After reading Beachcombing by Jim Arnosky, Adrienne decided she wanted to try to identify the seashells we had. We have a few in a box that were given to us by one of our wonderful aunts...who brought them back from Florida. Adrienne had a wonderful time trying to match the seashells with the ones from the book!
After researching a few different options for science this summer (which didn't really fit in our budget), I finally decided to put our own together. We wanted to cover chemistry this year. I searched my bookshelves for a spine that I could use and found an Usborne book called Mixtures and Compounds to start us off. As we read each chapter, we can visit the Internet links suggested and also add some more reading with library books. A few experiments are listed. We have already covered a chapter on mixtures, learning about what is a mixture, what is in it, the different types of mixtures and mixing liquids. A simple experiment illustrates mixing...just mixing sugar with warm water and observing what happened! The next chapter introduced us to separating mixtures. Decantation, filtration, chromatography, evaporation, distillation, and centrifuging were explained. We did a simple experiment using chromatography to separate the different coloured chemicals that made up inks (see our photos below).
This week, we have been talking about the air. We started learning about different gases that are in the air, air quality, the nitrogen cycle, and even a bit about gases that pollute, acid rain and the greenhouse effect. An experiment is sitting on our window sill right now. We took a piece of concrete, put it in a big glass, and added vinegar to cover it. We are supposed to leave that for a couple of days and see how acids affect building materials.
Fairy has been making her own list of chemical elements and their codes as we come across new ones. We have been watching videos from the University of Nottimgham, try this great link : The Periodic Table of Videos. Below you can watch the one on helium.
My kids are not hard to please...they could have stayed here all afternoon! They had so much fun on these little dirt hills with their bikes. Even Princess, that couldn't do it with her bike with the training wheels, had a blast just running up and down! The best part...it's really close to our house. We found this place on our way to our search for trees (see post below!).
We decided to go for a bike ride after lunch and brought Crinkleroot with us. As I mentioned in my previous post, I wasn't sure if we would find many trees, but I did have in mind to go along the farmer's field that is at the edge of our subdivision. We did find three different trees! We brought one leaf home from each tree and tried to identify them with the help of our books. We are pretty sure that we found a white oak, an American beech, and a quakin aspen. We put the leaves in our leaf press and will add them to our Author Fiesta binder.
We liked the idea from Author Fiestaso we made our own little Crinkleroot guy! We will take him on our neighborhood nature walk this afternoon! We will try to find some trees near us, it might be difficult...we live in a new subdivision and not many big trees are around!
After researching a few different options for science this summer (which didn't really fit in our budget), I finally decided to put our own together. We wanted to cover chemistry this year. I searched my bookshelves for a spine that I could use and found an Usborne book called Mixtures and Compounds to start us off. As we read each chapter, we can visit the Internet links suggested and also add some more reading with library books. A few experiments are listed. We have already covered a chapter on mixtures, learning about what is a mixture, what is in it, the different types of mixtures and mixing liquids. A simple experiment illustrates mixing...just mixing sugar with warm water and observing what happened! The next chapter introduced us to separating mixtures. Decantation, filtration, chromatography, evaporation, distillation, and centrifuging were explained. We did a simple experiment using chromatography to separate the different coloured chemicals that made up inks (see our photos below).
