Homeschooling fun

I'm running high school chemistry lab course for my kids this year, and, long story short, they got to do a tour of the Chemistry Department at Indiana University. It was a marvelous tour, ending with a popular chemistry demonstration:

It was tons of fun, with explosions, fires, and liquid nitrogen. No chemistry demo is complete without liquid nitrogen.

Then, a friend organized a field trip to Limberlost State Historic Park in Geneva, Indiana. I'd never heard of the author Gene Stratton-Porter before moving to Indiana, but we learned that she led a very interesting life. The house we toured was one she'd lived in in the early 1900s. It was beautiful but I think my husband and kids enjoyed the Loblolly Marsh that she used to visit even more. Our guide, Bill, an enthusiastic naturalist, did a nice job and endured the heat with us.

That reminds me, I don't know if my kids know how lucky they are. As homeschoolers, we're able to pick up and go anytime, anywhere. At the tender ages of 14 and 16, they've already been to about 46 of the 50 States, and 4 of the 10 Canadian provinces. We sure do enjoy our driving trips across the continent, but I'm going to keep reminding them that they're lucky, lucky kids. in so many ways.

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams

Random Tuesday Facts

We're home...hooray!! The trip was really great overall, and I hope to post about it soon, with photos. In the meantime, I wanted to let folks know I'm back and will be starting to visit your blogs again. :)

Also, it's Random Tuesday Facts once again and I have a couple for you.

1) For those in the U.S.: Unless it's high travel season and you're on a tight schedule with no wiggle space, don't book a hotel in advance. Pick up one of those Travel Coupon booklets, such as this oneand save yourself a ton of money. A nice young man at the Comfort Inn in Fruita, CO, told us that it's way better than the AAA discount of 10%. He said that our coupon saved us $30 for that particular motel.

2) A friend remarked about something being "ironic" and it reminded me that many people misuse the word "irony" when they mean "coincidence". Irony is defined as (and I'll use the Dictionary.com definitions since they're very similar to the ones in my American Heritage Dictionary definitions): 1) the use of words to convey a meaning that is the opposite of its literal meaning: the irony of her reply, "How nice!" when I said I had to work all weekend; 2) an outcome of events contrary [emphasis mine] to what was, or might have been, expected, as well as the incongruity of this.

Coincidence, on the other hand, is defined as: 1) a striking occurrence of two or more events at one time apparently by mere chance: Our meeting in Venice was pure coincidence; 2) the condition or fact of coinciding.

My favorite memory of learning the meaning of irony was in grade 8: the English teacher showed us a cartoon with the headline, "Olympic swimmer drowns in bathtub" - morbid but a great way to demonstrate irony!

"He is happiest, be he king or peasant, who finds peace in his home." ~ Johann von Goethe