Pretty Grasshopper
LD was very excited to catch this grasshopper. Up until now, we’ve only ever seen them at the Desert Park (zoo). Sorry, I don’t remember what they’re called!
Category: Science Units
States of Matter: Solid, Liquid, Gas
Last week we did a sorting activity on solids, liquids and gases. This activity was actually quite challenging for them, so we’ll have to repeat it a number of times in the near future. After they sorted the cards together (with help from me), we ran around the house and collected one example of each and presented it to the others. Click on the link to see more details about...
Science Center Monday — M&M Color mixing
Here are the trays ready for our Monday morningscience center. All the various experiments lead towards the final M&M;color mixing experiment. There were about four differentmini-experiments leading up to that. I’ll talk about thatmore in the next posting.
Science Center Monday — M&M Color Experiments
Experiment 1:Add a teaspoonful of sugar to water. Stir. Observe. What happens when you add sugar to water? What happens when you add several more teaspoons? Experiment 2:Cut (or bite) an M&M; in half. What do you see? We talked about the three layers —the outer layer which was coloreda small thin layer of white (more of the sugar-outer coating)chocolate Experiment 3: Pour water into a white screw top lid....
Science Center Monday: M&M Color Mixing Experiments
Experiment 4: (above) Take drops of food dye/water and drop two colors ontoa piece of coffee filter. What happens when the followingcolors mix?red-yellowblue-redblue-green, etc. Experiment 5: (below) Pour water into a white screw top lid. Add four M&Ms;,one each of red, yellow, green and blue. Make a prediction. What do you think will happen whenthe colors meet? Observe. **When the colors meet, they will form a solid line (atleast at...
Science Center Monday: Planting Seeds
I never got a chance to post about our science center experiment last week. We planted seeds in various ways. 1) We put seeds on damp paper towels and hung them in the window. 2) We put sprout seeds in a jar on the dining room table. 3) We planted seeds in soil in jars (covered with glad-wrap to trap the moisture). 4) And, we planted some seeds in the...
Science Experiment Monday: Seedlings
We had the quickest results with the seedlings in the window. Overall, we had a lot to talk about because the seeds on the kitchen table started to sprout — and then died when they weren’t kept moist (we went camping this weekend). And the seeds at the bottom of the bags in the window didn’t sprout because they were submerged in water. That led to some good talks about...
Rain Forest Plants Activity
Today I gathered up the various foods and spices that go along with the rain forest plant cards. The kids were intrigued and excited (“we get to TRY everything, right?!!”) To introduce the rain forests, we first did our world pin map (bottom right) and sang our continent song. Then we pulled out the biome pin map, placed the deciduous and coniferous forests (that we studied last week) and then...
Rain Forest Plant Cards
So, here are the cards I made. I spent a long time lastnight trying to see if I could link a nice picture from Scribd,but had to give up. Here are some photos, though clickingon the links below or on the sidebar will give you the niceversion to download. I laminated my cards, sorry for the flash spots!
Forest Animal Tracks
We’ve continued with our Forest Unit. Today, LD did this quick animal track sorting activity. The animal tracks in the top row go with the story, The Mitten (see our activities here). I got them from http://kidssoup.com/ (a membership website). Update: More recently, my youngest was interested in studying animal tracks. I made a new packet of materials for her. This packet is available here: Animal Unit! ~Liesl Other related...
Science Center Monday — Water Surface Tension Experiments
It has been a very busy week and I’m just now gettingaround to talking about this week’s science experiment. We talked about surface tension this week and how askin-like layer (called a meniscus) forms on the top ofthe water. We saw how this allows water to rise up overthe top of the little cup. All three of the kids repeated these experiments anumber of times. They especially liked using the...
Science Center Monday — Experiments: Float a Needle; Soap Propelled Boat
Our third little experiment was to try tofloat a needle. First, we dropped a needle from up high, thenlower and lower to see what happened. Nomatter how close we were to the top of thewater, the needle sank. Then I said we were going to try to make aneedle float. The excitement and anticipation built… Gently the kids placed their needles on asmall piece of tissue paper. We watchedas the...
Living and Non Living Sorting Activities
Be sure to grab our free Living – Nonliving Cards and Packet here: If you’ve read about our activities for a while, you’ll see that we tend to repeat things quite a bit. This week, I stuck the living, non-living sorting into the workbox once again. DD really enjoyed it (LD only did the cards below and that was only because DD asked him to!) I can’t remember where I...
Forest Biome: The Mitten — Activities
Today in our study of the forest animal habitat we read The Mitten. (affiliate link) We read Jan Brett’s book first. Using the beautiful mitten masks by Jan Brett the kids reenacted the story by putting the animal into the mitten (the kids are holding up the masks in the picture above). The mitten is just a file folder, drawn in the shape of a mitten. Jan Brett’s printables for...
