Spooky Science

One of the downsides of having a PhD in Science Ed as a mother/teacher is how carefully science activities are chosen.  We don't do many whiz bang magic tricks in our science class.  For example, even though everyone loves making a baking soda volcano, they aren't very good models for how volcanoes actually work.  But today, we made an exception and did some cool science stuff just for the (gasp) fun of it!

But first, a picture in our Halloween shirts...

and in our beautiful fairy aprons Grannie made for all of us.

Then, everyone made some instant "snow" and grew a princess that expanded in water.  

While that was going on, I took one girl at a time and made a soapy, pink, glittery volcano!  

Ava, Zoe, and Avery observe the volcano

Zoe, as the most senior student enrolled in the academy, had to wait until last to do her volcano.  The wait was worth it!

Then, we brought out the slime!  Everyone but Avery was a big fan.  We decided there was something therapeutic about it.  It kept them busy for a long time.

After everyone was de-slimed, we had an orange lunch!

and some cuddles with our youngest student, Charlie.

After everyone left, Lucy broke out the fall bin again.  

This was probably our most fun Fun Friday to date.  What a great group of girls and moms we have!

5 Little Pumpkins and a whole lot more

Today we enjoyed a calm day at home (though formal tiara attire was clearly called for).

We looked on our US map and talked about the upcoming drive from Dallas to Nashville.  

We will meet Nonnie and Papaw in Little Rock, which is halfway.  

We read a fun Halloween book where two little witches add friends to their trick-or-treating group. We used bears as our trick-or-treaters and wrote number sentences for each page.  Our favorite was 10-8=2.  This was when the monster came out and everyone but the two brave witches ran away.

Today, we tried something very new: sensory bins.  I have seen different versions but read about them at Counting Coconuts.  Most fall stuff is very cheap now that it is almost Halloween, so I decided to try a fall bin and see what we thought. I dyed rice, added real and pretend pumpkins, pumpkin seeds, real acorns and pinecones (thanks, Abby, for bringing them all the way from Missouri!!!), orange beads, silk leaves, and anything else I found in the dollar bin (which was 30% off).

There was lots of balancing of irregular objects.

Some pattern making

Lots of sifting through the rice in search of all of a particular type of thing

Several animated versions of "5 Little Pumpkins" 

(pictured, of course, is "rolled out of sight"...the best part by far.)

 Lucy and I played with the bin for almost an hour.  We had so much fun doing all kinds of things.  She used the big beads as money so we each took turns as a store owner selling pumpkins and pinecones.  She balanced pumpkins on my head, talked about how real and silk leaves were the same and different, and just had fun.  I don't know if it will be as magical the second time, but we will see!  

Zoe finished her Water Poster - showing what happens to water as a solid, liquid, and gas.  

Lots of glitter added just the right touch.

Halloween Fun

Where we live, Halloween is a full 2 week experience.  By Halloween night, everyones costumes are worn out from party after party, and we are in full swing around here!

Some things are universal, whether it's homeschool or public school.  The day you get to wear costumes to dance class, don't count on much school going on beforehand!  We actually spread puzzles all over the room and just played for about an hour.

Here is Lucy and her wonderful dance teacher for 2 years running - Ms. Crystal

Lucy in the playoffs for hot potato champ.  Observant readers may notice that Olivia the pig sitting against the wall is wearing Zoe's Annie dress from 2 years ago.

Zoe the fancy hippie doing a Halloween tap number

Today was party day at Spanish Schoolhouse. Here is Zoe and her class.

We did a candy hunt for them - it was a big hit.

Zoe ran out of room on top of her cupcake

Lucy pitching ghosts in a bucket

 I love this picture.  Lucy and Michelle are great friends - she is the absolute perfect teacher for Lucy and we were so glad to have her again this year.

While I was on the phone, Zoe handed me this note "sore=sorry."  I was impressed as a mom and a teacher and relieved that it was only a broken clip - I got a little nervous when I saw it!

Field Journal

I have no idea where she got this name, but Zoe is obsessed with her field journal.  It's the best thing to happen to our school.  She saw a little spiral notebook in Staples and said, "PLEASE can I have this field journal?"  I put it, some tape, pencils, crayons, colored pencils, and scissors in a box and told her she could do whatever she wanted with it.  She has been so busy.  I have seen more effort go into her drawing and writing than in anything she's ever done.  She will copy whole pages of a Fancy Nancy book, write a list to do before our Halloween party, or write a note for her sister.

