What a dreary, cold, rainy day--felt like the kids from Cat in the Hat. Julia, Sam and I spent a while playing the Kindergarten Brain Quest fan quiz. The questions are unbelievably silly, but Julia enjoys doing them. Go figure...

The kids watched the Disney channel most of the morning, and I did some research on climber accessories and tree houses. I showed the kids how I was doing comparison shopping and trying to figure out the total cost of accessories and get the lowest price. Then we talked about the engineering problems with the tree fort part of the climber--how to support the entire structure with the fewest number of bolts possible. We discussed the different kinds of forces that will be exerted on the tree fort from above as well as below, since it will double as a frame for a climbing wall. When dh got home, they watched us hash over the different options, decide on the best solution and calculate the necessary materials.

The kids played with playdough much of the afternoon--we pulled out some new colors, which is always a treat. The girls worked on making models of our solar system, which came out really cool. Em was a bit frustrated though because she couldn't represent the rings around Uranus and Neptune without them looking like Saturn--there's just no way to make a subtle ring with playdough. She even made some of the moons for the planets, and her earth was complete with continents and weather over top of them. Some of the weather was just white clouds, but apparently there was a pretty bad storm represented in gray.

Sam and Em finally bundled up and went out in the rain for a little while, then came in and took a nice hot tub.

Tonight, Em played Ages of Empires for a little while until American Idol came on; then we watched part of the Discovery Channel's 7 Wonders of Ancient Rome. Afterwards, we read a bunch out of the DK book on ancient civilizations, looking up all the different civilizations from Ages of Empires, which lead to reading from the comparative mythology book. The Persian empire showed a picture of a gold arm band with twin griffins, which Emily recognized from myth. So, she jumped up and grabbed that book, and we read several creation myths: Norse, Chinese and Egyptian. Then it was Justice League and off to bed.