This Week

Does anyone know what happened to my sweet peas?

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Shane: "I'm glad I always have my evil laugh with me."

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Dirt for Saturday arrived Tuesday! Ever try to keep large groups of children away from a big pile of dirt for 5 days?

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This weeks craft was either hanging gardens,

or potato dolls

modelled after this guy:

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Ugh.

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$15 well spent!

Wednesday was a sad day. 13yo Bella, who had seemed fine the day before, appeared to have a stroke. We sat with her in the morning until the vet's office opened, but she passed away on the trip down the hill. We will miss her 'talking' to us (no dog talks like a husky does!), and sleeping on TOP of the dog houses in snowstorms.

She was a really great dog!

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People frequently leave things behind at the library, and if I think something belongs to one of my Facebook friends, I will sometimes post a picture to see who claims it.

This one resulted in a cross-country tussle, with people in several states declaring they left it right where I found it. Wherever that was.

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I can totally do plumbing and construction, but electricity is not my thing. So, of course, I planned a Teen program centered around making light-up cards. I was able to explain the basics of closed circuits, and made one of my own with one light, but I wasn't able to make two lights work off of one battery.

The kids experimented, and a few were able to make it work! That's scientific exploration that will stick in their brains!

Super simple program, you just need cover stock, batteries, LED lights, and copper tape. I got all that off Amazon, and have a ton left.

Why yes, that is the Death Star.

The program went way over because they were still experimenting. We will definitely have to do it again!

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The kids like to explore the fields and forest, and bring home old rusty treasures. An old railroad spike. A broken tool.

A car.

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In other news, Psycho Cat still hates my guts.

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Logan's head is filled with so many awesome ideas, even when he is sleeping he needs to write them down.

Teen Cafe - Giant Scrabble

My teens love over-sized games, and this one was so easy to set up!

I just did a quick search for the number of tiles for each letter and the point value, and printed them on cover stock in the largest font that would fit.

I did not have time, materials, or energy to make an actual giant game board, so we just went by straight point value of words. I had the kids split themselves into two teams, and the one that happened to have a birthday that day went first.

And yes, "damn" was the first word. Well, it IS in the dictionary, and can be used without actually swearing - but I told them nothing 'worse'.

Oh, they chose team names, too:

Sometimes it is best not to ask.

While most of the words were pretty short and common, they came up with a few they were rather proud of:

"It's in SHAKESPEARE!" one exasperated teen told her teammates.

We took a break after the first half hour to get more snacks, and wrapped up just a few minutes after the hour, so it timed perfectly. We'll definitely be trying this one again! Easy to have on hand when an outdoor activity gets rained out!

Teen Cafe - Construction Challenge

My oldest son, Christopher, has been enjoying the tweens group (grades 4-7). They do a lot of fun activities with Mr. Cliff and Sherry, and they are a fairly quiet, well-behaved group.

This past week, Christopher had to be with me at the library, so I let him join the teens (grades 8 and up). He discovered that the teens are...well, not like the tweens.

Our activity this time was a construction challenge. As they grabbed snacks and drinks, I nudged them into tables, which became their teams. Each team had exactly 100 pieces of uncooked spaghetti (yes, I counted) and one brand new roll of scotch tape. The goal was to build the tallest structure in the time allotted. The catch: It had to support a large marshmallow at the top (I would measure from the surface of the table to the bottom of the marshmallow.)

We ended up with three teams and three very different tactics. This team was all girls, and they went straight for height:

with a little bit of drama thrown in.

Okay, a lot of drama. And a lot of noise, despite generous use of tape.

They named their structure Bobert Robert the Seventh of the Germanic Tribe Nobert (also a unicorn). When he began teetering, they encouraged to think of his family, think of his cat!!! They even played the sounds of his cat calling for him, in hopes it would help him pull through.

I have very odd teens, is what I'm saying.

This team went with strength first, binding several spaghetti strands together.

And then they started laughing and couldn't stop, and never got it any higher.

(I had to cut part of the team out because I didn't meet up with a parent for photo permission, sorry!)

The third team (also without photo permissions) consisted of two teens who talked to each other nonstop, and a third who pretty much built the whole thing herself. Which pretty much describes every team project I have ever been a part of. Enjoy college, honey.

