Meant To Teach

This week we learned about clouds! Surprisingly, my oldest seems to be very interested in weather and gets it very easily. When talking about how clouds form - she really understood it and seemed to think it was very cool. We started out with talking about the process and I had my own little drawing on the white board. We talked about evaporation and how we get rain, snow, sleet, and hail. We set out a cup of water outside and marked with a dry erase marker to see our line of where we filled it. Once it evaporates, we will be able to see how much and where the water originally was. We ended the week learning about the different types of clouds. After reading about the cumulus cloud and how it can turn to what's called a cumulonimbus (LATIN WORD: NIMBUS) she asked me, "Is that what can make a tornado?" Lo and behold, in the next paragraph of our unit - that's what it talked about. She thinks she can be a weather predictor now by watching the clouds! I love the...

Thought I would post pictures of what we did on election week! Our candidate didn't win, but it was great to see how involved the girls got with this election. Their father taught an election unit to them the whole week. He's very into politics, so when he came home from work - they would sit down and do their file folder on the election. They also did a "Race to the White House" file folder game. My husband played the moderator. Then of course, they voted in their own online election through currclick.com. We also went to vote as a family. 

Since its Halloween week, we've decided to conjure up a few experiments! First experiment - Acetic Acid mixed with Sodium Bicarbonate Our reaction certainly looked like a wizard's potion. We just used 1/2 a cup of vinegar as our acid and 1 teaspoon of baking soda. The result...Carbon Dioxide! The girls loved to see it bubble up. We talked about how the vinegar and baking soda were in a "duel" with one another to try to neutralize each other, resulting in the bubble reaction of carbon dioxide. Second experiment - Making a Polymer SLIME! The girls had a great time making this. It was very easy with a borax and water solution mixed with a glue and water solution. The girls have played with it all afternoon. They also love seeing it take shape to anything. They've had fun stretching it and seeing it shape itself. We got our directions from http://chemistry.about.com/od/chemistryactivities/ss/slimerecipe_4.htm . Now for the SCIENCE part.... This POLY...

We were doing our Mystery of History (which we love) and we learned about the Egyptians this week. The girls seemed to really have an interest in the culture and the pyramids. We were lucky that we got to do a field trip - thanks to the online VIRTUAL world. ;) We did an online virtual tour through http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/ancient/explore-ancient-egypt.html . We finished up the week with the girls going over to their Nana's house and surprising us with a cake of the map of Egypt. They also made a pyramid on the map. I couldn't be more proud of my girls.

We timed it perfectly to learn about rocks in science and Stonehenge in Mystery of History. You can find our ROCK lesson here . Its hard to imagine standing up 28 ton slabs of rock and making a perfect circle. The girls went rock collecting and tried to guess what type of rock their rocks may have been and then tried to stack up their own rocks to make a perfect circle like Stonehenge. Then we pulled out the dominoes and made our own version of Stonehenge, although dominoes aren't that easy either with falling and making a perfect circle...so imagine having 28 tons of a rock slab that's not a perfect rectangle. :)

The three types of rocks are igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic. To make sure we understood how these types of rocks were formed, we used candy! Igneous rock is formed when melted rocks cool and become hard. So why not demonstrate that with some fondue chocolate (one of my favorite things)?? Sedimentary rock is formed with layers of mud, sand, and animal remains that slowly turn into rock. So we used a Snickers bar to demonstrate this. Metamorphic rock is changed by pressure and heat. So we added a little of our own pressure to some flavored Tootsie Rolls. You know the girls loved this lesson! They got to enjoy it. To finish it all off, they did their own music video with the song we all know the tune of, "We will Rock You". The words of the songs are posted below as well. We will we will rock you! We will we will rock you! Volcanos erupt with lava so hot, it cools and hardens and its igneous rock cuz rocks can change...all over this place...

Who knew ancient history could be fun? We're loving Mystery of History . We enjoyed this week learning about Sumerians and their Ziggurats and Cuneiform tablets and the Tower of Babel. They made their own Cuneiform writing and they loved looking at pictures of their Daddy at the ziggurat in Iraq. The kids found it very interesting that the world has about 5,000 different languages. We believe it all started from...THE TOWER OF BABEL! We did our own Tower of Babel with marshmallows all while listening to FOREIGN languages in music. We didn't have a clue to what languages we were listening to or what they were saying, but it was a great way to demonstrate confusion! We also learned about the Hebrew word "babel", which means confusion. We also get the word "babbling" from that - a toddler babbling can be so confusing! We found humor from that lesson.