science fair

I just realized that I never posted anything further about Alex's science fair project after my initial post. Life got crazy and we barely got the thing done and presented before he left for camp.

Because he was going to be at camp during the actual science fair, the museum was very kind in letting him present early. So, a couple days before we left to take him to camp, he gave his presentation...
His experiment went well. It was really interesting to see how things turned out. Alex's hypothesis was that salt would make the best desiccant... but according to his experiment, the natron mixture did indeed make the best desiccant. I have quite a few photos of the end of the experiment but I'm being lazy at the moment.

Alex's presentation also went well. He was excited and knowledgeable about his subject.

What didn't go well was his paper. A couple of things were working against him here.... one, he hasn't done a lot of writing (something to work on for next year) and two, he was already mentally at camp when he set down to write the report. Oh well.

So, needless to say, Alex did not place at the science fair.... but he had a great time doing his project and learned a great deal from it. He's excited to work on a project for next year's science fair. Hopefully he'll take what he learned from this year's science fair and apply it to his new project.

a cool birthday present....

Yesterday Alex decided to get back out the science kit he had gotten as a birthday present...
We had already played with the glass prism and hung up our prism chain in the window. But yesterday they wanted to play with the UV activated beads. The beads start out a frosted white color (or a very, very pale pastel color) and then turn bright colors in sunlight.

They started out by setting them up on our window sill (please, please ignore my dirty windows)...
then they sorted them by color once they changed color...
The kit came with a square of clear plastic. They then put a small sample of sunscreen on the square and put it over a set of beads that had not be exposed to the sun to see if they would change color. They washed off the sunscreen and tried again with different SPF's. It was a pretty cool exercise for them. Of course the SPF 50 we had worked the best :-)

and so it begins...

We FINALLY began Alex's science fair project yesterday. The fair is at a local museum and isn't until mid-June but since Alex will be at camp most of the month of June, he has to have it done early (the wonderful people at the museum are letting him present to the judges before he leaves for camp). June seemed so far off until I started counting up the weeks yesterday... yikes! We're going to have to work hard and fast to pull this off!

Alex became fascinated with the mummifying techniques used by the Ancient Egyptians after we mummified our royal fruit family a while back. He became intrigued by what would happen if we used different substances to dry out the "bodies". This became the basis for his science fair project. Our original "natron" mix was half salt and half baking soda. He wanted to see what would happen if we used only salt and only baking soda.

The project has changed a bit since he originally wrote it up for approval. He was originally going to use hollowed out oranges like we did for our fruit family... but we thought that those wouldn't leave us enough bulk to weigh and see a significant difference. Next we thought about apples.... but I imagined whole swarm of fruit flies taking up residence in our kitchen. So... last minute, we decided to use potatoes.

Also in his original proposal, he wanted to use sand as one of the drying agents like the Egyptians did for their first mummies. But, we never managed to acquire any sand and we needed to get started.

So, we got started. Here Alex is weighing potatoes to make sure each pan had approximately the same weight in potatoes...
Once we separated the potatoes into 5 pans worth of potatoes weighing about 8 oz each, Alex cut each potato in half to increase the surface area...
Here are the five pans waiting for their drying substances...
We determined that three cups of the substance was needed to properly cover the potatoes, so Alex measured them all out and filled the pans...
So, here's the view of our lab (formerly my kitchen)....
From left to right we've got kitty litter, the control (just potatoes), salt only, baking soda only, and 50/50 salt and baking soda mix.

We weighed all of the filled pans as well.

I typed up a few quick charts for Alex to fill out so he could keep track of his data. He also has a journal that he took notes in while we worked. This is really going to be an interesting experience for all of us!

it takes a village :-)

Today was one of those blissful homeschooling days.... a day where you sit back at the end of it and really realize just how lucky/blessed you are. We truly are. We no longer belong to any formal homeschooling group but we have this good solid circle of homeschooling friends that surrounds us. A group that gets along well... both parents and children. A group where each individual member is active in either coming with field trip ideas, organizing outings or teaching classes. There's no pressure to do it all... just opportunities available.

Today was the capper... but it had been a really good week. Tuesday was our last day of a science class series at a local museum. The older kids really truly loved the class and really had a great time together. Clara and her friend (the younger sister of one of Alex's friends from class) had a great time hanging out together each week during class time. They explored the museum, played the play area, collected sticks outside or sometimes just sat at their own table in the cafe and talked girl talk. All the while, her mom and I got to have some much needed adult conversation. It was good for everyone.

So... on to today. One of the families from our circle I mentioned earlier, invited us over for a science class. The dad had picked up a box of supplies from the Adler Planetarium and wanted to teach a class on space for the kids. How cool is that? The kids and I went over to their house this morning for the class. The kids all went off to the kitchen with the dad for the class while the moms hung out in the other room and chatted. It was wonderful!

The kids had such a great time and really seemed to learn a lot. Their favorite time of the class though was rocket time :-)

Here's Clara waiting to launch her rocket...
ready for liftoff...
The "class" ready for a group launch....
(the mom of the girl on the right didn't want her daughter's photo posted, I hated to crop her out since she was part of this group.... so I covered her with a cute little flower by Emily Merritt)

I love this series... just look at their expressions as the rockets go off (click on the photos to see them larger)...


