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Mar. 7, 2009

The Science of Light & Color

Posted in Science and other Hands On activities

I just have to share with you this really fantastic book that we are using right now for our science studies.

Super Science ~ Light & Color by Frank Millson has got to be the coolest little book that you could add to your bookshelves for studying light and color! At the bargain price of under $10 it has all the materials included to complete 10 great experiments sure to please everyone ;)

It covers topics like what light is and how it travels with easy to understand, illustrated and short and to the point explanations. K started by making a simple periscope learning about how light reflects followed by learning about shadows and their two shades: umbra & penumbra *grin*.

Then it was time to learn about transparent and translucent items, how they effect the path of light and refraction in action! Included with the book are 3 plastic lenses in concave, convex and flat shapes that are ready to be filled with gelatin and used to observe how they refract light and change the images you view with them. I think that this was our favorite experiment :)

We learned about white light, prisms and how they can disperse white light creating a visible spectrum with a pair of super cool prism glasses that come with the book and the above spectrum disk that when spun like a top really fast combines all of the colors back to a white color.

The final experiments in the book teach about how and why we see certain colors with the use of the three additive primary colors of light and how they differ from the primary colors (red, yellow & blue) that you use in art.

K really enjoyed working through all of the experiments and I was happy with the simplicity of them and the fact that everything was included! I could have easily given this book to K and he would have been able to do it on his own, but I wanted to join in on the fun *grin*. So if you are looking for something that your child can work on with minimal supervision then this is the one :) If you know of some great little science books like this one I would love to hear about them!

Blessings,

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Jan. 30, 2009

Magnet Fun

Posted in Science and other Hands On activities

This year we are using TOPS Magnetism which is part of our Sonlight science curriculum and it is so much fun! We have been testing out magentic fields and the strength of magents so far. In the above picture K suspended a paperclip underneath of the magnet without touching it and as far away from it as he could without breaking the magnetic field. The he passed objects like paper, tinfoil, paperclips, pennies and such between the two to see which ones would break the magentic field and which ones wouldn't. It was very interesting and then he had to make some predictions based on his previous results. It was great!

Today he tested the strength of his magnet by hanging as many paper clips from it as he could without them dropping. He started with 24....

And then started layering masking tape on the bottom of the magnet and then removing paperclips to see how many it would end up holding after 60 layers of tape! He just loves hands on projects like this and it is a welcome relief after tackling some of the tougher subjects :)

Blessings,

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Jan. 27, 2009

Our Valentine Tree

Posted in Science and other Hands On activities

I just had to share with you this fun little Valentine Tree that the kids and I created a couple of days ago :) We had previously been making handmade felt hearts that I had hinted to you about here on my blog a while back... well here is how they turned out :)

I picked a branch off of our snowball tree outside the back door and spray painted it with a semi-gloss white paint to coat it and then hung it to dry by the wood fire. After it had dried we planted it in an aluminum pail of rocks and decorated it with our felt hearts.

I had just found a great pack of super sweet vintage reproduction valentines with flocked velvet on them so we added to our tree along with some tin birds that I had stashed away in my craft supplies :)

I am very happy with how it turned out and I don't know why we didn't do this years ago! We always decorate an Easter tree very similar to this with eggs and bunnies but never give much thought to Valentine's Day besides trading cute little cards with each other :) So this was a fun project to do together and one I plan to do every year.
For more photos of our tree check out my craft blog HERE.

Blessings,

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Nov. 30, 2008

Christmas Cards

Posted in Science and other Hands On activities

We have had a busy day of card making today *grin*. The kids have been cutting out felt trees and getting glue all over themselves!

Punching out felt Christmas balls and of course more gluing!

They're still wet in the photo, that's why they look discolored but I think that they did a pretty good job and they can't wait to mail them away to everyone :) Hope you all had a great afternoon to!

Blessings,

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Nov. 15, 2008

THINK ~ Windmill Challenge

Posted in Science and other Hands On activities

We've missed the last couple of THINK challenges but we are back in the game! *grin*. The challenge this week is to make a windmill using a couple sheets of paper, 2 straws, string, paperclips, and a button.

K quickly remembered that pinwheels are just like a windmill and set off with one of his sheets of paper. Luckily I could remember how to make one! LOL. After I gave him the run down on how to fold and cut his paper he was set to go :)

The button was going to come in awful handy to secure his pinwheel in the center and to give it some strength for what he was about to do, but the tiny little length of string he was allowed to use had him stumped!!

Just how was he going to sew on a button if he didn't have enough string to loop it in and out of the holes??

