Science Sunday: Apply it to life

Posted on October 21, 2012 by Ticia

This week we started our chapter about the cat family. Within the first 3 pages of the chapter, the kids were telling me all about what Aunt Tara needs to do to help her cat.

Being the good homeschooling Mom that I am, I decided they needed to write down their advice for Aunt Tara and gave them a word bank of useful words.

Can you guess what the advice was related to?

Aunt Tara,

Next time your cat brings a mouse throw half of it away and give half to your cat.

Superman

They learned bringing a dead animal to you is a sign of respect in the cat world, and they will feel incredibly insulted if you do not eat their gift.

Of course we had to talk a little bit. At first Batman was suggesting she actually EAT THE MOUSE!

Aunt Tara,

Next time Pixie brings you a mouse throw part of it away and give the rest to Pixie.

love, Batman

Princess changed her answer. Originally Aunt Tara was to throw the whole thing away.

Aunt Tara,

Next time Pixie brings a mouse to you throw a little away.

Next time you’re assigning reports or projects, think beyond the normal science report or summarize the chapter. Make it real to them and bring it home. Help a friend know how to interact with their pet. Warn people going camping about what they might see.

Let’s see what others did this week:

Each week I’m spotlighting a few posts that were shared previously. Many posts get linked up later in the week and they don’t always get as many clicks as they deserve, so I’m trying to spotlight a few every week.

Source: teachbesideme.com via Ticia on Pinterest

Teach Beside Me has a great post about air for kiddos. She does some of my favorite experiments in that area.

Source: agreaterhand.blogspot.com via Ticia on Pinterest

Over at Academy at a Thousand Oaks she shared all about their space unit, including a yummy idea for the layers of the earth.

Dottie’s Homeschool Universe has a great batch of posts about geology.

Science Sunday: Canines and their relatives

Posted on August 26, 2012 by Ticia

We finished up our study of the canine family with a field trip to our local nature center. I will take any excuse to go there, and this was a perfect one: observe and write down about the animals from the canine family.

We first sat outside the coyote enclosure. This coyote was raised as a pet, so cannot be released back into the wild, it’s too acclimated.

For the two animals we observed they had to write one sentence, and draw a picture that used at least 3 colors.

Superman’s says: Coyote has pointy ears. Tail is pointing down.

Batman wrote both on the same page, so the coyote one says: He has a black nose.

Side note: They need to work on understanding how to write on the page. They do better at home, but for some reason every lesson I’d taught them flew out the window when we were there.

From the coyote we headed over to the Fox enclosure and spent some time observing her. Again she was a pet that can’t be released back to the wild because of acclimation issues. She wasn’t exciting to observe because she was asleep in the back of the cage.

Superman’s says: Red fox has red fur and they like the shade.

Side note: Notice there are still lots of letter reversals, and capital letters. Not what I was working on for this lesson, so no corrections.

Princess: She has pointy red ears.

Batman’s said: He has red fur.

I was going to have them work on writing more, but I could see I was starting to lose them, so I released them to play in the water, which they happily did until I dragged them home again.

Let’s see what others did this week:

This particular week, I’m going to play hooky and send you to my land animals pinterest board, because I’m going to sneak away and go cuddle with my hubby………

Science Sunday: The Canine family

Posted on August 19, 2012 by Ticia

So I had this great idea to get us back into the swing of things and do some geography and science and I was going to do a lesson on grinding teeth and the manatee, and compare it to dogs. I presented it to the kids, and they said “No Mom, we want to read more about dogs since we’re taking care of Aunt Tara’s dog.”

Ummmm……. Okay…… Only problem is we already did the project I had planned related to that, so we just worked on notebooking for this week. It’s not exciting, but they enjoyed it and worked hard.

Which is a good thing.

Can you see the comparison between this dog and a wolf? My kids did. They figured out wolves and miniature schnauzers both have multiple babies, they both eat meat and have the same teeth.

Wolves are different because they don’t dig, and we do not have wolves as pets.

It was a fun week.

Let’s see what others did this week:

Source: creeksidelearning.com via Ticia on Pinterest

Creekside Learning shared their Frog and Toad study, literature and science at the same time? Yes please.

Source: frugalfun4boys.com via Ticia on Pinterest

Frugal Fun for Boys shared her snowshoes experiment from Apologia Land Animals. I was excited to realize someone else is doing land animals, and thinks of experiments as she’s teaching the lesson……..

Source: enchantedhomeschoolingmom.blogspot.com via Ticia on Pinterest

The Olympics may be past, but Enchanted Homeschooling Mom has a great experiment with friction, that is easy to do with stuff you probably have at home.

Science Sunday: herbivore or carnivore teeth

Posted on August 12, 2012 by Ticia

We’re attempting to get a head start on our land animals science for the year, and this week we learned about teeth.

