Science Lab: Exploring Electricity

Hi! I'm Leslie- a homeschooling momma to a 5 year old girl and 20 month old boy.  The 2 are as different as night and day.  I share our adventures here to both inspire learning at home and chronicle our lives, because honestly, I never started the baby books and my kids will just have to look back on their childhood through this blog... ha! #keepinitreal

Oh my goodness yall!

Exploring science with littles is so much fun- especially when studying ELECTRICITY!  

Mother Goose Time gave us some excellent ideas and resources to make studying this a blast!

Our day started with a question: What do you turn on and off?

This simple question led to a field trip around the house exploring all the things we turn on and off.

From toys and light switches, to the washer, dryer and diffuser, there are items in every single room that my girl turns on and off.  Taking a quick field trip helped jog her memory to all the things.

We then explored STATIC ELECTRICITY.

I blew up a balloon, and we took turns rubbing it on our heads and watching our hair stand up on end!  My son got such a kick out of seeing his sister's hair attach itself to the balloon, that he too had to have a turn. 

We explored if rubbing the balloon on our head would provide enough static electricity to make the balloon stick to the wall.  It did!  We did several experiments and noticed that the static electricity seemed to diminish over time.  Our balloon stuck to the wall for 12 seconds, then 10, then none, and finally 4 seconds.  We were able to talk about scientists having to repeat experiments over and over again to see it something really works.

During our Math time, MGT sent us Connect the Circuit (connect the dots) worksheet.  Each dot was numbered 1-11, and it was a little too simple for my girl.  However the "Challenge" in the teacher guide suggested for the child to count backwards and start at 11 which she did.  

Grateful for that suggestion!

It was time to explore LIGHTS and FLASHLIGHTS.

We discussed why outlets were dangerous and went around the house finding them, pointing, and then holding our hands up saying "Don't touch!"  My son loved this!  He still says "Don't touch" when he notices an outlet.

It's hard to find old lights when everything is going LED, but I found this bulb in one of our lamps, and we were able to look at the filament inside.  Then she screwed it into the lamp and I plugged it into the wall.  She pulled the switch and Vo-la! Let there be light!

My teacher guide then suggested a Broken Flashlight activity where I supplied some disassembled flashlights.  My daughter explored putting the flashlight back together.  The challenge was getting the batteries turned in the right direction.  When she got it to work, her brother had a blast chasing after the light she shined around the room.

During our Creative Art time, my kiddos used our Do a Dot paint markers to color their lightbulb cutouts MGT provided.  I love these markers!  Whenever we have a painting activity that I just do not want to break out the paint, these markers are the next best thing!  

We added a black twist tie later for the filament. 

Our day ended with us curling up together and reading out of our Ingenuity book that MGT provided this month in our Science box.  I LOVE this book!  It's a great biography for preschoolers covering 5 different scientists.  I loved reading to my little perfectionist that it took Thomas Edison so many tries to get the lightbulb to work.  She really struggles with trying over and over again.

Whew!  What a fun filled day!  

Which one of these activities will you try with your littles?

Happy learning friends!

Science Lab: Exploring Our Senses

Hi! I'm Leslie- a homeschooling momma to a 5 year old girl and 20 month old boy.  The 2 are as different as night and day.  I share our adventures here to both inspire learning at home and chronicle our lives, because honestly, I never started the baby books and my kids will just have to look back on their childhood through this blog... ha! #keepinitreal

Three years ago we started our homeschool journey with Mother Goose Time.

We started with this box- the Science Lab.

A lot has changed including some of the activities.  I actually blogged about doing this particular activity 3 years ago, and here it is again but with new graphics and twists on the activity from long ago. Here's how it went to you can try it today with your littles.

Scientists use their 5 senses to make observations; it's actually called "Qualitative Observations."

My scientist and her research partner (little brother, Everett), explored all sorts of items we had around the house using their 5 senses.

However, first things first... read a book.  Today I chose My Five Senses by Aliki.

As we read the book, the scientists pointed to that particular body part.

When talking about smelling, my kids  researchers pointed to their noses.

After reading the book and poking at all sorts of body parts, I cut out the 5 Senses Cards provided from MGT.  I laid them in front of my older scientist.  She would grab an item from the tray of research materials (aka anything you can find around the house), and then decide which sense she used when making observations of that object.  She would move the card if she used that sense.

