Fun Friday-Bubbles!

I absolutely stink at routines and consistency, so Freebie Friday is a great theme but takes all the spontaneity and fun out of blogging for me and turns it into a dreaded chore. Since life is about adapting to weaknesses, I am going to mix it up a bit and still do Freebie Fridays some weeks but also throw in some random Friday fun. So this week we did the bare minimum of bookwork and then devoted the rest of the morning to science fun. A great way to do inexpensive science is to use Steve Spangler's books or websites. He has fun experiments to do with kids and a lot of them can be done with supplies you have on hand. Today we did Bubble Inside a Bubble and the only thing that I had to order for the experiment was a package of pipettes. I got a pack of 100 for $6 on amazon and now I have 98 more for bubble fun and for other cool science in the future.

This experiment was very easy and the kids were able to do it with minimal supervision. I printed out the experiment and then had them do all the prep work and then demonstrated what we were trying to accomplish. After they did some rounds of bubble inside bubble (which took some concentration and involved frustration if bubbles popped), they shifted to creating bubble snowmen and bubble pyramids or just tried creating the biggest bubble possible. The best thing about the Steve Spangler site is that there's a scientific explanation written out for each experiment which can lead to great discussions or lead to further research.

Microscopes are awesome!

If there was one big ticket item that I would recommend, it would be microscope. We have had so many great experiences with our microscope since the purchase and I have also really loved getting to see things. As a public school graduate, I would have loved to have the chance to see a bee or strand of hair under the microscope in elementary school. When I had a job after college that involved fixing phones, I got a huge kick out of looking at my finger at 10,000 times magnification.

I recommend getting a microscope that allows you to look at both slides and 3-d objects and we opted for the Thames and Kosmos Biology Tk2 Scope. I did a lot of research before purchasing and wanted to start with one that was affordable since my kids are still young. This scope came with the basics but also materials they can grow into as they learn to prepare slides. For now we are mostly enjoying seeing what things look like and coming up with new items to investigate. Currently on amazon, the scope is around $90, but I paid $65, so there are deals to be had if you do a little googling.

Here are some of the things that were really cool--

Bumblebee
Wasp (the stinger is so cool!)
A baby tooth
Feather
Black mold on bread (we wore masks to be on the safe side)
Hair
Cat's claw
Cat fur

I think my favorite so far was the black mold because it was so amazing to see much more than I expected and I can't wait to explore even more.

Simple Machines are done!

Well, summer hit us and we got busy. So we took a break before tackling levers and I finally finished the levers worksheet today. Then i also had a great brainstorm about combining pdfs to make a multipage download instead of having to download each part individually :) So here is the link to the 6 worksheets all in one file and here is the link to the corresponding answer sheets.

The books that I used for this lesson came from my library and they were a great series written by Kay Manolis. They are a colorful and easy to understand set of books (which is helpful since I knew next to nothing on simple machines) and I really recommend this series for early readers. The books are easy to find if you google BlastOff Readers: Simple Machines by Kay Manolis.

Simple Machines...finally plugging along

Our most recent science unit began with my son wanting to figure out how zip lines worked, so I figured that it would be a good way to tackle simple machines. So we started with pulleys and got through it pretty quickly. Then mommy took a nice spring break before starting to learn the other machines.

And yes, mommy did have to read up and relearn all sorts of great stuff. In fact, that's a hidden bonus to homeschooling--relearning stuff that you forget a long time ago. Did you know that there are 6 simple machines? Or that a zip line is a movable pulley? I didn't until a couple of weeks ago. That information was long filed away in the no longer pertinent file. Now the trick is to see how long we can both retain this stuff :p

K...editing this post to say that i got smart and figured out how to combine the printouts into two files and I found a better way to share files. The first file has the worksheets and the other one has all the answer keys and you can get the links in this post