No moss growing under our feet

Our blogging has been a bit slow this week (combination of limited time on dialup plus school plus...). I know.

These are some things we've been doing:

1. Looking at moss as part of our Botany study. Did you know that moss is a non-vascular plant? Probably you did, but my knowledge of Botany is not great, so I'm learning along with the squirrelings. And we never knew that we had so much moss in our backyard until we went out with a magnifying glass to look for some.

2. Looking at angiosperms in our backyard, ditto. Did you know that rose hips have little fuzzy things inside of them? We cut one open, along with an unripe grape tomato, to see if their insides looked the same; but they're quite different.

3. Mama Squirrel is going to a focus group about breakfast cereal this afternoon (two hours' easy work, and yes, we admit we eat our share of cold cereal in the Treehouse, although not for dinner). The Apprentice will be home from school by that time, so she can sister-sit for awhile, and then we'll blow some of the proceeds on takeout food since Mama Squirrel isn't here to make dinner.

4. We made mummified apple slices as part of an Egyptian history lesson. You mix equal amounts of salt and baking soda, slice some apples, and put the apple slices into the mixture for a week. The slices are supposed to get leathery and dried out (like mummies) instead of rotting, if you put enough mixture on top of them.

It worked, sort of. The apples didn't rot...they were just very strange.

5. The Apprentice has been doing very well in her classes and on her assignments. The only trouble she got into last week was for playing with a yo-yo during lunch break. (The hall monitor didn't think she should be doing it over a stairwell...)

The strangest way she's spent a class period so far is watching Mrs. Doubtfire.

6. There's more, but I'm on dialup, remember? I'll be back later.