Teeth you say? That’s right, how can you tell whether an animal is an herbivore or a carnivore from it’s teeth.

Short answer: Herbivores have flat teeth for grinding, and carnivores have sharp pointy teeth for ripping and tearing.

What about omnivores, you say?

They have a combination of both teeth. Another interesting point, most carnivores don’t chew their meat, but swallow it in bite size pieces.

After learning all of that I printed off several pictures of “funny animal teeth” (that got the best search results). I made sure to print off some of each type and only print a close-up of the mouth.

Then came the sorting, more sorting, and the final analysis:

Can you tell what animals I chose?

After all of this wrangling and deciding we had to see for sure what type of teeth our dog had.

And pose for pictures, you can’t forget that. Doesn’t he look so happy to wear the Rapunzel wig? And what do you know, he does have carnivore teeth.

I’m behind on commenting, I’ve spent the week enjoying our last few days before we “officially” start school. We’ve had a playdate each day of the week, so look for your comments someday today or tomorrow. Sorry guys.

Science Sunday: Identifying footprints in the mud

Posted on July 29, 2012 by Ticia

A few weeks ago when the kids were playing in the mud we found some footprints, or something odd in the mud.

Which led to the discussion of who could have left that. That’s when I came up with my brilliant idea, which might or might not of ruined one of my plastic bowls. I made a small batch of plaster of paris and poured it over the print.

But, I’d made too much, so I wandered around the yard pouring it into anything that vaguely looked like a footprint. About 10 minutes later, thanks to the Texas heat, they were all dried up.

After much discussion about the different molds we had, we decided one was Mac’s footprint, that mystery was solved. Another was from a child’s tennis shoe, next one solved. A third was the impression from digging in the mud with fingers. The others we could never successfully identify.

Do you ever find unidentified footprints in your yard? Later I found an alphabet animal footprint chart which would have been helpful at the time.

Let’s see what others did this week:

Source: homegrownlearners.com via Ticia on Pinterest

I love Homegrown Learners incorporation of music and science into one to make a water xylophone.

Source: homeschooljournal-bergblog.blogspot.com via Ticia on Pinterest

All Things Beautiful shared part 3 of their homemade terrarium, I’m storing this away for when we study botany.

Source: myjoy-filledlife.blogspot.com via Ticia on Pinterest

My Joy Filled Life shared their homemade rockets to go with their astronomy studies.

Source: kathysclutteredmind.com via Ticia on Pinterest

Kathy’s Cluttered Mind shared their bug specimen board (no bugs were harmed in the making of it).

Science Sunday: making a dam

Posted on July 22, 2012 by Ticia

As I mentioned earlier this week, we had a lot of rain, and our backyard flooded. Jeff and I took that as an opportunity to teach the boys some engineering. We challenged them to create a dam to stop some of the water.

Some of the challenges were the white waters in the stream, and the water flow was rapid enough to take away many of the building materials they could create.

They started by weighing down the big bucket with some rocks, then they remembered the huge pile of bricks in our backyard, but transporting them one by one is tedious and boring.

But a wagon…….. That’s easy and you get the amusement of pulling it through the water.

Eventually this is what they came up with. It’s an odd combination of bricks, buckets, watering cans, and what have you, but it raised the water level on the upstream side about 6 inches, and the downstream side was significantly lower.

All in all a good spur of the moment engineering lesson.
Let’s see what others did this week:
Each week I’m spotlighting a few posts that were shared previously. Many posts get linked up later in the week and they don’t always get as many clicks as they deserve, so I’m trying to spotlight a few every week.

Source: homeschooljournal-bergblog.blogspot.com via Ticia on Pinterest

Over at All Things Beautiful Phyllis shared how to make a terrarium. I can’t wait to see updates on it and what happened to it.

Homeschool Discoveries shared why sodas explode in the freezer, it was a fun read and I know I’ve left a soda or two in too long while trying to instantly freeze it, and SUPER kudos for using Dr Pepper.

Source: teachingstars.com via Ticia on Pinterest

I loved how Teaching Stars used bubbles to explain nuclear fusion. BRILLIANT

Science Sunday: Florida and Disney World

Posted on July 15, 2012 by Ticia

During the summer I’m doing some things with my kids for geography that we couldn’t necessarily do during our geography co-op. This was definitely one of those times.
We read Disney World (Going Places) and it certainly made my kids want to go. They’re already planning where they want to go.

So, then I had to redirect them to our activity. Making a roller coaster ride.

We then spent the next 30 minutes fine-tuning and messing about with toilet paper rolls, tape, and random pieces of paper trying to make sure the marbles made it all the way to the end.

The first few times we tried the marbles went flying off into who knows where (over a week later I’m still finding marbles, it’s kind of sad).

That being said, this is not the activity to do with little kids. Marbles are popping up all over.

