Amber on February 25th, 2011
The kids love to do “experiments” in the kitchen.  They love to mix kitchen ingredients together and see what it looks like when they are done.  Usually things like ketchup, flour, salt, honey & oatmeal are mixed together for their experiments.  Yesterday they wanted to do it again.  But I hate it.  I don’t let them do it very often because it is messy and wasteful.
So to make us all happy they helped me put a small about of white kitchen ingredients into little bowls.  We then labeled them with their names and a number.  Then I made the kids a quick chart with the number of the cup and a yes or no box.
Here it is all set up:

And then I gave them each a squirt bottle of vinegar.

All ready to go!

I told them to spray 3 squirts into a bowl and see if there was a reaction.

They were excited when they saw the vinegar melt the sugar in bowl #1 and wanted to mark down yes on their chart.  I told them that was just a change, what we were looking for was a reaction.  (They gave me a silly look but marked down no on their chart.)

#2

Again they were excited  to see the vinegar and the flour in #2 make a paste.  Again I told them it was not a reaction and to mark no.
Then I jumped to #5.

#5!

They started jumping and yelling “a reaction!”.  It  was super cute.

I told them to put their ear to the bowl and to listen.

They got excited again when they could hear the bubbles from the baking soda (#5) and the vinegar reacting.
They quickly filled the bowl up with vinegar and saying “more reactions, more reactions”.
They moved on through the rest of the bowls.  Each time spraying it with vinegar, mixing it with the toothpick and watching/listening for a reaction.

Only #5 and #8 had a reaction.
Here are all charts and cups:

Jillian's

Wesley's

What… you wanted to know what was in each bowl and what it’s reaction was?
Well then:
  1. organic sugar – no reaction
  2. flour – no reaction
  3. kosher salt – no reaction
  4. sweet n low – no reaction
  5. baking soda – yes reaction
  6. powdered sugar – no reaction
  7. cornstarch – no reaction
  8. baking powder – yes reaction
The kids sure did have a great time.  They wanted to do more!

All done!

 

 

 

 

 

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Amber on February 22nd, 2011

Right now it is snowing.  As soon as Jillian saw it, she asked me “can I go and catch snow on my tongue?”  How could I say no to that…

She was starting to get cold and Wesley wanted to join in on the fun.

Then they were both running and catching the snow.

It was now time to take shelter in their “fort” area.

Here they are going behind the fountain and under the big tree.

Once they got out of their fort  – they still wanted cover from the wet snow.

It would be great if the snow would stick around until Joshua gets home from work.  We really want to sled around the neighborhood together!

 

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Joshua on February 15th, 2011

SQL Pocket Guide is exactly that, a small guide to most things SQL. You won’t find a lot of background or extraneous content. Instead you’ll get good examples of SQL syntax for nearly every SQL command supported by PostgreSQL, MySQL, Oracle, DB2 and Microsoft SQL Server.

I’ve been using this book daily at work, and while it doesn’t officially support the SQL database engine we use, I’ve found it to be most helpful. This isn’t the type of book you’d sit down and read. It is meant to be a reference, but I find the content to be interesting enough that I often read about an extra command or two after the command I was looking for.

Don’t buy this book (at least not first) if you are new to SQL. You need a working knowledge of SQL and relational databases to make the most of this. But if you do work with SQL on even a semi-regular basis I really recommend it.

The only thing I’d like to see changed is adding support for SQLite. It is, after all, by numbers of installations, the most popular SQL engine in the world. Plus it is the one I prefer to use for most of my projects. Still much of the content is applicable, but it may take some trial-and-error to find the precise syntax.

I review for the O'Reilly Blogger Review Program

Full disclosure: If it wasn’t obvious I received a free PDF version of this book for free in exchange for writing this review. I’ve followed the review guidelines set by O’Reilly. Especially (and always) “First and foremost, we want nothing but complete honesty in your reviews”.

 
Amber on February 14th, 2011

 

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