100th Post!

More fun with chemistry!

We separated mixtures.

solids: rocks and sand

liquids: food coloring from water using coffee filters (chromatography)

These boys would do science every day if I let them!

Catapults!

My hubby is back on his regular work schedule, after a year-long fellowship on Capitol Hill, so he has every other Friday off of work. Being the awesome dad that he is, he helped the boys build seige weapons this morning while I went to yoga class. We've been studying Roman history, and Thing One is especially interested in military history. He found instructions online here. It only requires popsicle sticks, rubber bands, masking tape, cardstock, and glue or glue. The things used mini-marshmallows for ammunition. Another good reference for building this sort of thing is the book The Art of the Catapult: Build Greek ballistae, Roman onagers, English trebuchets, and more ancient artillery by William Gurstelle.

Here are some building photos.

The battlefield had been cleaned up by the time I got home. I heard the ammo kept disappearing down Thing Two's throat.

Thing Two, the Self-Styled Scientific Genius

Thing Two just turned five. He is amazing. He just amazes me every day. He obviously has an engineering brain. He is very interested in robots, motors, gears and cogs, how things work. Oh, and alien motherships. But that is a blog entry for another day. Thing Two loves designing and building machines.

He adores legos, k'nex, build and play erector sets, superstructs, and marble race.

His drawings are...amazing. He demonstrates such great fine motor skill and such patience for a barely five year old. I want to wear all of his drawings across my chest everyday so I can brag about them.

Yes,this is a UFO. Again, I must explore this in more detail later.

This is a diagram for how to build a robot. The arrows show you how to assemble the parts. I just can't wait to see this kid grow up and show me what he can really do. Of course, I'm somewhat terrified since he already wants to do chemistry experiments every day and build motors in his room. I'm going to have to do a lot of studying to keep up with this one.

Chemistry is Fun!

We have been having an awesome time with our new curriculum, Real Science 4 Kids: Chemistry Pre-Level 1.

I can't say enough good things about this curriculum. It is so easy to do, and so much fun! The text is well written, has colorful, engaging illustrations, and communicates complicated ideas well to young readers.

Some of the experiments require quite a bit of preparation but are well worth it.

Goodbye chickies!

We returned our chickens to their farm home on Sunday. In one week they had developed tiny wing and tail feathers. Some had even started growing feathers on their feet.

I will miss their cuteness but not their smell!

Eleven, Eleven Baby Chicks, Aaaah, aaaah, aaah

We jumped on an opportunity to rent an incubator and raise some chicks from eggs. We have done a whole unit on eggs and chickens.

We started with 18 fertilized eggs. We read all the instructions for the incubator which involved keeping a bottom tray partially filled with water to maintain humidity, maintaining a temperature of about 100 degrees F, and marking and turning the eggs daily.

Chicken eggs take 21 days to hatch. At day 6 we candled the eggs. We candled again at day 20 and removed two eggs that were obviously not fertile. On day 21 we started hearing cheeps from the incubator and saw tiny cracks in a couple of eggs. By the following evening, we had 11 healthy hatched chicks, and one that started hatching but didn't completely hatch.

We are keeping the chicks for a week then returning them and the incubator to the farm from which they came. They are so cute and fuzzy. They are relatively easy to care for. They need a heat lamp, water, and chick starter feed. We borrowed a cage to use as a brooder, and lined the bottom with pine shavings. Our two cats are very curious about them, but don't bother them much.

Our egg unit reading list:
Egg to chick by Millicent E. Selsam This is the most awesome book ever for this project. It shows the development of the chick at many stages. Be forewarned that is deals frankly with sexual reproduction.
The Chicken Book by Garth Williams
Chicks and Chickens by Gail Gibbons
An Extraordinary Egg by Leo Lionni

Snail and Slug Week

Thing One has developed a fascination with slugs. We have found some real doozies around our house lately. He asked to learn more about them. Unfortunately it's hard to find much about just slugs for young kids, so we broadened our topic to include snails (and we touched briefly on mollusks in general).

