A Net in Time

Curriculum and book reviews, faith, homeschooling and more!

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What we Learned today : Density

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It was actually two days ago, but life got busy that night.

We took
Corn syrup
Vegetable oil
and coloured water.

Put them in a wide mouth mason jar.
about an inch of each.

We discovered.. corn syrup sits on the bottom, oil goes to the top, and water is sandwiched in-between

Then we had the fun of finding things to put the jar.

Thumbtacks, lego, unpopped popcorn, raisins, chocolate chips (that led to an impromptu snack), grape, screw, bolt, nut, white thing that acts as a foot to something or other, millet seed, tomato, plastic from a bag, and such like.

We learned that lego and millet seed and plastic floats on top of everything!
Screws and metal things sink all the way to the bottom!
and most everything else sits between water and corn syrup. but the fish food sits JUST ABOVE where the oil and water line meet. We found that rather intriguing.

We learned that a pencil put pointy end in sinks farther than a pencil put on it’s side (it was a small pencil).

it was lots of fun learning about the weight of things and how fluids are different thicknesses.

Science on the brain

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They put together a variety of science based videos on you-tube.

rather interesting to watch them.

Measuring Yourself.

How strong a strand of hair?

How to keep an egg from breaking

go check them out. If you go straight to you-tube it will connect you with more of them. Science is fun and interesting. 🙂

What We Learned Today – Jet Engine

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This come from the book “101 great science experiments by Neil Ardley”.

Justin saw this one in the book and just wanted to do it. In fact he insisted for the next two hours that we go home right now so that he can do it. We of course insisted that we had our things to do first, so we ran our errands and eventually headed home.

One blue balloon attached to a straw on a string. He’s ready to let go.

and so he did…the end result.. and boy…did it ever zip fast. Just like a jet engine!

Once we ran through that a couple of times it was time for the boy to just experiment with a balloon and tape and other such stuff. And Experiment he did….First he asked for a tied up balloon… and then he whacked it back and forth a couple of times. The he changed the tape. We went from packing tape to masking tape. and instead of two pieces, he used three. That held the way he wanted it too.

So then he went to the kitchen where he retrieved a straw and a q-tip. I wondered “HUH? what is he up to now?”He proceeded to stick the straw in his mouth and blow the Q-tip at the balloon. He did this about 5 times with an unhappy “AW” being the result. I finally asked him what he was doing. He demonstrated with spinning the balloon all the way around the string. So I asked “why don’t you think it’s working”. His response “It’s not heavy enough.”

So he decided next time to blow the q-tip into dad’s ear and just chortled. 🙂

Next change in plan.

He built a bumper

and then he built a glider.

and now all the bunnies in bunny town are happy because they can safely hang on and zip down the string. The bumper will give them a nice soft landing so they don’t get bumped off. 🙂 All is well. 🙂

His final chortle of this experiment time was to jam the q-tip into the straw and then say “mommy, blow in this”. When I couldn’t get it out, he laughed. 🙂 He’s a fun, silly lad.

Sketch Tuesday – something that grows on trees

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This is our boy’s first sketch that we’ve submitted to Sketch Tuesdays. 🙂

We were to sketch something that grew on trees.
The Buggy chose to do crabapples. The top one is very mouldy.

We have a crabapple tree out front that my hubby grew from a wee seed. It gets nice crabapples, it also gets a lot of not nice (as the buggy would say, mouldy) crabapples. 🙂

In case you wonder what the black circles are… those are the branches that the Crabapples grow on.

Review: Math in the Right Direction

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Math in the Right Direction: Forms of Sequential Memory That Affect Learning By Anne-Marie Laliberté-Denis is a WeeBook published by The Old Schoolhouse.

I have to admit, the second part of this e-book titled I found a bit intimidating… what exactly is Sequential Memory
and just how will it affect learning and will I be able to remember it? That of course didn’t stop me from reading the book. 🙂

The author points out that as home-schoolers we “have the opportunity to tap into the different forms of sequential
memorization (really learning math), thereby avoiding re-teaching or frustration when faced with skills that just don’t seem to “stick.” ” We are not limited to working with 25-30 students and having to primarily work with short-term memory (knowing enough to pass a test). We can use different methods to help our student(s) retain the information that they need to.

I appreciated the fact that the author listed some different things we can do to help students get their facts into their long term memory.

This book is worth reading. 🙂