Weather

This was our last major home school topic. It was a great summer, and I feel like the kids learned a lot.

In fact, Seth has made major leaps in reading and writing. We worked on things a little bit at a time, so that he didn't ever get frustrated or sick of it, but suddenly it was like a light turned on, and he was suddenly reading! He is sounding out words to write them, as well, and I am loving some of the stuff he comes up with.

Here is Seth reading on one of the first days after he realized he could do it himself!

Hannah's love for science has only deepened. She is so inquisitive, and has been known to ask really thoughful questions days or even weeks after something struck her fancy. I love it! She has become a great journal writer, and loves to makes lists and answer questions in her journals. She also loves to take her encyclopedias and transcribe them into notebooks. Not sure what she sees in that process, but OK!

As for Weather:

Here is what the kids had to say in the pre-interview:
Hannah: There's sunny, cloudy, rainy, half cloudy, half sunny, and half rainy. Weather can be harmful or calm.
Seth: It can be sunny and rainy, cloudy and stormy, and half light and half dark. Gas makes the sun. It gets really hot, really cold, and really icy.

So we went through books and talked about different types of weather. We talked about how the earth's rotations makes the weather change. We talked about severe weather, normal weather changes, seasons, the water cycle, and lightning and thunder. We talked about various tools used to measure the weather. We talked about how we would dress based on the weather. We talked about the different types of clouds and named them. We talked about why they look the way they do.

We did a couple of simple experiments. We put ice cubes and salt in this metal bowl, and watched it for about 20 minutes. Here is is after just a few minutes...condensation, and freezing already starting!
Then when we checked it again after the full 20 minutes, it looked like this!
I told them how the air all around us has moisture in it, but it's not cold enough to feel like water or ice, but when it comes near a colder area, like a glass filled with ice, or this metal bowl, the water in the air condenses and either turns to water or ice, depending on how cold it is. They thought this was cool because they had always thought that the water sort of "leaked" through the glass when a glass had ice in it.

The second experiment was more complicated, but very cool. Basically we were making a cloud in a bottle. Hannah got this cool science book called Pop Bottle Science for her birthday from her Aunt Marcie. It comes with a few simple items (like a pop bottle) and you can do 79 experiments with it.

Step 1: Add two inches of hot water into your pop bottle.
Step 2: Blow into the bottle to fill it completely with air, and then cap it.
Step 3: Shake the bottle for one minute. This mixes the water into the air molecules.Step 4: Light a match...let it burn for a couple of seconds, and then blow it out. Quickly uncap the bottle and drop the match in, and recap. Step 5: Lay the bottle on its side and push down on the bottle as hard as you can. Rick was better at this part than I was. You can see the cloud forming in the bottle, and condensation will occur on the inside of the bottle. Step 6: When you see the cloud, uncap the bottle and let the cloud out. We had to squeeze the bottle a couple of times for the cloud to escape. The dark colored paper was there so that you could see the cloud better. (I amped up the contrast on this picture so that you can see the cloud swirling up from the bottle better. You could see it pretty well in person, but it's hard to get good pictures of it!)
Essentially what is happening is that clouds are made of water vapor, air, and particles of dust. We added the match so that the burnt soot would dirty up the air and make the cloud more visible.

This one was a lot of fun because right around the time that we did this lesson, we had a lot of thunderstorms in the area. The kids were able to see all the types of clouds we had learned about, and looked at lightning and thunder in a whole new way.

The post-interview:
Seth: They use special tools to catch up to storms so they know what it is like. There are tornadoes. When it's wintry weather, you would want to wear gloves and a jacket and a scarf. Lightning comes first before thunder. Air crashes and makes thunder.
Hannah: There are different kinds of clouds. There's cumulus...like poofy clouds. I learned the water cycle. The water goes up to the clouds and the clouds fill up with rain so it comes down and then the sun evaporates it into the air and it does it over and over again. Thunder happens when the air explodes from the lightning and pushes the water in the air.

