June 3, 2012
Pot luck at Julie and Mark’s
Everyone enjoyed an abundance of food and a delightful afternoon in the big house, playing by the river and on the swings. 
April 1, 2012
We started by reading a brief biography of Galileo Galilei. We discussed his invention of the telescope, his work with pendulums and rolling balls, and his fight with the Catholic Church over the idea that the Earth revolves around the Sun. For our activity, we did experiments with a pendulum. We asked the children how we might make a simple pendulum we built swing slower. They tried swinging it higher, and changing the weight, but that didn’t work. Then we tried making it longer, and that slowed it down. We found out that we had to make it 4 times longer to swing twice as slow, and 9 times longer to swing 3 times as slow. We then worked out that for a pendulum, the length squared is proportional to the period.
We also dropped small balls and bigger, heavier balls from a height, and saw that they fell at the same speed. Then we rolled a ball down an inclined plane, and saw that every second the ball went further than before, which we call acceleration.
February 26, 2012
Family performed selected scenes from the A.A. Milne play, The Ivory Door, which was followed by a discussion of the reactions of various characters when they learned that a legend that had been central to the culture for many generations was false.
February 12, 2012
Family Group had a field trip to Ano Nuevo State Reserve to observe the Elephant Seals.