Lab

 Oh man our read aloud book is putting my kids through the wringer! It’s all about yellow fever, so you know someone close to the main character is going to get sick. Well, today the mom got sick. She had so many close calls with death, my kids kept typing their dismay in the chat. Things like: Nooooooo! Crying sad faces, She can’t die! Wait, what?!?!, etc. 

Then, to top things off, the grandpa gets sick! And that happens while they’re trying to leave town. My kids wanted to keep reading because they had to find out if the grandpa makes it. So we read one more chapter and he lived through that one, so we stopped there. Little do they know, the main character is going to collapse from the fever in the next chapter. Good thing I didn’t read another chapter! 

The 5-6th graders did their first at home lab today. It was all about finding the pH of liquids, or if something is an acid or a base. The lab actually went really well. It took a while for everyone to get everything ready, but once we were ready, the lab went fast. We used vinegar as our control acid, and we used bleach for our control base. That was not a great idea; the bleach bleached the litmus paper and turned it white. So the one girl who used ammonia instead had better results. Our next lab involves ammonia again, so I might have to send that liquid home in the drop packets. I already have to send cabbage juice along (it’s an acid-base indicator).