That was a good day.

Yesterday should not have been such a good day. It started off with the decision to stay home since Tex and I were both sporting runny, drippy noses, because I knew that if we went anywhere not only would we be leaving behind copious germs, but we'd also get so worn out so fast that it wouldn't be any fun. The drawback is that most days we are "stuck" at home turn out to be tortuously long and full of arguments between playmates.
Not this time! We started off with an episode of The Amazing Race. We've been Netflix-ing the DVDs of Season 1 and watching them with Tex as a fun way to talk geography and dialogue on concepts like sportsmanship, honor, fairness, etc. In this episode we found France and Tunisia, and talked about how two teams working together, even though they're in competition, can actually help both teams do better; and also about how one team that can't communicate will have trouble getting anywhere.
We finished our third hydraulics machine, the scissor lift. Only one machine left to go. Tex and Noodle did weight-testing to see what objects the scissor lift could hold up, and which were heavy enough to actually push the fluid around themselves and lower the lift.
The most fun I think we had all day was graphing the Halloween candy. We made plates for "chocolate", "fruity candy", "gum", "snacks", and "lollipops", and the boys each separated their candy into those groups, counted each group, and then made a bar graph showing how they compared to each other. Then they selected their favorites to keep, and the rest went to "DaddyO Tax". They had so much fun, I imagine we might be doing this again with any candy in their Christmas stockings, or maybe at Easter! :-)
Oh, and Noodles has discovered Zoo Tycoon!! This is a PC game that allows one to build their own zoo (with regular, endangered, marine, and even prehistoric animals), design the exhibits, hire staff, provide for the guests' needs, and maintain the animals' happiness. I credit this game with getting Tex started reading last year, because he had to learn to identify words in order to play it without a grown-up around to help. Noodle isn't quite there yet, being as he's just about to turn 5 and Tex was a new 6-year-old when he got started, but he's fascinated about each animal and how their environments differ from others, why you have to have boy and girl animals in order to have babies, and especially why some animals have a LOT of babies very fast while others take a long time to grow their population. Last year Tex learned about the food chain by putting penguins into the sea lion exhibit and watching the resultant scuffle, then putting the sea lion in the polar bear exhibit and seeing how the predator became the prey. I find it amusing that the game designers created this function, and the "scuffles" complete with swirling lines and stars. LOL
In any case it was a good day. Now send me prayers that today should be as fun, because we've added a sick Monkey to the bunch, so we're staying home again. Noodle may just go crazy.