After the class, the girls went inside the play and the boys stayed outside to continue launching film canisters into space!

A wonderful homeschooling day! :-)

I have more stuff to ramble on about.... but I'm tired and this post has taken me longer than it should have so I'll try to catch up next week!

educational decorating :-)

We're in the process of doing some redecorating... actually, we're in the process of decorating since we've lived here a couple years now and haven't done a thing to the bedroom area of the house.

So, we needed to find a new shower curtain for the kids' bathroom (because we needed to pick a paint color). I loved their old shower curtain. It was an inexpensive clear shower curtain from Target that had a map of the world on it. It was amazing how much geography they absorbed just from being around that map daily. Clara came to me just yesterday and told me that she had been looking at the map while brushing her teeth and our flight to Mexico next month would be much shorter if we still lived in Texas. A while back Alex became interested in the South Sandwich Islands after seeing them on the map. But it is time to retire the map shower curtain as several of the holes have ripped through (more than likely... due to Clara... sigh).

So... I was on a hunt for a shower curtain... any shower curtain that was kid-friendly, yet not too kiddish.... not too boyish, not too girlish and not too dark since it's a windowless room. I wasn't necessarily looking for an educational shower curtain... but that would have been a bonus.

Well.... I found what I was looking for.... plus the educational bonus!!! I actually found two. Which of course, led to a little disagreement between the kids.

Alex loved this one...

Weather

And Clara became attached to this one...

Metamorphosis

So.... given that I was in love with them both and the colors were the same on both of them... we ordered them both. We figure we can switch them out occasionally. We ordered them from Uncommon Goods... and they arrived within a couple of days. They are so cool! We don't have them up yet since the bathroom isn't painted yet.... but we're thinking we might do a shade of orange in there.... but there's always a chance that we might chicken out and go with a blue or green.

Anyway... I just wanted to share my cool find!

testing the waters...

So, I finally wrote out my big homeschooling epiphany the other.... now it is time to put it into practice.

In my newly (self) defined role of "facilitator", I tried out something Tuesday night at the library. While Alex was in book club I roamed the stacks... looking for inspiration. So, while browsing the paperbacks I found a Magic School Bus Chapter book and I just went from there. I ended up picking up the following three books...

Amazing Magnetism (Magic School Bus Chapter Book)
What Makes a Magnet?
Batteries, Bulbs, and Wires (Young Discoverers: Science Facts and Experiments)

I told Alex about them and his eyes lit up... he insisted on taking to bed with him so he could look at them. This was exactly what I hoped would happen.

What I did not expect was for him to emerge from his room at 10:15 to tell me that he had read all three books. He then started spewing out all kinds of information about magnets and circuits. It was amazing to witness... he was so fired up!

He had marked the experiments he wanted to try with kleenex (yes, clean ones) and couldn't wait until today to try them out.

Many of them were almost like magic tricks which made them even more exciting. He passed this excitement on to Clara who signed up to be his "lovely assistant". :-) He set up his "tricks" and started the show!

Here he is making the compass spin...
and here's Clara, the "control", not making the compass spin...
See... nothing up my sleeve...
.. hey WAIT... is that....
a MAGNET I see???
Yep, it was. He then took great pride in telling me why each trick worked out the way it did. They did a bunch more that I don't have photos of.... I'll tell you this though, I think they ended up magnetizing all of my butter knives in the process of setting up some of the tricks. :-)

Then, I dug out some science supply kits we had that went with a curriculum we didn't end up using and in the kits, he found enough stuff to do some of the experiments from the Batteries book.

Here he is making an electromagnet and seeing how many paperclips he could pick up...
This afternoon we made a solenoid as well.

It was a wildly successful experiment for me... I guided but did not push. He picked it up and totally ran with it.... taking Clara along for the ride. Alex read information, comprehended it and was able to explain it, in his own words, back to me. And this was all done with such excitement and wonder.

I'm realistic enough to know that this will not happen every time... but if it is only half of the time, I think that's good enough for me.

it's electrifyin'

This is all the result of yet another rabbit trail :-)

The other day, Alex became obsessed with the idea that he wanted to build a working hot air balloon with Legos and other materials. Well... since we wouldn't let him use actual fire to make the hot air (mean parents aren't we?) he had to come up with other alternatives to make his balloon float. He was making us a little mental so I ended up pulling a stack of science experiment books off the shelf and told him that perhaps he might find something in them. My hope was that he would find an alternative or he would become distracted by other experiments. He was distracted by other experiments... because about an hour later, he brought me one of the books with half the pages dog eared (wasn't totally thrilled that he did that... but oh well).

Here's one of the first ones he worked on... the static charge detector...

It's hard to see since our glass isn't smooth, but the pieces of foil repelled each other when something with a static charge was place by the nail at the top of the glass. They have kept the detector in tact and periodically check different things throughout the day.

The experiment came from here...

101 Great Science Experiments

the rabbit trail continued

After reading my last post, a friend of mine sent me an email about another fun resource...

