Showing posts with label Science. Show all posts
Wonder Workshop: Out of this World
Today saw the launch of the first wonder workshop. It was themed "Out of this World", and we had a full eight kids to start! I had so much fun, and so far the feedback has been awesome -some kids went home and just carried on experimenting!
I thought I'd take you through the workshop by photo...and also lend you some tips if you are wanting to host or start your own co-op.
Once I've planned everything (remember it's my middle name and the way I remove stress from the morning!), I make sure I am prepared for the day. I pack each experiment we're going to do into a set box, or put it into a special place in the kitchen. So here are some boxes ready...
And I try to have something on the table that'll pique their interest as soon as they walk in....
To begin with, we had a few ice breakers as these kids didn't really know each other. There were some connections between the kids, but we played a few name games to help them to remember each others names. As the overarching theme I had chosen was " Out of the World", we spoke about the 8 planets in the solar system (yes, you read right, Pluto is no longer considered a planet, but a dwarf planet, and you can read the ins and outs here). I found this lovely song here, and we did a little game using it.
Then we came inside and speculated what it would be like on the planet closest to the sun...and made these awesome lava lamps! I was blown away by the fun these kids had, and how they changed and altered the experiment to make swirling storms in the glasses too!
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| got to love Mr. Sociable's face! |
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| things do look impressive in a row hey?! |
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| King Arthur's... |
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| Mr T's |
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| got to love the clumps of salt on this! Reminds me of a limestone landscape! |
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all so different! |
And again, this proved such a hit, the kids stayed here forever! I filled up the bottles of colors a couple of times, and after they had played their hearts out, they left them for a while, and when we came back, this is how some had changed:
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| Such beautiful colors |
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| Mr Sociables addition of his lava lamp to the ice created this volcanic looking ice! |
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| Mr M's lovely ice sculpture! |
And then a much needed snack break...
Then some more fun - what if we visited a new planet, what might we discover? Some SLIME perhaps?
Combining two liquids to make...wait for it...a solid...a SLIMY solid! For this one, they worked in designated pairs...
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| got to love Mr M's face! |
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| eugh! They made this color! |
I'm so thankful that I'm following my heart and doing these workshops, and thankful for these precious kids to share them with!
Sharing School: Sensational Senses
Today was the last day in the series I've been doing on the body, and we explored our senses. Here are some of the activities we managed to fit in, some great ideas for next time, and lots of fuel to get you going when it comes to wanting to explore this topic with your kids!
Hearing:
Tasting
Hearing:
- Here's a lovely poem for kids to learn:
The SensesFive little senses are what I need,To use when things are near.I use my eyes to look and seeI use my ears to hear.I use my nose to smell thingsI use my hands to touch.I use my mouth to tasteThe things I love to eat so much.Five little senses standing in a rowTo see, hear, smell, touch and tasteThe things I need to know
- a great song to sing, (to the tune of "Did you ever See a Lassie", nice and simple for musically challenged people like me!). We kept adding in our favorite sounds which included waves crashing (me), a dog barking (Miss K), and a skunk farting (thanks to King Arthur - boys will be boys!)!
- Fill up same sized containers with different things (marbles, gravel, sugar etc) and compare and contrast the sounds you hear.
- Sit still outside somewhere, and see who can count the most sounds in a given time period - we got between 5-7 different sounds in a 20 second period. Amazing what you can hear when you chose to draw aside and be still - think I'll be doing that more often!
Tasting
- Taryn over at Hayes Happenings made this tongue craft a while back which I loved, so we followed her post step by step! Before we put the items on our biscuits, we put them in the center of our tongues to see if we really could taste anything - and we couldn't - how interesting!
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| measuring |
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| tasting |
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| shaping |
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| making |
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| before... |
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| after ... (don't use soft centred sweets for the front - they melted!!!!!) |
- Blindfold your kids and feed them a variety of foods and see if they can guess what it is without seeing it first!
Touching
- Using the blindfold, prepare a number of small bowls of different textures for the kids to feel and enjoy (custard, jelly, cornflour, salt, sugar, ice) without looking. To extend the activity, try to get them to describe what they are feeling what it feels like to them. Help to prompt them to draw comparisons - it feels like a jelly fish etc..., or thicker than the previous one etc. For kids who can write, ask them to be the scribe for the younger ones and throw in some handwriting too!
