was chilly enough to make a warm bowl of soup and a grilled cheese hit the spot at lunch time.  We had a choice of tomato or chicken noodle.  We almost forgot to take a picture, so here is half of a grilled cheese sandwich resting in half a bowl of soup...notice the popcorn on top?!  These are our new soup bowls and spoons, too.  We decided to invest in them since serving soup to our guys in paper or Styrofoam bowls with plastic spoons doesn't always go too well.  Plus, it's better for the environment!  We recently acquired a collapsible washing tub (thanks, Liz!), so we are able to wash them without too much trouble.

During our educational groups, we completed worksheets and read books about birds.  This group was talking about how birds use twigs to make nests.

This group was unscrambling bird names so we gave them dictionaries to help with spelling.  Imagine our surprise when words like "turkey," "pelican," and even "crow" were not in the dictionary!  

Dev and Bo were able to find "penguin" in our bargain dictionaries (we got them at the dollar store!).  Next time, we'll go online! 😎 Dictionaries are so old school...

Devin and Drew found the photographer and proudly showed off their good work!

We ended our Bird Day activities with a game called Bird Song Hero that is on BrainPOP.  In this game, we learn to train our hearing to recognize bird songs.  It uses spectrogram technology to show a visual representation (or voiceprint) of the bird songs, which we try to match to the sound of the song.  We need a lot more practice, but it was fun to try it!

During our dance warm up on Friday morning, Alexis and Dev came over to check out the birds at our feeders.  We think we now have a tufted titmouse visiting!  

Friday was A.A. Milne's birthday,so we but it is celebrated as Winnie the Pooh Day!  Some of our friends wore their Disney finest, since Pooh is mostly thought of as a "Disney thing," but we learned the history behind his creation and found that he was around way before Disney got involved!  We still think our guys rock these Disney designs!

To celebrate Pooh, we made peanut butter/honey truffles.  We had to grind the oats into flour, so Lexi and Patrick used a food processor.  

Liz and Laura added peanut butter, honey, and vanilla.

Kacie gave it a good stir!

Everyone got a little bit and rolled their own truffles, that's why we aren't wearing gloves.  Kevin chose to roll his in coconut, but he still thought it was sticky.  They tasted good, though, and as far as snacks go, not too bad with just the peanut butter, oats, and a little honey. 😋

We left the whimiscal of Pooh for the seriousness of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.  With the help of a BrainPOP video, we reviewed his life and contributions to the civil rights movement.  The guys wanted us to put a picture in the blog of how well we did on the quiz!  Here's Moby giving us some high-fives!

Next, we all worked diligently on our "assignments" about Dr. King.

This group checked each others' work...look at the A+ grades and smiley faces!!

After lunch we watched a Mystery Doug mini-lesson about this weekend's lunar eclipse that will reveal a "Super Wolf Blood Moon."  We learned that the full moon on Sunday will be closer to Earth than usual, thus giving it the name "super,"  We also learned that first full moon in January is called a "wolf" moon possibly because folklore says that in very cold places wolves were heard howling at the full moon in January.  Finally, it's  called a "blood" moon because of the position of the Earth and the way the sun's light will reflect off of the Earth's atmosphere.  It might be fun to try and observe it, because the next blood moon won't be visible from America until 2021, but you'll have to stay up late as it peaks around midnight Sunday!  Bundle up if you go outside!

Finally on Friday, we did something kind of weird.  We had run out of time on Wednesday, but today was the day...we were about to "cook" Ivory soap in a microwave!  We got the idea from Sam's mom, who saw the idea on Facebook.  She donated the soap, and probably couldn't wait to see our results!  (Thanks for the idea and the soap, Teri!  It's safe to do at home if you want to try it yourself!) In researching the project, Lisa found an extension that involved adding toilet paper and water to the Ivory after it's microwaved.  So, Sam gathered the materials and we headed to the kitchen.

First, we learned that Ivory soap also floats, and we found out the reason is because it's got extra air pockets in it compared to other brands.  Ask your associate to tell you about the production mistake made by an Ivory soap worker who got distracted and accidentally mixed the soap mixture so long that lots of air got in it...and voila!  Soap that floats... (This may or may not be a true story!)

Devin tossed in the soap and it did float! When we broke it in half, we could see it was light and airy.

We took turns watching the soap cook in the microwave.  (WARNING:  Do not try this with any brand of soap except Ivory!  We're not kidding!) 

Amazingly, it expanded to many times its original size.  You can look up "Charles' Law" if you want to understand the science.  By Friday afternoon....well, this really wasn't about science for us!

The soap grew and grew, until it looked like a big cloud.  Everyone thought it would feel like shaving cream when it came out, but it was still solid, and just a little bit soft.  Wow...just, wow!

Those who wanted to (and many did not!), squished up the soap with their hands.

Next, we added warm water and a few rolls of toilet paper.  The squishing continued, and eventually we had something similar to Play-Doh.  It was interesting.  And the room smelled great!

In the end, we can say this was fun and silly and a perfect way to end the week.  If we ever do it again, maybe we will add coloring and sparkling glitter...LOL!

Meanwhile, next week will be here before we know it.  Here's what you need to know:

Tuesday:  Bring your balls and wear your Arc shirts for bowling today.  We'll have pizza for lunch, courtesy of Drew's friend and AoA supporter, Melinda B.!  Thank you, Melinda!! We appreciate your generosity very much! The forecast calls for chilly and overcast skies, so we will head back to AFCC after bowling for Choice Time and maybe a craft!

Wednesday:  It's birthday time!  Today we will celebrate Cameron with party activities and cupcakes!  It's also Squirrel Appreciation Day, so we are going to try and "appreciate" these little rodents by learning more about them.  Dress to stretch since Patti should be back for yoga.  Lunch on your own.

Thursday:  Everyone will be extra nice today, as it's Compliment Day!  It's also Peanut Butter Day, so we will work that into our day somehow! 😉 Lunch on your own.

Friday:  We will be on our cooking teams today as we put together a Blueberry Pancake Day Lunch! It's also Opposite Day, and Monday is Have Fun at Work Day, so we will celebrate both of those with a day filled with "fun" of all sorts...😜

SAVE THE DATES!!!!

Our film screening is almost here!  It's one week from Sunday and we hope to see you there!



We're still ironing out the final details for the Indoor Golf Tournament...so please stay tuned!



Hope everyone has a wonderful weekend!

Lisa, Carol, and Nan