For example, with the banana, she used all her senses except hearing.  

observing a banana

Observing how this candle smells... mmmm...... gardenias!

You can't have an observation day without SLIME.

Don't forget sound!  Grab those bells you have hidden in your cabinet!  That's where mine are and where they will be returning soon. Ha! #truth

We had so much fun with this activity!  It was a perfect one to coincide with snack time too.  Get those taste buds working!   My favorite part was watching her really chew her goldfish slowly, trying to think of words to describe what was going on in her mouth.

The scientists favorite parts:  eating the banana or ringing those bells over and over again.

Stay tuned for more adventures this month as we revisit the Science Lab!

Preschool: Safari Food Fun

This week has been one of those weeks where I am sooooo thankful for homeschooling.

We had a busy beginning to the week, but the last few days- at the end of the week-

 my girl has been battling the flu. Flu B actually.  So please forgive all the pajama pictures.  

She lived in them for the last few days.  *Homeschool blessing*

I am so thankful we have our Mother Goose Time box, can work it in on our own time, and not worry about missing out on a lesson. 

Last week we peeked into how the African Culture dresses looking at the beautiful beadwork they create.  This week we still delved into the African Culture as we looked into their diet.  The teacher guide suggested quite a few activities that had us searching for food, putting it in baskets, and practicing balancing those baskets on our heads.  

We practiced balancing different baskets, then we took turns hiding and searching for play food around the living room.  We easily played this game for 30 minutes or more.  

We also looked at the diet of African animals.

From our play kitchen stash, I grabbed a hamburger patty (meat) and a pear (plant).

I had Avaleigh sort our animal cards provided by MGT between carnivores and herbivores. Although my girl was not very familiar with those terms, she knew enough about the animals to know what they ate.  The only one she struggled with was the vulture.  

I told her a vulture was similar to a buzzard here in Texas.  

MGT supplied us with this cute poster!  You put a picture of an animal (the last is always the lion), and read it as if you were reading Brown Bear, Brown Bear What Do You See? 

The only difference is once you say "I see a LION looking at me," the next sentence is "RUN!"  

She loved switching out all the animal cards and reading the story.

Avaleigh has always loved that book- it was one of the first ones she read to Everett when we brought him home from the NICU, which is pictured below from December 2017.  Heart melt....

On the back of the "What Do You See?" poster, was the Food Web poster pictured below.

The numbers on the web matched the number on the cards, so placing them was pretty easy. 

But when Avaleigh first looked at the picture, she didn't pay attention to the numbers instead... 

She really focused on the diagram.

I asked her to find all the animals that would eat grass and put them at the bottom. 

Then I asked her what animals would eat the grass eating animals?

That's how the lion ended up above the elephant pictured below.

But it led to a great conversation!

"Avaleigh, do you think the lion would eat a hyena?"

"Yes."

"Do you think a lion would eat a cheetah?"

"Yes."

Then she noticed the numbers on the card and on the web and moved her lion card to the top.

We only had 8 cards, but there is space for another.  I am not sure why, but we could totally cut out pictures of other animals and work on this food web again!

And just FYI, I taught food webs and chains extensively in 3rd and 4th grades, and again for a little bit in 6th grade!  My preschooler is already getting engaged in that science concept.  Love it!

She asked to color afterwards, so I pulled out our Letter C coloring sheet from today.

Perfect timing.

This past month I have noticed how much she has been coloring things the way they actually appear instead of just whatever she felt like.

She really made her corn look like corn and her carrot look like a carrot, but her cat was the one I was most impressed with.

She named her cat "Reddy" because "He's red."

Makes sense.

 I love how she colored in a pattern format.  She made the inside of his face orange, along with his spots and the end of his tail.  Yall... she has never really done this.  I am so glad we homeschool so I can catch these details and see how much she's learning and thinking.

After making our C book, we played with our zebra striped letter parts from Zebra day and she practiced making letters.

The very first letter she put together was this Q. 

I know I say it just about every week, but I am so thankful for our little school bus box of MGT materials.  I love that it's fun, and can be worked in whenever we have time, and is something we both look forward to even on days we might not feel well.

I love the smiles, the learning, the growing, and the fun we get to have as a family.

It truly is a blessing.

Lessons from Ice Day

Busy.  Life is just so busy...both in the everyday normal (laundry, cleaning, feeding, cooking, errands...all the stuff), and even in schooling (especially public school- I speak from experience).

