Sunday, January 11, 2015

Science experiment Saturday

Since my husband and I tag team homeschool , I get excited when my full  day comes every week but I tend to lesson plan too much and stay up late Thursday  night kind of figuring out our Friday lol. I was too ambitious this past week and we had to make up an hour that I didn't  get to teach him Thursday  morning since he spent the night at Grandma's.  I usually  teach for 1 hr before work Monday -Thursday  then my husband picks  our son up from Grandma's  and he teaches  the remaining 5 hours. I teach  all day Friday.  It works out where  I teach 10 hours a week and my  husband teaches  20. I wish  I had more time to teach but with our work schedules it's  hard. I work 32 hours per week and my husband works 20. I thought  Jason was crazy when he told me he wanted to homeschool  and this first year of transitions  has had a few days of temper  tantrums  (adults and Jack included ). Thank goodness  we live in a great  city with lots of support groups  , co-ops , field trips , P.E. groups, service projects and library activities. As we are approaching  our 100th day of school  , I feel like we all have a grasp on what is expected  from everyone and we have a good flow to our day now. Plus the grandmother's  have been amazing.  They don't  want to do a lot of teaching  but  they will help out some. When Jack spent some time at my Mom's  she made sure he read a book out loud to her  and is getting  in teaching mode rather than just doing. As a teaching  household you don't  just take vitamins  you teach why the human body needs nutrients and you don't  just get up like  a robot and prepare  meals , you have your child help measure and prepare meals too and laundry etc. We don't  include this stuff in our homeschool hours  but we take every opportunity  to instruct and teach. This week I had an hour  to make up and since Jack loves science , after  he completed his math and grammar workbook pages, we had a science experiment  Saturday.
The first experiment we did was on density which he found fascinating that we poured the oil in first then the water then the syrup but everything switched  because of how dense the substance  was.
The second experiment was on solid , liquid and gas. After this was over he played with the  ice until  it melted lol because he didn't  believe that it would take up the same amount  of space in the bowl as the plain water.

The third experiment was to demonstrate  hydration by putting candy  into glasses of water and documenting what happened.  I thought  this was a neat and cheap  way to show cohesive  force as well. Jack loved that the peppermint  lost it's  red stripes.

The last experiment was to determine  how  water affects seeds. Jack thought  it was crazy  how the dried beans soaked up all the water  and changed the volume of beans in the measuring  glass. I took a picture of the first part  of the experiment then the beans are supposed to soak for 25 hrs. I forgot to take an after picture.  Oops

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