In the end, Bobert hung on long enough to win. And then ended up in pieces. His cat misses him terribly.

With only 15 minutes left, I let them choose if they wanted to try the second challenge - building with toothpicks and tiny marshmallows. A little bit more structurally sound this time around!

In other news, R. tried to give a teammate her best stern look:

Um...no.

Nope.

Almost!

You got it!

Aaaand you lost it.

Teen Cafe: Blind Taste Tests

I'm never sure how many teens I will get for the first program of the summer, so I try to plan something that has a good draw, but will work with 2 kids or 50. Food is generally a safe bet!

Have you ever wondered what companies are thinking when they label certain food flavors? As in, just because you make your medicine red, that does not mean it is "cherry flavored", people! (Have these guys ever eaten an actual cherry?!)

Of course, back in MY day, there were Oreos, or there were Oreos. Double Stuff and Chocolate Oreos were a huge uptick in variety. Now, you can find them in just about any flavor you can think of.

And don't even get me started on Pringles! You had your original or your cheddar cheese, buddy, that was it. Kids these days are so spoiled...

Where was I going with that? Oh, yes! How do they choose these flavors, and do they REALLY taste like they say? We decided to find out with some blind taste tests.

Set-up is pretty easy - I just raided the shelves of the local grocery store. One package of each is plenty for a decent sized group. I also bought various drinks and some fresh strawberries to 'cleanse the palate'. (There was a subsequent discussion of how bread, fruit and cheese are used in other taste tests, and the pros and cons of each one. That disintegrated into dump buckets at wine tastings, and...well, we'll just stop there.)

All you have to do is number the appropriate number of plates and dump a package of each:

Then prepare answer sheets for each teen to fill out:

As you can see, for the chips they had to match the chip to the flavor. Pretty much everyone got the bacon and cheddar, chili lime, honey mustard, pickle, and salt and vinegar. NOBODY guessed cheesy Italian, ranch, or sour cream and onion - which I thought was interesting, since those are probably some of the most popular.

Speaking of popularity, while the honey mustard chips sent one young lady scrambling for the strawberries, they were the first to disappear completely. Salt and vinegar and dill pickle were close behind.

For the Oreos, I made them come up with a name all on their own. Smell and color were a big help, so these weren't as hard as the chips. There were only three that they had trouble with:

Cinnamon Roll - several people came up with almond, and I can see that. Everyone agreed that they were really good, whatever the name!

Cookies and Cream - I believe one suggestion was "alien type substance". To me, this is just a weird flavor. If you have a cake or a milkshake that is "cookies and cream" flavored, that means it has crushed up Oreos in it, right? So these are...Oreo flavored Oreos. They crushed up their cookies to make their cookies.

Peeps - Stumped everyone! Most common answer was "birthday cake", but my favorite response mirrored some of my friends' responses to Peeps themselves: 

"That is just...ugh!!! Whoever decided to put this on the market - I should, like, slap them or something!" (back to the strawberries)

Everyone seemed to have fun, and we ended with an informal discussion of what flavors we would like to see in an Oreo. The biggest hit was a pickle-flavored Oreo, which does not seem to exist as of yet (the things I Google after Teen Cafe...). I did find this list of somewhat unusual flavors - how many have you tried?

Odd Oreo Flavors

Teen Cafe - Cupcake Wars

I love when we have new faces at Teen Cafe! Funny what the promise of playing with food will do. 

Our Cupcake Wars are pretty simple: each teen gets three cupcakes, and can pick whatever they want from a spread of frostings, fondant, and candies. They have to decide on a theme and decorate accordingly, then we all vote for the best plate. And then we eat them!

Tonight we had:

Snowman Princess Leia, a Skittle, and...Barney?

An M&M

Emojis (love the border - nice presentation!)

Valentine's Day (again, nice presentation)

Easter

Generation of Miracles

America (note orange gummy bear. I am not saying a word.)

And, our winners (a tie):

Red and white blood cells, an open wound, and a sutured wound.

Moana

 Side view so you can see the gummy bears playing beach volleyball under the palm tree:

So much fun - and so much sugar! Remind me next year that this is NOT a good day to skip lunch. Pardon me now while I go slip into a coma...