A trip to Mexico

  This last week was a very full week as we changed our country focus to Mexico.  The kids were very excited to be learning about a new country and so we “flew” to Mexico. I set up an “Airplane” in the living room and acted as stewardess and captain.

I believe they are fastening their seat belts in this pic  ;o)

 

Upon landing in Mexico they had their “passports” stamped and were directed to the cultural information center where they watched a few short movies on Mexico.  It was great fun!  

  One of the movies was on the Naica Crystal Caverns  (we watched a video here but you can also google for some fascinating information! This inspired us to learn a bit about crystals and try some experiments. Our first experiment was a crystal growing kit.

We laid it all out and discovered we had a kit for rose colored crystals

 

We followed the directions and added water and the toxic crystal growing powder to the larger of the to containers and stirred.

   

We were supposed to stir until the chemicals dissolved but that never happened. After 2 hours of alternately stirring and waiting we gave up.  We placed the rocks in the smaller container

and then poured the solution over them. There was about twice as much solution a there was room in the container.  But we did our best

Feeling frustrated because this likely will not work I turned to google and found a recipe for growing edible crystals from sugar (aka rock candy) and, later in the week, we started that. Here are some pictures of that process.  We used got all our equipment together, measured water and started it to boil

Measured our sugar and added it to the boiling water

 

 

  Put sugar on a wet piece of yarn as a starter for the crystals
  

Added the hot sugar syrup to a jar and then placed the yarn in it

We made enough for everyone but the baby ;o)

The lighting is kind of funky in this picture, I promise the real stuff doesn’t glow!  According to the directions we should have rock candy for our Fiesta at the end of the week. I am a little concerned though because, at this time, there doesn’t appear to be the slightest hint of crystal growth.  You know, it seems every time I follow directions the project flops! :oP  I will update next week and let you know if the crystals eventually grew.

  We also worked on our leaf collection and bark rubbings for the tree identification scrap book we will be working on throughout the winter. I wanted to take pictures because it was a glorious day but most of the time my hands were full of baggies, papers, crayons, pencils, leaves, and I was trying to keep children corralled. We were blessed to have friends join us for our excursion :o)  Here is a pic I took that day trying to catch sunflare. It is much easier with my kit lens than the one I had that day, but I was pleased with the result

Throughout the week they have watched videos about Mexican history, culture, and families, read books on Mexico and missionaries to Mexico and, in general, just had a really great week.  Please excuse the mess in this pic. They were all watching a movie on the history of Mexico and it was too cute to pass up, mess or no.

 

Now, if any of you have stuck with me through all of the pictures and rambling I commend you!  Lol.  Being brief and to the point is not my gift!