What we Learned Today

Today we experimented with different paper airplane designs.
We talked about wind currents and lift, but mostly had fun trying out four different designs of paper airplanes.

1. was easy and fun to do. It kept wanting to hit Milo. It did like to crash land though…particularly after we added stickers to it. 🙂

2. we didn’t like. It was too wobbly and didn’t fly straight. “it’s not a good plane mommy.”

3. was HARD to make. It’s supposed fly outside and it went far inside, but it was VERY difficult to make and I’m not convinced we made it properly.

4. was easy to make and fun to do with a boy child. It flew like the first one… long and far and kept wanting to scare Milo (the lad’s cat).

will add pics later. 🙂

The lad also did
on some book work. Copying letters and doing some early math. 🙂

Today I set the lad up with Magnets, iron filings, nails and what not. He took it from there.

Things the lad learned or that we talked about, not necessarily in the order learned/taught

1. water doesn’t change how a magnet acts
2. water doesn’t wash off iron filings
3. iron filings are fun to watch on paper – you can make them dance
4. iron filings will cling to a magnet and they are very sticky.
5. magnets can break easily if they are the stick type
6. magnets sometimes stick end to end and sometimes they don’t…sometimes they stick in the middle and sometimes to the side. (when I ask Justin if that is because of polarity he says yes)
7. nails sometimes jump up the side of a magnet while others just cling loosely and others stick very hard to the bottom of it and we don’t know why that is.
8. iron filings will rust.
9. magnets have a north and a south (but Justin doesn’t really get this at this point)
10. iron filings are very small…but they stick in long lines when they dance…it’s fun to make them move around in clumps. 🙂

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.

1. Vaseline is slippery.
2. Balloons are fun to pop! 🙂

Did you know that
1. you can write on paper even if you have vaseline sticking between two pieces of paper
2. vaseline helps you put a skewer through a balloon.
3. if you put vaseline on the outside of a balloon AND put the balloon into water that the vaseline gets “more” (as in it gets soft and spreads out over everything).

Skewers plus vaseline put up through the bottom of the balloon works 5 times out of seven.
Skewers plus vaseline put through the top of a balloon works 0 times out of five.
Skewers with NO vaseline NEVER works pushed through a balloon
Skewers plus vaseline put through the side of a balloon works 0 times out of five.

That a piece of paper coated with vaseline sticks to other paper. BUT a skewer coated with vaseline will NOT stick to a piece of paper.

Vaseline will help a piece of paper stick to a balloon and it sticks better than using tape.

Justin LIKES homeschooling 🙂