This stumped him for a minute and then the light bulb came back on. *grin* He didn't need to go in and out of the button holes numerous times... he just needed to get it down and up through the holes so that he could tie it off in a knot by hand :)

The next brain stumper was trying to figure out how to attach his windmill to his straw and still get it to spin freely.

K didn't realize that those pesky little paperclips could be bent into the perfect windmill shaft :) He bent out one end like above and then pierced it through the backside of his pinwheel and through one of the button holes which provided the perfect fit for it and let his windmill turn smoothly :)

All that was left was for him to fit the other end of the paperclip into the end of the straw and voila, he had created a windmill :)

He did a great job :) Below is a video of it in action as he blows on it to make it go.

Blessings,

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Oct. 18, 2008

THINK ~ Egg Challenge

Posted in Science and other Hands On activities

The THINK challenge for this week is to consruct some sort of structure using straws and 12 inches of tape that would be able to hold an egg (raw or boiled) at least one inch above the table.

K started by pushing straws into one another to try and save tape and make the perimeter of his stand. Then he crisscrossed them over the top to make a little nest :)

Looking good so far! We opted for a raw egg to really put the pressure on *grin* and measured to make sure his stand was high enough and so far it was.

Success!!! K put the egg onto the straw stand and it held and it was over 1 inch above the table to. Hooray :)

Check out this THINK challenge and past ones to really flex your brain muscles!

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Oct. 16, 2008

Leaf Embroidery

Posted in Science and other Hands On activities

I ran across a super inspiring Flickr group yesterday showcasing some amazing crewel projects which just happened to be leaves and since the kids and I are learning about leaves right now we just had to give this a try :) So out came the embroidery hoops, floss, needles, some muslin for embroidering on and a collection of leaves that we found outside.

We started by tracing our leaves onto the muslin.

After the outline was made K filled in freehand where the veins would be on his leaf...

and L did a bang up job tracing hers as well *grin*.

They used a simple running stitch to follow their lines.

Here is K's completed leaf. I think it turned out really great! He mixed it up and added yellow veins so that it would look more accurate and then he had the brilliant idea of doubling the lines so that they stuck out like they do on the back of a leaf.

Here is L's leaf :) Brings a smile to my face every time I see it *grin*. I'm not sure where we are going to display them yet but I think they deserve a prominent place on the wall. I can't wait to try my hand at one later. You could get really creative and make them mutli colored all over like a falling leaf or better yet, check out the flickr group I mentioned at the beginning of the entry. I just might try and make one like they did :)

Have fun making some embroidered leaves of your own!

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Oct. 12, 2008

THINK ~ Paper Car

Posted in Science and other Hands On activities

This weeks THINK challenge was to make a car out of paper using 4 sheets of paper, 2 markers, 2 pencils and tape and then see if it would roll down a ramp. One of the rules was that you couldn't use scissors so K ripped the paper into the shapes that he wanted :)

One of the greatest challenges K had was figuring out how to make wheels! First he made large wheels that were one ply thick and they were much to floppy then he taped them to the axles with the axles poked through the car, but then they wouldn't turn properly. In the end he decided to roll an entire sheet of paper into a long rectangular strip and then wound it tightly around one of the markers to make a nice stiff and durable wheel. Success!!

With his wheels all made it was time to test out his car and see if it would actually roll.

He built a makeshift ramp with a couple of over sized board books and sent it for a test roll :) At first it only rolled a little ways, so I got him to access it to see why it wasn't going further and it turned out that one of his wheels was a little bit misshapen so he fixed it up and the next run was successful.

His paper car rolled a total length of 38 inches. He was extremely happy to see it go :) If you have a chance head over to the THINK blog and try out some of the challenges yourself, you won't be disappointed :)

Blessings,

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Oct. 4, 2008

THINK ~ Bridge Challenge

Posted in Science and other Hands On activities

A couple of weeks ago I ran across a great blog that was all about getting kids to think outside the box by giving a limited list of supplies to use and a task that needed to be completed. Fun!! I love challenges like that and I knew the kids would to. The difficult part was keeping my mouth shut while they did it so I didn't interfere with their own ideas *grin*.

This week's project was bridges and all you were allowed to use was some spaghetti, a couple of spoons, cups, paper, a chunk of tape and then build a bridge that spanned 9 inches and then test its strength by piling pennies and quarters on top of it. Simple right?

Actually it seemed to be a piece of cake for K :)

After taping his spoons together and fortifying it with the spaghetti and the wider width of paper for stability he was set to start adding his pennies and quarters.