Next week: nothing. We are finished, but I will probably add a few things here and there throughout the year. I want to keep track of ideas so that I can use them with the Round 2 children, MaKaty and Cru. Until next time...

Pioneer Day/Bread and Butter

First of all, this is a rather photo heavy one...so bear that in mind.

The Pioneer Day holiday inspired me to refocus school a bit for this particular week. I decided to talk to the kids about what life might have been like in pioneer times. We discussed the trek across the country. We talked about the terrain they covered. We discussed how they traveled, by wagon and handcart. We talked about the dangers of the land and the dangers of illness, etc. We talked about what they might have packed in their wagons and what they would have had to leave behind. And we talked about what they might have eaten, and how they might have prepared it. Then we focused in on BREAD AND BUTTER. We talked about how yeast worked. We did a yeast experiment. We made homemade bread. We made butter from cream. We toured a local bakery. And at the end of it all...this is what the kids had to say.

Seth: Pioneers bought oxen and cattle. They made butter. They made their clothes. They brought blankets and rope in their wagons. They walked across America and they left where the bad guys were hurting them and went far away from them. Yeast makes bread rise. If you don't push the air out of bread, it will build a big hole in the bread.

Hannah: The Pioneers traveled across America. They made their own butter and bread. We celebrate them on Pioneer Day. They carried their supplies on handcarts or wagons. Yeast rises and if you don't knead the air out, there would be a big hole in your bread. (they steal ideas from each other, obviously...)

Here is our yeast experiment. All three glasses had cornmeal in them. The first had only cornmeal and water. The second had cornmeal, baking soda and water, and the last had cornmeal, yeast, and water. We watched them for 20 minutes. In the meantime...

We mixed up some dough:
And kneaded it. (I used to be a Kneader at Great Harvest Bread Company...I find kneading to be fun and relaxing. My kids enjoyed it as well. You could say that kneading is in their blood ;)
By this time, our glasses looked like this. We talked about how the second glass obviously had seen a chemical reaction, but no growth. The third glass had grown due to the yeast, and obviously...the first glass just looked like cornmeal in water. Easy peasy. They could really picture what was going on within the bread dough.
While we waited for the dough to rise...we took cream and put it in jars and shook it like crazy!
It turned creamy and thick...
Then suddenly, the butter separates from the whey...and makes a big thunk! Pour off the whey and you have homemade butter. (I did add a little salt to flavor it, but not a lot).
Before long, our bread was ready to go into the oven:
And finally! Bread and Butter! They look proud, right?
OK, onto the field trip. I scheduled a visit to a local bakery. But they didn't do tours for less than 20 kids. So I called up a bunch of friends, and they all showed up! Yay! We made quite the crew. But the kids were all really good. I think they had fun. I hope so, anyway!

A funny note...when we were all listening to the tour guide, Brett, give us instructions on not touching things and trying not to get dirty...he asked if there were any questions or comments. Seth's little buddy, Alex, piped up with, "I can see China from here!" Man, kids rock!

The tour started with the kids seeing the big mixing bowls. They are huge! To give a little perspective...they are big enough that when I worked at this bakery, years ago...we decided to see if it was big enough for me to fit in with the lid on. It was. I know because I climbed inside and a customer came into the store, and I had to stay in there until the customer left. Nice. Anyway...they are big. Brett told them that sometimes he comes in and fills them up with Captain Crunch and eats until he's sick. They thought that was pretty funny!
He told them that he was going to make bread dough as fast as he could. In fact, he was attempting a world record.
Thanks to Heidi for this photo...I hijacked it off her blog! He made his blob of dough in 36 seconds! Using flour, water, honey, and salt. Of course the yeast is also a factor when they are making real dough...
Here is what a full batch of Honey Whole Wheat looks like:
(another note...when I was working there...I could lift a 3/4 batch of dough from the bowl onto the table...by myself. It is not for the faint of heart, though...if the weight of the dough doesn't kill you...the smell of yeast as you pull the dough from the sides of the bowl will!)
Here they are separating the dough into loaves and kneading it.
Onto the oven. When he opened the doors, Maxine yelled, "It's like a ferris wheel for bread!" The shelves inside the oven rotate around just like a ferris wheel. Bennet also noted that the oven felt about as hot as it is outside. hehe. It *is* pretty hot out there!
We can sure fill up a bakery!Here are the breads rising and waiting for their turn in the oven!
And here's Bennet enjoying his slice. My kids wouldn't pose for a picture, but Bennet would. Thanks, Buddy!
Thanks to Beka, Amy, Jamie, Shauna, Angie, Shelly, Chantel and Heidi for bringing your kiddos and making it so that we had enough kids for a tour. It was fun!

