My son is thoroughly enjoying doing Science experiments from his book.  For some reason, I never thought of just letting him do the experiments on his own.  I always had this idea that we had to do science experiments together as a “class”.  As you can guess, we rarely got around to it.  Josiah was delighted the minute he started doing his first experiment on his own.  I had no trouble getting narrations… oral ones, anyway.  The book we are currently using is called My Big Science Book by Simon Mugford.

He made a little Diver man out of aluminum foil, put a glob of sticky tacky for a weight, and a paper clip to hold his bent straw air tank.  Then the little diver dude was put into the water and the lid closed to the bottle.  When Josiah squeezed the bottle, the diver would go to the bottom of the bottle.  When he let go, the diver soared up to the surface.  The reason for this, in Josiah's own words, "is when you stick him in his tank, the straw is full of air and so he floats.  When you squeeze it , it forces water into the straw and the air pushed out and he goes down to the bottom.  When you let go air goes back in and water forces back out and it floats to the top."

In the next experiment,  Josiah tied a spoon to the middle of a 3 foot string.  He inserted each end of the string into his ears, one in each ear.  Then he banged the spoon onto different hard things such as a table or the metal file cabinet.  BONG!  It sounded like a bell.  Again, according to Josiah, "The reason is because when you hit it the sound travels up the string and you hear the sound like a bell instead of the tapping of a spoon."

"Can I do another one now, Mom?"  nope... gotta wait till next time.  How's that written narration comin along, Josiah?

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