Here it is just before it tipped!! It held a whopping 216 pennies and 50 quarters which weighed 1 pound 12 ounces. It never actually broke but leaned a little to far over so he's going to try it again and see if he can beat his record :)

Blessings,

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Sep. 28, 2008

Unplugged Project ~ Fruit (Thanksgiving Turkeys)

Posted in Science and other Hands On activities

This week Unplug Your Kids' weekly unplugged project is FRUIT.

I am completely nuts about stamping with apples and potatoes and with Thanksgiving coming up in 2 weeks what better time than to do something turkeyish *grin*.

The weather cooperated perfectly and we set up our painting station outside since this one was going to be a wee bit messy :) K and L picked out an assortment of fall colored paints, putting a blob of each onto our palette, filled up some buckets for hand wash stations and I brought out an apple cut in half so each of them had their own chunk for stamping and a couple of corks :)

We started by dipping our apple into a nice blob of paint so that it had a nice coating. They found that the more paint on the apple, the better the print was so don't be shy with the paint :) This is going to be our turkey body.

Now comes the messy part *grin*. Start dipping your finger into one of the colors so that you can give your turkey some tail feathers :)

Switch up your colors a couple of times and you will have a lovely plumage for your Thanksgiving turkey :)

But wait!! It needs a head. That's where the cork comes in....

for a perfect little round head :)

L started to get a little tired of dipping one finger into paint for one tail feather and then washing and dipping another so we thought that we would try painting all of her fingers at one time!

It worked great, making a rainbow colored tail and the paint was good for 2 stamps worth :)

They filled up their papers with a wonderful collection of apple stamped turkeys to decorate our kitchen with :)

Gobble, gobble. LOL.

Have fun making some of your own :)

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Sep. 7, 2008

Electricity ~ The One Wire Circuit

Posted in Science and other Hands On activities

Yesterday I asked you if you could light up a light bulb with a battery and one piece of wire and the answer is yes :) I was listening to Jonathan Drori on TEDTALK.com about how we don't really know as much as we think we do *grin*. It's only about 12 minutes long, very interesting and worth watching :) He takes this exact same question to a group of MIT science graduates and asks them if they can do this and they actually said it couldn't be done and when given the materials they couldn't complete the circuit!

To be honest when I first thought about how to do it myself I wasn't sure and my first idea was to strip a section of the wire in the center to touch the light bulb to while I put the ends of the wire to the positive and negative ends of the battery. Well this didn't work and I was stumped again for a moment. Now think about virtually every diagram that is given in children's electricity workbooks and texts. They always show 2 wires, one on each end of the battery and then connecting them to the lightbulb to make a complete circuit. We are so used to that image that it creates a sort of blockage in our creativity :)

As you can see in both of the above photos that it can definitely be done :) If you've got a moment check out the quick video because he poses 3 other questions that are equally interesting!

"Be very careful what you put into that head, because you will never ever get it out."
Thomas Cardinal Wolsey (1471 - 1530)

Blessings,

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Sep. 7, 2008

Unplugged Project ~ Soft (Felt Bookmarks)

Posted in Science and other Hands On activities

This week Unplug Your Kids' unplugged project was SOFT, so I thought it would be fun to make felt bookmarks for all of our new school books :) K started by drawing his pattern on paper so he would have a visual of what he planned to do. He drew the cutest owl and he even color coded the pattern so that he know what felt he was going to use :)

Then he cut it all apart into individual pieces....

so that he could trace around them with a pen for cutting out.

It worked out really great since he often has a hard time cutting freehand and getting the same results as he originally wanted *grin*.

After he had all of the owl parts cut out he glued them together. Another way it could be done is by sewing them on with embroidery floss, but he opted for glue instead :) Much quicker and less fussing.

Here's his wonderfully colorful owl :)

Next we needed to attach some sort of string to sandwich between the pages so I pulled out all of my ribbons and he found a great green one to match his owl. He cut approximately a 12 inch length and glued the owl to the top of the ribbon.

To finish off the bottom of the ribbon so it wouldn't fray he stuck on another triangular piece of felt.

And there you have it, a soft felt owl bookmark happily sandwiched between the pages of a nature book *grin*.

Have fun making some of your own!

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Aug. 25, 2008

Unplugged Project ~ Cylinder (Pencil Game)

Posted in Science and other Hands On activities

This week Unplug Your Kids' weekly unplugged project is CYLINDER. Lucky me I ran across a fun little game over at Scribbit's blog that we just had to try using cylindrical pencils, a plastic bag and water. Anything involving water just has to be fun!!

We started by filling a bread bag with a generous amount of water, squeezing as much air as we could out and then knotting it tightly so that we were left with a plastic bag water balloon :) Next we sharpened every pencil crayon and pencil we had in the house to a super sharp point and then the fun began *grin*. Each of us took a turn poking a pencil from one side of the bag clear out the other side!