Next week: Weather!

The Human Body

The pre-interview:
Seth: We have blood cells. There's good germs and bad germs. If you fall, you'll get germs. You have lots of blood. Inside you the blood is blue, and outside you, it's red.

Hannah: You have lungs and a heart and molecules and blood and blood cells and a brain and eyes. Without a body we couldn't do anything, and without a spirit, our body couldn't do anything.

I checked out a few books from the library...the simplest and funniest being "Armpits to Zits" which was an alphabet book of body parts and a little about them. It was pretty fun. We covered the muscular system and nervous system most specifically. We learned different types of muscles...how nerves and receptors work. We talked about the different areas of the brain and what parts of your body they control. I let them sort of lead the discussion...going more into detail about the stuff they were most interested in.

Seth's preschool had done this next activity with the whole class, and I sort of stole it and made it my own. Obviously, it was going to be different doing it with two kids, instead of a whole class. But basically, we pretended that we were inside a giants body, and we were cells and such, doing various jobs. I labeled the couch as the brain, the cedar chest as the heart, and the entertainment center as the lungs. Then we acted out some different scenarios. Such as:

• the blood cells picking up oxygen in the lungs and returning to the heart and then being sent to the rest of the body...
• the giant fell and scraped his knee, and a germ got in the cut...so the white blood cells took care of that germ!
• the giants cut was bleeding, so a coagulant came and helped the red blood cells stick together and form a "shield"
• the giant got his shots and the "weak measles germ" was sent in through the "needle" and the white blood cells took care of it...the antibody watched the white blood cells do their work, so he could remember for the next time. Then the "real measles germ" entered the giants body, and the white blood cells didn't know what to do, so the antibody showed them what he had learned...and they were able to kill the measles germ.

This was a surprising lot of fun. The kids loved it, and they wanted to do it again and again.

Here is Miss Oxygen waiting in the lungs for the blood to pick her up.

Here is Miss Germ coming in the cut.

Here is Captain Antibody, saving the day!

And here is the coagulant helping the red blood cell stick to the other red blood cells. (The coagulant was being very goofy.)

Then I had Seth lay down on a big piece of paper and I traced the outline of his body. I let the kids loose with markers, string, and popsicle sticks, and they tried to recreate the body. The toilet paper tube was all Hannah's idea. It's the esophagus. They kind of got bored before the whole body was finished, but they had fun while it lasted. I loved the red and blue string for the blood vessels.

Post- Interview:

Seth: A coagulant makes all the blood cells stick together and make a shield. The brain sends messages to your feet. Your bum is the biggest muscle. (When this little fact was read, it was followed by 20 minutes of intermittent giggling.) Your elbow is a joing and helps you bend. Germs come and white blood cells surround it until the germ dies. And Mr. Antibody teaches white blood cells what to do to fight.

Hannah: Your belly button is a scar. Your heart pumps the blood to all your body. The white blood cells kill the germs. There's really such thing as the antibody, and it saves the day. (She had thought this was just a joke). There's two sides of your brain. You have a brain stem. You feel dizzy if those things in your ear don't work.

