Don't look directly into the sun!

We always heard that growing up.  I even say it now that I'm a mom.  I never knew exactly why this was though, despite the old adage that it can "damage your eyes".  Our science studies went from learning about the solar system as a whole to a study of the center of our universe - the sun!  During these lessons, we learned WHY it truly can be damaging to your eyes to look directly at the sun for too long.  The lenses of your eyes are shaped similarly to the lens of a magnifying glass...and we all know what can happen when you take a magnifying glass in the sun to a leaf.  The kids didn't yet though ;).  We went outside, armed with a simple magnifying glass and some curious children, on a hot, sunny day.  We were lucky enough to actually find a leaf floating around from a neighbors house (since we have practically NO trees at our house LOL).  After a little bit of practice (because I have to admit...I had never actually done this before), some focusing of the heat from the sun into one small spot onto our leaf - it started sizzling, then smoking, and soon had a hole in it!

I gave all "safety first" lessons, but even after that, Aly was still a little too eager to show her newfound discovery,  to her Auntie.  We then let things be known with NO questions about it, that ANY sort of play with fire, no matter how simple it may seem, can lead to disastrous results.  It's nice that I was able to be around to see that she might not understand the magnitude of the original "no playing with fire" speech, so I could nip that in the bud right away.

So what did we learn from this experience?  1) The lenses in our eyes act very similarly to the lens of a magnifying glass, and it could be fairly simple to do big damage to our eyes; 2) Despite the fascination, even a small smoke can lead to a giant fire, so DON'T MESS WITH IT.