One by one the pencils started to pile up inside the water baggie and still no leaks! A little hint is to keep your pencil going in one smooth movement in and through the other side. By all means do NOT pull the pencil back once it is exiting the bag on the other side *grin*. I'm sure you can guess what happens. LOL.

L was taking a closer look as it was getting harder to find a good spot to stick a pencil through that wasn't going to make a hole to close to one already there :) It's absolutely amazing how many pencils it holds!

We tried this game quite a few times and each time mama ended up getting sprayed with the geyser of water that erupted from a misplaced pencil! LOL. In the end the best one we did held a whopping 41 pencils!!!

You've got to try this, your kids are going to love it *grin*.
Blessings,

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Aug. 10, 2008

Unplugged Project ~ Hot (Stencil Painted Tshirt)

Posted in Science and other Hands On activities

This week Unplug Your Kids' weekly unplugged project is all about HOT. I knew exactly what I wanted to do for this project. I have been coming across these super cool hand painted tshirts all over the web lately and I knew that we just had to do it to! Hey, I even made my own logo for this weeks unplugged project *grin*.

We started by deciding what we wanted to put on our shirts. L wanted a pony so I found some pony coloring pictures online and let her pick her favorite :) A key component to these fun and easy to make painted tshirts is butcher's paper. It's brown craft paper on one side and waxy on the other side and can be found at pretty much any grocery store. We always have tons of it on hand for butchering so we didn't have to go far to get any :) Cut a piece of the butcher's paper the same size as a regular piece of white printer paper, 8x12 inches. You are going to print your image directly on your paper by running the butcher's paper through your printer. Make sure that you check which side your printer will print on and put your paper in the printer appropriately. You don't want to print on the waxy side!!

As soon as you've got your images all printed you can get started with your exacto knife and create a stencil by cutting out whatever portions of the photo you want to color with your paint.

K designed his own picture by drawing a ship that we scanned on the scanner and then printed on our butcher's paper. You could use any artwork that your children have done :) The simpler it is the easier it will be to cut out.

Now comes the HOT part :) Place your butcher's paper stencil, waxy side down on top of your clean tshirt and iron it gently on the dry heat setting. You don't want to use steam! It only takes a second for it to stick, sealing your paper tightly to the tshirt and your stencil is ready for painting.

You can use fabric paint which is specifically for using on material or you can use a fabric medium like Jo Sonja's pictured above. The fabric medium is really great because you can use it with any of your acrylic craft paints you already have on hand and it's way cheaper!! All you need to do is mix equal portions of acrylic paint and the fabric medium, mix well and voila.... you've got fabric paint :)

With your paint mixed you're ready to start painting :) Brush the paint on from the outer paper edge towards the middle of your areas. You don't want to accidentally push any of the paint under the paper edges so by painting towards the center and not the edges helps to prevent this. Make sure you use a generous amount to, you want to saturate the cotton to get a good even color. We put a layer of butcher's paper inside the shirt to just in case any of the paint went through. That way it would protect the backside of the shirt :)

Even if the stencil cutting portion of the project is to hard for younger children they can definitely get in on the painting portion. L's only 4, but she did a great job painting :)

When you're all done painting, hang your tshirts up to dry.

You don't have to wait until your paint is completely dry before taking your stencil off if you just can't wait like us *grin* Ours were still slightly damp to the touch when we started to peel our stencils off. They just come right off and if there are any pieces that stick just pick them off. It won't wreck your paint at all.

To finish off our project we needed to do one more HOT thing to them and that was to heat set our paint by applying dry heat to them again after they were completely dry to set the fabric paint :) As you can see they turned out really great!! The kids are thrilled and we now have some new clothing to *grin* Let me know if you make some to. I would love to see what you come up with!

Have fun!!

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Aug. 8, 2008

K's House Update ~ Siding

Posted in Science and other Hands On activities

I thought that I would share another little update on what K has been doing with his house he's building :) He decided to tackle some of the siding on it. At first he was sure that he wasn't going to be able to nail it on because the studs are so tiny inside but in the end we decided that maybe using wood glue to stick them on might be his best bet and it worked! Thank goodness it did because he was feeling a little glum when he thought he had worked so hard on it to not be able to finish it :)

Next step..... the 2nd floor *grin*

Blessings,

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Jul. 24, 2008

A new wall & a couple of beds :)

Posted in Science and other Hands On activities

Well there hasn't been a whole lot of new additions to K's house but he has added another wall, the stairs to the 2nd floor and those wooden blocks on the floor are beds. *grin* He just got a bunch of model train stuff given to him so his house has taken a backseat for now, but I'm going to have to get him to come back to it again!