We read:
Snails, Clams and Their Relatives by Blaxland
The End of the Beginning: Being the Adventures of a Small Snail (and an Even Smaller Ant) by Avi
The Snail and the Whale by Donaldson
The Snail House by Ahlberg
Mr. Carey's Garden by Cutler
Some Smug Slug by Edwards
My Buddy, Slug by Krosoczka

We tried a couple of experiments at attracting slugs. Several friends made suggestions and we tried most of them. We set out canned catfood (and attracted nothing, that we saw anyway). We set out a dish of beer (again, nothing). I also heard that wet sisal mats attract them but we didn't try that. We had the best luck just looking under big rocks or bricks, and checking the sidewalks early in the morning and after rain.

Plant week

So I've gotten a little behind in blogging! We've been out enjoying the gorgeous weather.

A few weeks ago, we studied plants. We did several science experiments. We did the classic cut a stalk of celery and put it in water colored with food coloring, and watch the leaves turn colors. we did this with white carnations too. Oddly, the blue worked well with the carnations, but we noticed almost no difference in the red carnations.

We put some damp paper towels and lima beans in an empty jar and set it near the window for a few days. When some of them had swelled up and split open, we looked at the inside of the beans and named the parts. When they started sprouting, we planted a couple of them.

We also put some grass seed in an old pizza box. I cut half the lid off the box. Then I closed the box lid. Supposedly, the grass seed would come up on the side where it was exposed to the sun. Actually, it all grew on the side that was covered. I often have luck like this with our science experiments!

We went on a nature walk and tried to find as many different kinds of seeds as we could. Then we took them home and examined them closely, and compared and contrasted them. We talked about how each of them served a purpose in helping the plant grow new plants.

We read:
A Parade of Plants by Stewart
From Seed to Plant by Gibbons
A Seed is Sleepy by Aston
Plants by the Ontario Science Centre
Plants Grow! by Wade
How a Seed Grows by Jordan
A Tree is a Plant by Bulla
Ten Seeds by Brown
Oh Say Can You Seed? by Worth
Plant Life Cycles by Ganeri
Flip, Float, Fly: Seeds on the Move by Macken

Volcano Week

We studied volcanoes in school this week. We touched on beginning geology. We talked about how volcanoes form, the types of volcanoes and where they are found. We talked about the structure of the earth, and about the three main types of rocks.

Our list of books this week:

Hill of Fire by Lewis (We used some activities from the unit study here and lapbook activities here)

Volcanoes by Branley

The Adventures of Polo by Faller

Eyewitness Books: Volcanoes and Earthquakes

Magic School Bus Chapter Book: Voyage to the Volcano by Judith Stamper

Magic Tree House: Earthquake in the Early Morning by Osborne

Magic Tree House: Vacation Under the Volcano by Osborne

Volcano! by Nicolson (I like this one because it lists easy science experiments inside)

Braving Volcanoes: Volcanologists by PetersonThat Crazy Eddie and the Science Project of Doom by Cox

Into the Volcano by O'Meara

That Crazy Eddie and the Science Project of Doom by Cox

We examined some rocks closely and talked about their texture, color, and about how shale will flake off in layers. Thing One asked to smash the slate, which led to me learning a secret of little boy happiness. I gave him the hammer and permission to smash any rocks he wanted. He loved this so much, he even asked to do it the next day as well.Of course, we had to make a baking soda and vinegar volcano. We took an small empty bottle and wrapped it in crumpled aluminum foil, and put the whole shebang into an old roasting pan. Add a few teaspoons of baking soda into the bottle, mix your food coloring into a small pitcher of vinegar, and pour the vinegar into the bottle. Do you see the joy on his face? It was worth getting everything in my dining room stained red.

We got a really nice intense red color from food coloring paste (versus liquid).Friday afternoon, I pulled out my nice acrylic paints and some small canvases and let the boys paint real paintings. Here's Thing Two who insisted on having the biggest paintbrush. These are Thing One's:

And Thing Two's:

I'm so proud. I think they are fantastic. They are going on the wall as soon as they're dry!

See you next week, when we explore BUGS!