Walk to Cure Diabetes

Tomorrow, Nov 7th, our family will be participating in the Walk to Cure Diabetes.  This is sponsored by the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation. 

Joshua has been looking forward to this walk for many months.  We started talking about it when he was in the hospital.  He is familiar with "walks" because we go to the local Buddy Walk (supporting Down syndrome) each year. 

Here is a note from Joshua.

I think the walk is going to be fun.  I hope that the JDRF gets more money so that they can find a cure for diabetes.  I hate diabetes.  I don't like getting shots and pokes.  I want to be able to have food whenever I want it.

I know that money is tight and that there are many worthy causes.  I do feel the need to share this one though as it is important to us and many other families as well.  If you are interested in sponsoring Joshua, please go to this link.

http://walk.jdrf.org/

You can type in his name Joshua Nelsen and state and his page should come up for you.  Our team name is "Joshua's Fan Club" which should also show on the site.

Blessings

Leslie

FIAR Co-op: Pumpkin Runner

We had another great co-op day last week.  I just haven't gotten around to posting about it.  It is always such a treat to spend time with friends and have fun learning in the process.  We had a beautiful day and spent it all outside. 

So what did we learn about today?  Well, pumpkins of course. 





We had a few more experiments on density and learned that all pumpkins float no matter the size or weight.  



One thing that I thought was really interesting was watching them turn in the water so that the stem was facing down.  I'm not sure why they did that, but all of ours from small to large turned in the water like that.  (Can you see that the large one is in the process of turning?)



We also learned about the human body.  We talked about joints (and had a neat visual) of how the joints can break down (ouch that one was a little close to home!).  They also learned about the bones in the body.



They came home with a neat project to label the bones as well as a skeleton to put together.  (The black dots are velcro to which the names of the bones can be attached.  There is a copy of the same sheet with the answers behind it so that they can check their work.) 



After learning about the body, we talked about the style of running done by the man in the book who "shuffled along" and won the race!  The children had several rounds of running a course.  What a fun course too!  It was through the woods and the path had pumpkins all throughout as well as pictures of various Australian animals. 



Lastly, the children learned about hot air balloons and why they float.  They made their own hot air balloons from a trashbag.



They used hair dryers to fill them with hot air and then watched them rise! 



We had a yummy snack of pumpkin muffins and granola.  While they were snacking the children watched the "dancing raisins" experiment.  More on the experiment here. 



While the other children were learning about pumpkins and such, Daniel again had his private nature study class with his sweet friend Miss Lynn.  He so looks forward to these days!



Thank you friends for another wonderful day!  I'm blessed to be a part of such a creative and sweet group of friends!

Love
Leslie