Volcanoes

The Pre-Interview:

Seth: Volcanoes blast. They have lots of lava in them. And gas. They make special kinds of rocks. They are really hot. They are red. They can kill people.

Hannah: They erupt. They can kill people. There was a volcano called Mt. Vesuvius, and it erupted on a town called Pompeii and Pompeii was buried in all the ash.

We talked about the layers of the earth and how magma is in the core...we talked briefly about fault lines and the plates rubbing together. I showed them how magma comes up through cracks and finally erupts out of a volcano. We looked at maps to guess where the most volcanoes would be. We talked about how lava cools and the different kinds of igneous rock left behind. We talked about the difference between active, dormant, and extinct volcanoes. We talked about the damage caused by volcanoes...by lava, ash, etc. Then we talked about the benefits of volcanoes, in farmland, natural heating, etc.

And on to the fun part...

We built a volcano out of salt dough.

Ingredients:
1 cup of salt
1 cup of flour
1/2 cup of water (may add more)

Instructions:
In a large bowl, combine the salt and the flour
Make a well in the salt/flour mixture and add the water
Knead until smooth and shape into a ball
When not in use, wrap in plastic or store in an airtight container
HINT: To get a softer dough you can add more flour. Adding more salt will lend a more granulous affect.

I added some red and yellow food coloring to give it a little color, but it was still pretty light. Then I added red food coloring to some elmer's glue and made the little drips down the side of the volcano...just so it looked COOL! We built the volcano around a small bottle. In the bottle I put some baking soda, a little water, some red food coloring, and a squirt of dish soap (to make it bubbly). Then we added the vinegar when we wanted it to erupt. It was perfect because we could erupt it over and over again.

When Katy and Cru woke up from their naps, we decided to head up the road a little bit to an area that has quite a few extinct volcanoes. I let the kids walk around on the lava beds...we would have hiked to the top of the volcano, but it was well over 100 degrees, and I didn't want to kill them, so we just examined the lava rock and talked about how it was formed. We drove far enough up the road to be able to see down on the top of the volcano a bit and see how it showed the center of the volcano. They thought it was all very cool, and Seth would have been to the top of the volcano had I not been the voice of reason. Maybe we'll do it this winter sometime.

Post-Interview:

Hannah: Inside the earth there is lots of lava. Earthquakes are made by two plates smashed together. The lava comes through cracks in the ground and comes out volcanoes.

Seth: Volcanoes can cover up the earth with ash. There's lava under the earth called magna (he meant magma). Some volcanoes are extinct, some will go again. Lava turns to stone.

Next Week: The Human Body

Fossils

The inspiration for this weeks lesson came from Beka. So thanks, Beka!

The initial interview: What do you know about fossils?
Seth: Things land in mud and stay there for a very long time and turn into fossils. Scientists study the fossils so they can know what lived in the dinosaur land.

Hannah: When they land in mud they stay there for a very long time, then the sand gets dry, then turns hard, and turns into rock, and makes a fossil.

We talked about the different ways fossils can be formed...under water, compressed by sand, etc. We talked about the different ways fossils are discovered...exposed by erosion, excavated by paleontologists, etc. We talked about what fossils can do to help us learn about our earth and the things that took place long ago. We read a book about Roy Chapman Andrews, to sort of put a face to the abstract nature of paleontology. This guy discovered the first dinosaur egg fossils in Mongolia in the 1920's...proving without a doubt that dinosaurs hatched from eggs. It is rumored that he was the inspiration for Indiana Jones...which appealed to Seth especially!

We have collected fossils over the years. Some family friends own property about an hour from here that is a treasure trove. The area was once a sea...millions of years ago, and now it is a mountain. The fossils are of shells, and there are hundreds of them! So we got out our fossil collection and looked at them and guessed what had happened to preserve them into fossils. We also talked a little about petrified wood.