- We used a mystery bag today, and one of Belle's old toys. Using only their sense of touch, the children had to choose a shape on the ball first and then feel for the correct one in the bag, without looking! I threw in some other items as well to add some fun.
Seeing
- We had a blast looking and laughing at these optical illusions!
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| How many dogs do you see? |
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| His legs...or trunk..?! |
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| Which is longer? Really? Pull out that ruler and measure! |
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| Duck or rabbit? |
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| Which is bigger? Get the kids to cut them out and lay them over one another to see! |
- Make cardboard glasses with cellophane lenses to show kids how different the world would be if their eyes didn't register colors properly....
Smelling
- I filled up a few plastic lids with some interesting stuff from the pantry (coffee, cinnamon, curry, vinegar, vanilla and sage), and then used the blindfold again. The first time round, neither Miss K nor King Arthur could identify anything. The second time round, I asked them what food it made them think of - both associated pancakes with the cinnamon aroma although they couldn't identify the spice's name. Then I allowed them to use their eyes and to taste, and they were able to get most of them!
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| ready to be a sleuth! |
Extension Activities
- Although we didn't get around to it today, I loved the extra info this site (scroll down to the bottom) provides on animals and their senses. It's a wonderful idea to link studying our senses with appreciating how complex God has made animal's senses. Make it into a mystery game i.e. I'm thinking of an animal that has taste receptors on its feet, and has hairs on its wings so it can sense changes in air pressure, which animal is it? (a butterfly). Or read the information out loud and ask your kids to draw a picture that incorporates all the animals mentioned...you get the picture - go wild!
I hope you found this helpful! Let me know what worked for you!
Sharing School: Delightful Digestion!
Today in our shared school morning we took a closer look at the organs inside our bodies and what they do...
Lungs....
We explored the volume of air in our lungs and boy did they have fun! The principle is that if you breathe out through the tube, the air form your lungs displaces the water in the bottle. We've been playing with this every free moment! King Arthur and Miss K had vastly different volumes of air which was fascinating, and I'm on the search for a 5L bottle now to test Braveheart's lung capacity! (the one we used was 1.5L. Make sure your bucket is large enough to hold the displaced water!)
Then we moved on to the digestive system. First they wiped off their tongues with paper towels before sampling a dry cracker. Without saliva on their tongues, they were unable to taste it! Fascinating!
FUN!!!!
Lungs....
We explored the volume of air in our lungs and boy did they have fun! The principle is that if you breathe out through the tube, the air form your lungs displaces the water in the bottle. We've been playing with this every free moment! King Arthur and Miss K had vastly different volumes of air which was fascinating, and I'm on the search for a 5L bottle now to test Braveheart's lung capacity! (the one we used was 1.5L. Make sure your bucket is large enough to hold the displaced water!)
Then we moved on to the digestive system. First they wiped off their tongues with paper towels before sampling a dry cracker. Without saliva on their tongues, they were unable to taste it! Fascinating! Then they broke up some bananas and strawberries as their teeth would, put them in a jug, added some water for saliva, and blitzed! I love the wonder on Miss K's face!
They poured this ever so lowly into glasses, just like the stomach would release it into their small intestines! Delicious!
To examine peristalsis, they tried to push an apple through a sock - the same way food is forced into their stomachs.... and then to further illustrate that food doesn't fall down into their stomach, they did some handstands and bends to show they could still successfully swallow a cracker....
Then (for some Language Arts) they listened to each other's stomach and tried to describe the sounds they could hear...
Then they measured out how long an adult's small intestine could be, and cut out a piece of string and tried to show how it would fit into my abdomen!
Then after a snack time and some stories, we played this Body Bingo game:
It really is fantastic - it comes with three different difficulty levels, and for these two children I just named the organs straight out. (Warning, this took FOREVER to download, no idea why, so persevere!)
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| Here they are preparing their boards, choosing the organs they want to place on their own Bingo Boards |
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| Coloring in to come! |
Have you done any fun experiments lately?
Lovely links that inspired me for this day:
- hands on digestion activities
- here's a great game we played looking at video clips inside the body
- digestion experiments for kids
- Body Bingo
- Body trivia
- A story of digestion particularly suited to kids who like 'yucky' things!
- A great slide show complete with riddles
