Project Day - Stick Bombs

After watching a couple of you tube videos the girls have become enamoured with stick bombs. So much so that they devoted a large chunk of their project day on Monday to making and releasing stick bombs. They patiently built them again

and again.

It takes approx 25 mins to use all our sticks and about 10 seconds to 'explode'

I'd say a definite way to teach them patience and keep them amused on a rainy day : )

Oceans week 2 - Salinity and the Arctic ocean

Our second week of ocean studies focussed on looking at the salt levels in the ocean:- we looked at what made the oceans salty, how salt water is heavier than fresh water (the dyed salt water sinks when added to fresh water - our control was to add dyed fresh water to a second cup)

and we also replicated the salt levels in the dead sea (just over 30% salts which works out at 340g of salt per litre of water) which led to a great game of  'what can we make float that normally sinks' - yes I know that game needs a new name, any suggestions?

We did get sidetracked by the snow so decided to use it to our advantage by studying the Arctic ocean and the wildlife found there - this naturally led to a discussion on how the animals keep warm - cue the lard activity, Rose was most impressed that the lard kept her hand warm in the snow : ) 

This also led to a quick study of the poles and what makes them different - land under ice in the Antarctic compared to just floating ice in the Arctic.

More Secret Writing

The girls decided to take the secret writing a step further and see if other juices would have the same result.

In case you can't make it out we tried (in order) lemon, apple, lime, grapefruit, grape and pineapple.

The girls guessed it was the sugar burning before the rest of the paper but after some research it turned out the 'inks' weaken the fibres of the paper so the they discolour first. (the same article  in About Chemistry suggested ironing your paper rather than heating over a fire, to prevent mishaps - now why didn't I think of that).

So one simple line from a story book has opened up a whole can of worms - turns out there are methods for using milk, onion, saliva and playing with acid and base reactions to hide your messages - something tells me we will be doing this for a long time yet : )

Secret Writing

Sunflower and Lilly are currently reading through the 'Lady Grace Mysteries' series.

Sunflower came up to me last night because she had read something and wanted to know if it is true - in the story Lady Grace is a young Maid-of-Honour to Queen Elizabeth and she keeps a daybook (like a diary), she comments that she wanted to write in seville orange juice so her writing would remain secret - apparently it only shows once heated. 

Cue today science lesson, totally unprepared as I have no seville oranges but couldn't miss a chance like this. 

I juiced a clementine and set the girls to writing

once we had left the juice to dry naturally,

we gently heated it over the fire to reveal the secret message.

After that they had to try various heat methods - candle heat, radiator, hair dryer and stove top (some worked and some didn't). Personally I think it was just a good excuse to do some more drawing in juice : )

Project Day

I've had a few people ask me questions about how I expect our new project day to work; how much planning I will do for it, how involved will I be with it, will I encourage them to do projects on specific things etc.

I thought it easiest to post about it and show what they did.

I've always believed the best learning you do is when you 'choose' to learn something and make all the decisions yourself. With this in mind, the idea behind 'project day' is to encourage them to develop their research and planning skills and fuel their passion for leaning.

For example, Sunflower decided to learn about mythlogical creatures. Luckily I had a few books about the subject so my planning consisted of digging out the books, printing off a world map and putting it all in a pile with some paper and pens.

I pretty much left her to it with the instruction that she had to do some reading and writing about her subject. She decided to draw pictures of the animals on the world map and started to write a journal about them.

Lilly choose to write a book so she just needed paper, pens and a quiet space to write.

Tulip was more hands on - I showed her how to draw the shape onto Styrofoam and then cut it out to stick onto a cork. After this she was happy to be left working on her own and trying out different things.

Rose wanted to bake which was fairly hands on for me but also very tasty  (mmmm scones) 

So overall I left them to it, they seemed to really enjoy themselves and are quiet keen to do more. It has worked well so far and my hope is that it will develop their research skills and help them to better plan their time (fingers crossed).