Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Science!

I spent all day yesterday cleaning and organizing, so today I determined to spend some time doing activities with the kids. They chose science, so we worked on several projects.
We:

1) Made a new Astronomy notebook by decorating the cover of a blue binder with stickers of stars, space ships, planets, comets, etc. We will be studying Apologia's Exploring Creation with Astronomy book, and a notebook is one critical element.

2) Got started right away with a Magic School Bus astronomy kit. We made a constellation view box (the constellations are punched holes in cards, you look through the box to see them--it's sad but so few stars are visible around here that this is about the only constellations my kids will be viewing until we go camping!) We built a small telescope (lenses and tubes were included in the kit). We made a solar system model (not to scale) with Styrofoam balls. We used balls and a flashlight in a dark room to model the Earth and the Moon. And Lily drew and colored a beautiful picture of the Earth.

3) Luke still wanted to do more science so we pulled out a magnet kit to explore. He had fun finding out how magnets attract and repel each other, what things they stick to, and how to make a simple working compass.

Of course I should have pictures of all this, but my camera battery is dead and I don't know where the charger is. You'll just have to use your imaginations!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

The Magic School Bus kit sounds great. We live in the woods, and in a valley, so it is really hard to see past the trees... I think my kids would love this. Where did you get yours?

Amber said...

Okay, I just realized why I don't do this kind of stuff as often with my kids. How in the world do you have all those supplies on hand??

Paula said...

http://rainbowresource.com
Anything and everything you could ever need for home education and crafts!
type "science kit" into the search and see what comes up.
As for why I have them on hand...well, I've spent the past 5 years or so researching and planning for homeschooling...I've built up a pretty good collection of resources in that time!