To slow down means I have to make a conscience effort to stop, listen, and observe the world around me...especially watching my kids learn.

  There are treasures all around us... many that I neglect to see due to busyness.

This week we looked into the Sights and Sounds of the outdoors with Mother Goose Time. Even though it might seem that there isn't much happening during the winter outdoors, there is so much beauty if we just slow down to see it and take it in.  I learned this lesson the hard way on ICE day.

Not gonna lie.  Ice day was HARD- because teaching with a curious hands on 1 year old who hates to take long naps and be contained in any way possible makes teaching my 4 year old girl difficult.  Therefore our ICE day was split into 2 days.  

Sanity is more important than a lesson plan. Always.

Using an eyedropper and white glittery paint, Avaleigh squirted and dripped paint to resemble icicles while Everett schemed ways to get his hands on her work.

In the end, it turned out beautiful.  But seriously yall, in the moment pictured above I was about to lose it (I had already listened to him scream/whine for at least an hour)

However, as I look at this picture I captured, I see the look of wonder in his eyes and although the moment was difficult, there's sweetness in it too.  I wish I had slowed down then to see it instead of getting so frustrated.  Maybe I'll remember that next time...

On Ice Day round 2, we completed a really neat science experiment!

Down here in Texas, we hardly get snow, but we do have ice occasionally.

This experiment teaches how salt helps melt ice,

Although Avaleigh's string did not have ice cubes actually come off with the string like the illustration depicts on the card, she could feel that the string had become frozen to the ice due to the salt melting the ice.  I had her draw in her journal the experiment and label it.  Then she told me what happened and I wrote it down.

Oh and that picture on the right is a whale with hurt fins, and some kind of animal (octopus I think) helping carry it.  What can I say? Her favorite show is Octonauts. ha!

We finished our Ice Day by making Egg shakers, which was a STEAM station mentioned in last week's MGT materials.  I made egg shakers a few years ago, which you can read about here, the only altercation I did was actually hot glue the eggs together.

They are my son's new favorite toy.  And for $0.88 who can beat that?

Here's a little 1:20 video of them enjoying the shakers together.

How can you tie the winter outdoors to egg shakers?

Use items from the outdoors to fill them, or try to mimic sounds we hear outdoors with a certain egg shaker sound.  Lately, it has been raining constantly here, and an egg shaker filled with sugar matches the sound of the rain outside my window.  

I know we are all busy- especially at Christmas time.  If there is anything ICE day taught me, it's that I have to slow down, breathe, and savor the sweet moments I get with my kids even if these moments are disguised in chaos.  I have to choose to see it- I have to look actively look for these moments otherwise I can miss the beauty.  Just like we all can miss the beauty of the Sights and Sounds of the Winter Outdoors.

Happy learning!

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Preschool Science: Volume and Water Displacement

I get so tickled when my preschooler does things that I used to teach in 4th and 6th grade.

Understanding VOLUME is a huge concept in both grade levels.

This month with our preschool curriculum we are studying Fables and Folktales; one being 

The Crow and the Pitcher- an Aesop fable.

The story goes that there once was a crow who was so thirsty on a dry, hot, summer day and the only water that could be found was in a pitcher.  However try as he might, his beak could not reach the water.  Using his brain, he determined to drop pebbles in the pitcher causing the water to rise to where he could get drink.  Smart smart crow.

After reading the fable, we did the STEAM experiment that Mother Goose Time suggested in the teacher guide. 

We used a beaker from when we did the Science Lab unit from Mother Goose Time, and a bunch of plastic gems that MGT sent with this unit.  We drew a line with a dry erase marker at the water level and then watched it rise as my girl put more and more beads in the beaker.

"Momma, look!  It's getting higher and higher!"

As the water reached the top of the beaker, my girl tried to take a sip and she could fully understand how the crow was able to drink.  We emptied the beads and did the experiment again, 

and again, and again.

Because preschoolers...and science.  You have to do many tests to make sure the conclusion is valid. 

If I was teaching my 4th and 6th graders, this would be an excellent Engage lesson (5 E Lesson plan)

Using a beaker or graduated cylinder, kids could actually find the volume of a pebble or bead by subtracting the starting volume (water level) from the water level volume after the bead was placed inside. 

My little girl.... already doing big things in science.  Big concepts start early.