Beka had said that she was going to make fossils with her kids, and so I decided I would try it, too. My sister had given me the vertebrae of a small animal (probably mouse)...thinking that my kids would think it was cool. It was perfect timing, because we decided to use it to make our "fossils". I mixed up a batch of plaster of paris, and we filled the bottoms of plastic cups with it. After it had hardened for about 10 minutes, we put the vertebrae and one of the shell fossils in it, leaving the impression. We let them harden for a few days, and they turned out awesome!

As part of our lesson, I wanted to take the kids to the dinosaur museum. A local man started to excavate his property to build on it, and discovered dinosaur footprints. The excavation stopped right then, and now, years later, a whole new kind of excavation goes on there! They have built the museum right around the site, leaving the fossils largely undisturbed. There are scientists and paleontologists right on site, and you can watch them working. It's not a large museum, by any means, but it's so cool for the kids to see what kinds of dinosaurs used to hang out around these parts! Here they are making some dinosaur rubbings.

An egg nest:

The new face of paleontology:

And the final interview:

Hannah: People didn't know if dinosaurs laid eggs until the scientists found dinosaur eggs. There are lots of fossils where the layers of rocks are (sedimentary rocks). Where we found our fossils used to be an ocean...that's why we have shells fossils.

Seth: A scientist (Andrews) found eggs and more fossils. Some animals got stuck in tar and died and it preserved them. They get covered up with sand and mud and turn into rock.

This was a fun one. It consumed a lot of our week, and the kids are still talking about it!

Next week: Volcanoes.

Turtles/Tortoises

This week we were a little stumped on what to do for "school." That is, until we got to meet this little lady on Sunday.
My parents were walking up on the Red Hill, and saw her. They called us to see if we wanted to come see, so I took the kids and headed on over. By the time my parents had called us, and we drove back up to where they had seen her, she had traveled a bit...so Hannah got to help Grandpa and Marcie "track" her for a while. They found her pretty quickly, and we all got to look (but not touch) until she started acting a little worried. So we let her alone.

On the way home in the car, Seth suggested that we learn about tortoises and turtles for school this week. So we did. Incidental learning at its finest!

What they already knew:
Hannah: They have hard shells. The turtles have flippers and tortoises have legs. They go up on land to lay their eggs and they cover them up with sand so that other animals won't get their eggs. You can know how old they are by looking at the rings on their shells.

Seth: Tortoises can't swim and turtles can. They can put their heads into their shells. They have a hard shell so their predators don't eat them. Some are both water and land livers. The turtles in the water have fins for swimming and the tortoises have claws for land. (I think he meant flippers, not fins, but whatev!)

There was so much to learn about turtles that I tried to make it more concise by taking a few facts, and writing them on a picture of a turtle. Then I took another copy of the drawing and colored it, and cut out little parts of it like a puzzle. Then they took turns pulling off the little pieces and revealing new facts. I used the books from the library to illustrate some of the points better. We learned how to tell the difference between a turtle and a tortoise. We learned how to tell if it was a boy tortoise or a girl. We examined an actual tortoise shell that had been found in the desert a long time ago. And we looked at the pictures of our little tortoise friend from earlier in the week. We were able to tell that the shell we were looking at was a boy, and the tortoise we had seen Sunday was a girl. The kids thought that was pretty cool. We discussed their life cycle and life expectancy. We talked about reptiles, being cold-blooded, and how to keep cool/warm when they needed to. We talked about diets; and, of course, speed.

When we were done with that, they each got to make their own tortoise "puzzle" and they enjoyed coloring the pieces of the shell. They insisted on my rewriting all the fact onto their tortoises as well.
What they know now:
Seth: The boys have a gular horn that points up, and the girls is flat. They lay their eggs and dig a hole and cover it. They dig burrows and hybernate. Tortoises eat cactuses for water. Some are so big that you could ride on them.
Hannah: You can tell the difference between the girls and boys by looking at their tails, their horns, and their shells. Girl tortoises pee on the ground to make it softer for digging their egg holes. They don't have as many bones as humans. The plates on their shells are called scutes.

Next Week: Fossils.