Helicopters, Crickets, and Bananas

Austin has had a couple of interesting projects going this week.

His first project was his helicopter display.

First he used fuse beads to make a whole fleet of helicopters. He really enjoyed designing and making these.




Then we used light colored string to hang them from a corner of the downstairs hallway so they could fly.


We found some helicopter pictures on internet that I printed for him to color and he's going to add those to the display when he finishes them.

Another of his projects this week has been making a cricket habitat. We made some insect habitats earlier this summer but they didn't turn out very well. So we rethought the whole idea and now we're trying again.

First he took and empty container (this one is an empty K-Nex container) and put in a layer of potting soil.


Then he added some grass seed

and watered it.




We put the cricket in his new home ( I hope he doesn't eat grass seeds) and added some bread crumbs and a hiding place.








The cricket is in the top right corner in the top picture and in the top left corner in the bottom picture.




Hopefully the grass seed will grow and Mr. Cricket will have a nice, comfy home.

And now for the bananas. This was my little project and it, um, really didn't turn out so well. I had some extra bananas that weren't being eaten so I thought I would make some dried banana chips with them. I've never done this before so I found some information on internet and thought it looked pretty easy. And it probably is . . .but this batch was not edible.

Here's how they looked when I started out, just before I put them in the oven.



And many hours later, this how is how they looked when I took them out.




I tried one and they tasted even worse then they looked. Oh, well, I guess I'll try again another time.