Blessings,

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Jul. 21, 2008

Unplugged Project ~ Glass

Posted in Science and other Hands On activities

This weeks Unplug Your Kids' unplugged project is Glass. Now call me boring but of course the first thing that popped into my mind when I thought of glass was 'stained' glass :) So here's our version of a child friendly stained glass project!

Materials needed:

assorted colors of tissue or crepe papers
clear plastic sheets (8.5x11) used for overhead projectors
simple (not a ton of detail) coloring pages
paperclips
scissors
glue
paintbrushes

First pick out a really simple coloring page to use. You want one that doesn't include a lot of detail so that it makes it nice and easy to fill in the spaces with odd shaped pieces of tissue or crepe paper.

Here's some of our crepe paper ready to use that you can either rip into little chunks or if you're like my son that loves to use scissors, what kid doesn't *grin* then let them hack it up into a million little pieces :)

You're probably wondering why we would use overhead projector plastic, but it works fantastic as a base for gluing your tissue onto and since it's see through you just paper clip your coloring page underneath of it and you've got an instant pattern ready to use!

Okay, let's get sticky! Squeeze a very generous amount of regular white school glue onto your plastic....

and using either a paintbrush or fingers work really well to, spread your glue around so that it completely covers your picture. Don't worry, you can still easily see your pattern through the glue :)

Now let the stained glass magic begin! Follow your pattern and fill in the different colors. When all of the paper sticking is finished add one more final coat of glue over the entire picture and let it dry completely. With your coloring page pattern still attached, take a black marker and trace all of the solid lines to create your stained glass effect :)

Here is one of our finished stained glass flowers :) We decided to cut it out of the sheet just around its perimeter to get rid of the excess plastic and hung it on the window with some of that re-usable sticky poster putty. The kids really liked how the light shone through it making neat patterns on the petals and leaves where the paper overlapped. The crepe paper reminds me of the paint you can by for glass that creates a frosted look :) Have fun making some stained glass creations of your own!

Blessings,

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Jul. 20, 2008

House building update

Posted in Science and other Hands On activities

K is continuing to work away on his house :) He finished another outer wall and a couple of the interior walls today. I think we may get an electric light kit from Playmobil so that he can wire his home with powered lights. That would be super cool *grin*

Blessings,

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Jul. 17, 2008

Building His 1st House

Posted in Science and other Hands On activities

K is building his very first house! My dad is busy building a shop right now and K has been helping him since he started so yesterday he decided that he was going to build his own house for his Playmobil men :) He's got a thick piece of board that he used as his foundation and on it he has drawn his floor plan to follow for building his rooms. Above is a photo of his first wall and he did it just like Opa with the studs :)

Here's a closer look at his floor plan. He's even drawn in some of the furniture *grin* That's the couch in the lower left corner :) I can't wait to see what he does tomorrow. Opa found him a little hand operated drill so he can drill holes in his studs before nailing them together to make it easier. He plans to go two stories high, hope he makes it sturdy!

Blessings,

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Apr. 26, 2008

Want to make a pop-up of Aslan (Narnia Lion)?

Posted in Science and other Hands On activities

I wanted to share this with you to go along with the online study that I posted for the Chronicles of Narnia just below this entry just in case you are working on a lapbook for it right now :) There is a wonderful tutorial for how to make a pop-up of Aslan complete with very detailed photo instructions for each step! The final result is fantastic and of course you could use it for any project you are working on as well *grin* While you are there take a moment to check out the main page for the pop-ups because there are more of them there to make! I know that we will be making a few. I love the birthday one. Wouldn't that make an awesome card?

Blessings,

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~About Me~

Hello from Canada! I am a homeschooling mom to 3 very rambunctious children ages 10, 6 & 3 years old while holding down the fort as tug boat captain 'Dad' sails the seven seas *grin*. We're located on 40 acres in a tiny rural community in beautiful British Columbia and this is my quirky journal about our homeschool journey, running my home based business 'RosyUndPosy' making 'Eco Friendly Bags 4 Green Living', and everyday life home on the farm. Hope you enjoy your visit :)

Looking East down Race and Current Passages to Helmcken Island

Want to have a peak at what the weather looks like here today? Here's a cam showing the lovely scenic view looking east down Johnstone Strait past Helmcken & Hardwicke Islands.

Looking North across Johnstone Strait to Hardwicke Island

And this one is looking north across Johnstone Strait towards Hardwicke Island. Hit the refresh button on your browser to update the picture and make sure you stop by during daylight hours :)