A whole new world is emerging, and it's so cool to see.  Everything is something to record, write down, scribble, or draw.  I went back and read parts of a book I loved from grad school called The Art of Teaching Writing.  The author talks about giving their early writing purpose and rather than praise it, ask them what they want to do with it.  Since then, she has written birthday cards, letters, to do lists for her dad, lists of bedtime chores, and more.   It's one of the benefits of homeschooling - working and feeling frustrated and then seeing change - or at least progress -  come almost overnight.

Pretty Pumpkins

Today we took a break from our usual Science Fridays with friends.  We are all crazy busy, so we just hung out at home and had a good homeschool day.

Zoe and I are working hard on numbers.  It's tough.  I found these stickers and she plopped in front of the numbers chart and put them in order.  We spent a long time talking about 7, 17, 70, and 71.  It wore us both out!

I got these Usborne Sticker Atlases on clearance this summer.  We put some of the Africa stickers on and talked about the different mountains, buildings, and people we saw.  It's a great book but a little over our heads at this point.

I decided to try the condensation experiment since we were on a roll this week.  We added water to jars and wiped the outside down to make sure it was dry...

Then we added ice and waited until water appeared on the sides of the jar!

We examined the tiny water drops and talked about where they came from.  Tough concept.  Zoe made the connection that it was because of the cold, but it's pretty abstract.

Really, this was the goal of the whole thing.  

We did learn the word condensation and that the water came from the air.

Just to be sure it wasn't leaking through the jar, we set a jar of pasta sauce out of the fridge 

and saw that it, too, had water on the outside!

Groan.  Two crafty days this week!  We have to bring decorated pumpkins to school on Monday.  Our first year, I thought it was a pain so we didn't do it and Zoe was the only kid with no pumpkin!  Zoe found a picture like this when we did our fall collage and wanted to try it.  We got $1 bunches from WalMart.  It was really easy and we love how it looks.

Lucy wanted a rainbow sparkle pumpkin.  Seriously, how nice am I?  

Needless to say, there are no pictures of this process.

By the time we were done, our shirts from yesterday were all dry!  We were very impressed!

Both art and craft

Do not attempt to refresh your browser.  You are on the Smithey Science Academy page, and yes, we did both art and craft today.  Frankly, the whole Spanish language is great and all, but the real reason my kids go to school twice a week is so I don't have to feel guilty for never doing art with them.  Glitter and paint are really not my thing.

Our water study has been going well, but now it's time for the tricker concepts: evaporation and condensation.  We began with the classic puddle experiment (making me miss my days at Michigan - we  talked so much about this concept in the elementary ed class I taught).  We poured a small amount of water on a plate and traced the water.  We predicted what would happen throughout the day.

Then we (gasp) did some painting.  We used a "wet-in-wet" watercolor method and talked about how the paint spread when it hit the wet paper and what we expected to happen to our paper as it dried...and where that water went!  This came from an old favorite: Art and Science Connections.

Zoe practiced reading some color and fall words.

We read some of our library books about Nigeria and learned that the Yoruba people dye their fabrics indigo.  So we did some tie dyeing of our own!  We are very anxious to see the results but are waiting until morning to untie them. (Note the craft!)

Our favorite book about Nigeria so far has been The Village of Round and Square Houses.  We liked the idea of girls living in one place and boys in the other, but the volcano was the real draw.  I still struggle with how to present cultural stories that give explanations for scientific phenomena.  I glossed over that part of the story, but it will continue to come up as we read stories from around the world.

Below you can see girls in the round house, boys in the square house (some boys have no hair) and Fairy Zoe with big wings in between.

After rest time, we were astonished to see no water on our plate!  

We learned the word "evaporate" - not disappear - and talked about water being in the air.  We also were impressed with how dry our paintings were and how our t-shirts were still wet but not as wet as when they were in the sink.  Some days, it all ties together nicely...

But maybe the coolest thing today, was Lucy wrote her name by herself!  In the afternoons, they sometimes ask to do "just a little bit of homeschool" and I found www.twistynoodle.com where you can print out a ton of pictures and modify the text at the bottom.  Big hit!  What a big girl.