But, we did learn a few things from this:

1. If there is nothing to stop the marbles they will keep going, so we needed to add “back stops” for lack of a better word.
2. Sometimes the tubes needed extra support, so we had to go back in and add extra tape.
3. Different sized marbles acted different ways.
4. Have something to catch the marbles at the bottom.

Afterwards we talked about what it must be like for the people designing these rides, because if that had been people on our ride we would have been in a lot of trouble. The designers have to put a lot more thought and care into their work than we did.
Let’s see what others did this week:

Journey to Excellence shared about a fun field trip to Bass Pro Shop. I need to check and see if my local one has event like this. It’s also a good reminder to try stores for field trips.

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Little Wonder Days has a super great idea of showing how animals mark their territory. I am so stealing this for our Land Animals study this year.

Source: deceptivelyeducational.blogspot.com via Ticia on Pinterest

Relentlessly Fun, Deceptively Educational has a great idea for learning about squid propulsion.
As you no doubt have figured out, I’m grabbing a few posts to share each week, but I wanted to make sure you knew that when you’re linking up. There isn’t a super good rhyme or reason to my choosing. Sometimes it’s “That’s so cool!,” sometimes it’s “how thought provoking.” I’ll share between 2-4 posts each week.

Science Sunday: hints for the future

Posted on July 8, 2012 by Ticia

I’m not even going to pretend I have time to write this post. We’ve got company in town, Jeff had half the week off, which is nice since previously he’s been working 60-80 hour weeks.

Here’s my hint for what’s coming soon, can you guess what we did, and what we were studying?

So, instead I’ll share my fun bit of news: MY BOYS ARE GETTING BAPTIZED TODAY!

Expect pictures later. Lots of pictures later, and a sobbing crying story from me. Oh yes……

Let’s see what others did this week:

I loved this variation on chromatography by 2 Big, 2 Little. I don’t think I’ve seen this variation, so you need to go check it out.

And pretend I have others shared here, but I don’t have them saved away……..

As you no doubt have figured out, I’m grabbing a few posts to share each week, but I wanted to make sure you knew that when you’re linking up. There isn’t a super good rhyme or reason to my choosing. Sometimes it’s “That’s so cool!,” sometimes it’s “how thought provoking.” I’ll share between 2-4 posts each week.

Science Sunday: For real Water and Air Pressure

Posted on June 24, 2012 by Ticia

So, obviously I never got that post fixed last week. First I was wrongly reported as having malware, so I had to work on that. Then I had two very hyper little girls who wanted lots of attention. LOTS of it.

THE QUESTION: Why does the water stay in the straw when you put your finger on it?

THEORIES: There’s something stopping it from getting out. We don’t know what.

First I had them figure out what I was doing differently than them that kept the water in the straw. They tried several different ways of holding the straw to duplicate my keeping the water in, but didn’t figure it out until I showed them what I did very slowly. Then I heard:

“OH! It’s just like the Thumb pot at Williamsburg!”

Talk about making a Mom proud. They’d drawn the connection between this and the gardening tool they’d seen one time. It also work based on air pressure holding in the water until you take your thumb off the top.

This one is from Farm to Market.

But, they still hadn’t completely figured out what was keeping the water in while my thumb was on the straw, so on to the next part.

Next we did the water and air pressure holding the index card on even though the cup is upside down. A similar principle holds the paper up as holds the water in. I asked leading questions:

What’s under the cup.

If there is no liquid in the cup, what is still in the cup?

After a while they realized there was air in the cup, and there was air pushing on the paper and air pushing on the water in the straw.

See, if I put my thumb on top of the straw, there is no place for the air to move into where the water is, it creates a vacuum, and the water cannot move out. The same theory works with the cup and the water. If the water is to the top of the cup, there is nowhere for the paper to go because the air pushes it up while the water is pushing it down. Of course eventually the water soaks through and the paper falls, but for a short time it’s “Amazing Mommy!”

So, that was my quick science experiment we had because I was trying to cool down my son’s tea.

Let’s see what others did this week:

No Doubt Learning shared about their solar week. I’m wondering what the results of her evaporation experiment would be here in Texas during the summer.

I don’t think I’m brave enough to try the light bulb experiment All Things Beautiful did in her microwave. I have a bad track record with fires……..

The Usual Mayhem shared the science behind a brain freeze and some suggested cures they tried. I figured at least one of us is going to get one this summer, I also found out I’m 90% more likely to get one because I get migraines, well BOO.

Science Sunday:Water and Air pressure

Posted on June 17, 2012 by Ticia

I got slammed this past week with stuff for VBS and other things. I’ll get this written with actual useful information later today. Just wanted to get the linky up for everyone to link up to.

I should say, “Hopefully, I’ll get this written up later today.” We’re taking the boys to camp today also.

HAPPY FATHER’S DAY!

Let’s see what others did this week: