Projects Aplenty

CHECKERED PAST: We're still trying to play catch up from last week's activities.

One of the things the kids did was sew an oversized chess board out of felt squares. Sixty four squares, to be exact.

It was really a great math exercise. Every measurement had to be precise, or else the lines wouldn't, well, line up!

They sewed eight rows together first, and then sewed the rows together. They only had to rip out three rows or partial rows to make it work. ;)

SCENES FROM LAST WEEK: A few leftover shots found on my phone while trying to free up storage space. We were super not proud of our pile on the grocery belt. Enough gelatin to make hundreds of 'Jigglers," ...

and SO much banana pudding (for the Nilla Wafer desert), as well as multi pounds worth of orange drink. 

All of the above was for our " '70s taste sensations" concession stand at the "Saturday Afternoon Fever" event. 

Another item on the 'to do' list last week was updating the calendar at the transitional residence where we volunteer.

We went with a bee theme for June.

I loved all of Annabelle's cute little creations!

IS THERE LIFE ON MARS? News from the Red Planet! NASA's Mars rover Curiosity has identified a variety of organic molecules, the carbon-based building blocks of life as we know it, in 3.5-billion-year-old Martian rocks.

While the results "do not give us any evidence of life," according to Jennifer Eigenbrode, a scientist at the Solar System Exploration Division at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, "but there is a possibility that [the organics] are from an ancient life source; we just don't know," Eigenbrode said in a Space.com article. Eigenbrode added an intriguing thought, "Even if life was never around, they [the molecules] tell us there was at least something around for organisms to eat." 

Another major find by Mars Science Laboratory is that methane concentrations in Mars' atmosphere cycle seasonally. According to the Space.com article, "the discovery suggests that this gas, which here on Earth is produced primarily by living organisms, is seeping out from underground reservoirs."

More info can be gleaned from the online journal "Science."