The Kid Who Named Pluto

(It is currently a free download at CurrClick)

I downloaded it today and looked over the stories included in it. She had specifically mentioned a chapter titled "The High Schooler Who Created an Incredible Secret Code". I printed this today and Alex and I read it aloud with Clara listening. It was definitely an inspiring story, I can't wait to read others in the book. I think it is really cool for kids to read about other kids who have done amazing things... especially in the world of academics.

Anyway... just wanted to share this free resource!

levers

Today, by the request of the kids, we got out this book again...
The New Way Things Work

So we could work on the next unit... Levers...

I even had the DVD already checked out from the library.

We also got out this kit as well...K'NEX EDUCATION Intro to Simple Machines: Levers and Pulleys-178 pcs

First we read the intro out of the book and then watched the DVD. After that the kids started to work on building the see-saw....
Once it was built... the mini figs went for a ride :-)
and then they did the experiments from the teachers' guide...
They moved the load and the fulcrum to see how the amount of force needed to do the work changed. Then they just "played" with it for quite a while... mostly using it as a balance.

This kit has a ton of different levers to build. The kids can't wait to move on to the next lever.... I think it's another first class lever, a balance scale, I think. I love how this little study we're doing using The Way Things Work book has really taken off with both kids. Alex had already read a lot of the book... but between the kits and the movies, things are really sinking in for him!

rainy day to sick day... sigh

But all in all... it was a good school day.

Yesterday we were supposed to go see the Midnight Circus with some homeschool friends... but it was a rainy day here so we stayed home instead.

A quiet day at home was nice after our crazy week last week.

We had finished reading The Secret Garden last week so we curled up in front of the TV to watch the movie.

This is the version I got from Netflix...
The Secret Garden
I have to say that I was not impressed with this version. It might have been okay if you hadn't read the book... but if you had, it was troubling. All kinds of odd stuff went on in the movie that wasn't in the book. One odd thing was that Colin wants to marry Mary and gets jealous of her and Dickon. Seriously? They're 10 years old. Why in the world was that a good idea to add to this story? Anyway... one good thing about movies like this is that I really see how well the kids had listened when I read to them as they were yelling out what should have been going on throughout the movie. :-)

After the movie we watched The Way Things Work - Inclined Planes DVD I had gotten from the library. I will say that it was a bit odd... but it was short and the kids seemed to enjoy it. So, we'll probably keep getting the DVD's as we work our way through the book.

Once we were done with the DVD, the kids and I read some more of The New Way Things Workand built the splitting wedge with the K'NEX EDUCATION Intro to Simple Machines: Wheels, Axels and Inclined Planes kit...


After that we got on our rain gear and got ready to head out the door for Clara's dance... however, Alex rushed back and threw up (lovely)... so Clara went to dance with a friend and Alex and I stayed home.

The funny thing about homeschooling is that school never really ends, does it? Alex settled himself on the couch and wanted to watch some of our backlog of Ancient Egypt shows we had recorded off of the History Channel. One was on the excavation of a tomb and the other was about the 10 greatest discoveries. Then he watched a couple of Cyberchases we had recorded as well.

Today he's feeling much better and the weather is much better so we're heading outdoors after lunch to tackle another nature challenge!

(Kelly... I haven't forgotten about your photography questions... I'll post about that soon!)

the way things work

This year I decided to forgo any formal curriculum for science and just follow my kids' interests (with some sort of a plan... not total randomness...lol). Clara loves nature so our participation in the nature study challenges are for her. Alex loves all things engineering, so here's what I got for him...
The New Way Things Work by David Macaulay

I knew I had made the right choice when he insisted on taking the book to bed with him the first night we got it. He read it every night at bedtime until he had at least skimmed the entire book.

Today we decided to start working our way through the book, so we got out this kit that I had ordered to go with the book...
K'Nex Education: Wheels, Axles and Inclined Planes

We also own the other K'Nex Simple Machines Sets that we'll be using as we work our way through this book:
K'Nex Education: Levers and Pulleys
K'Nex Education: Gears

We got everything spread out onto the floor this afternoon and got started...
First we read the pages on inclined planes in the book and then the kids got busy building the steep slide and long ramp from the K'nex kit.

One of these would have come in real handy today...
Spring Scale
But... sigh... we don't have one (something to add to my next amazon order though).

After looking at our inclined planes for a while and talking about what we had read... Alex had an idea. He wanted to get out his stop watch and time cars as they sent them down the ramps.

Here's Clara trying a plastic car...
And Alex trying his big yellow taxi...
They experimented for quite a while longer, trying cars of different sizes and weights. They charted them all out on the white board on Clara's easel.

I'm really enjoying watching them getting into our more open ended science that we're doing this year. They've taken some things so much further than they would have if we were following more of a curriculum as we had done in the past.

Alex seriously cannot wait to do more from this book. We have a splitting wedge to build out the K'nex next.

Oh... there's also a set of DVD's based on this book available from the library. A friend of mine has watched one of them and wasn't all that keen on it.... but given that it doesn't cost us anything, I've reserved the inclined planes one at the library to see what we think of it.