Unstructured Summer Days

No organized activities for my children this summer, except for the sporadic times I dropped Ann off at a park district games-and-swimming program that ran from early June until last week. It involved low fees and no commitment, so barely counted as organized. But the girls are entertaining themselves. Too much Wii, maybe, but that's just the opinion of someone whose most recent video game interests were Space Wars, Space Invaders, Galaxian, Pac-Man and Donkey Kong.

Other activities have surfaced for them as the summer goes on. Yesterday Ann took a sudden interest in buoyancy, filling up a large metal bowl with water and testing objects to see if they would float. When her search for new objects brought her into my office, I suggested she take notes of what floated and what didn't. So she did, on a single post-it note. I have it in front of me now.

Floats: an aluminum-foil boat, a rubber ball, six peanuts in their shells wrapped in plastic wrap, Lego pieces, pencils and some other small plastic items. Does Not Float: all coins tested, even aluminum ones, a Spongebob plastic figure, a plastic ring, a rubber ring, two metal rings, a paper clip and something that I can't decipher that looks like "small moron," though I don't think that's the correct reading.

Lately Lilly has been using cake mixes to make various cakes, topped with icing she makes from recipes she finds on the Internet, along with improvisation. She's been making some good stuff, too. One of her icings included sugar, confectioners sugar, butter, cocoa powder and Mexican chocolate -- that last one was added to the recipe, I think -- and boy was it good. She's promising other forays into cooking in the coming days, such as fried chicken for dinner using a select assortment of seasonings in the batter. I expect that'll be tasty as well.