All are taken from the same books we've been using for this weather study.

1. Following up on one of the experiments from the beginning of our weather study…..

The steel wool rusts—and the water rises within the glass measuring cup. It was pretty neato!

It does this because the oxygen in the cup is used up by the rusting process, which creates an area of low pressure. Water then rushes into the cup, trying to fill the place of the used up oxygen. The water actually rises to about 1/5^th of the cup b/c oxygen makes up 1/5^th of what makes up ‘air.’

We’ve moved on to air pressure!

All those layers of atmosphere, pushing down on us, well that’s atmospheric pressure! Pretty cool, huh?! The kids asked why we can’t feel that on our heads. *snicker, snicker*

This was a great time to explain a little further why our ears pop as we drive further up the mountains here in Colorado. The higher you go, the less pressure there is. The air pressure pushing in on your eardrums from the outside drops until it’s less than the pressure pushing out from the inside. The imbalance gives us that funny feeling.

Air pressure is continually changing. We have low pressure ~ lighter warm air; & high pressure ~ heavier cold air. We used the experiment below to show that warm air takes up more space than cold.

We put a balloon over a soda bottle and put it into a pot of water. Here is  the balloon before going into the water.

But as the water is heated, the molecules begin to move faster and faster – just like what happens when air is warmed.

That makes the balloon stretch and blow up.  In the atmosphere, warm air takes up more space than the same amount of cold air—and weighs less.

We also made a barometer, the instrument used to measure air pressure. We've been tracking it over several days now. Very cool!

Meet Brownie & Marshmallow.

Our oldest requested a bunny a year or so ago. She completed the required reading and written paper on how to care for one a while back.

 Taylor chose Marshmallow at the shop, but of course Jayda wanted Brownie, who was his roomie. J Dad said yes, but Jayda was told she too would need to read and narrate to us how to care for the bunny until it would be officially hers.

Unfortunately, Marshmallow was ill and passed away yesterday. She had mucoid enteropathy. ( 60-100% mortality rate ) The shop owner had no knowledge of the illness and we trust that he was being truthful. He did seem sincere when we phoned to let him know what happened.

I had rabbits growing up and my husband and I had a couple when we first were married, but neither of us has had experience with this illness. Marshmallow was buried in our backyard yesterday afternoon by oldest son and dad. The kids were very upset but are doing much better today.

We still have Brownie & the kids have decided to change her name to JOY! Isn’t that awesome?! Weeping may last through the night, but JOY comes in the morning!!!!!! ~ love that scripture!

I’m thankful that my children have found Jesus’ Joy this morning!

Here are a couple pictures from my sweet hubby's garden.

The first is an Allium and the second, English Daisies, the third an Ice Plant, the last is a Phlox.

The kids and I have been watching and drawing the Allium since it was a bud. What a wonderful sight to behold.....pretty soon it will be a snowball of purple!

I had planned to discuss air pressure with the kids today for the next step in our weather unit, but as it turned out the weather, or should I say our Great Creator, had other ideas.

As we prepared for our study, mom grabbing her notes and book, kids grabbing their weather journals, colored pencils and clipboards -- a rather foreign sight emerged from the window.

The sky became dark and ominous; out of no where a downpour, or ‘cloudburst,’ as we learned today, overtook the skies.  I told the kids, ‘This is what mom enjoys, a peaceful thunderstorm’ – can you call a thunderstorm peaceful? I don’t know but I like them! It’s relaxing.

We rushed outside as the sound of hail beat against the glass windows --- the hail, though not very big, began to cover my beloved’s flower garden.

Then my son, Kaden, notices a bag of garbage floating down our street. Its trash day and they hadn’t been by to collect it; the street was so flooded it picked that bag up and carried it away. I know we should have probably run out to get it, but we had such a great time watching the swift water carry it away. Eventually it did come to a stop – at another trash can sitting in the road. It was so flooded cars were parking on the side of the road to wait out the storm – what a sight, a crazy mother and her brood giggling, pointing at trash and playing in the rain!!!

 All precipitation starts out as snow, as it travels through the layers of atmosphere, ( learned earlier this week ) the snow turns to rain b/c of the changes in the layers temperature. But that drop continues to move, twisting about inside the cloud with the air current; when it goes upward it hits freezing temps and turns to ice. It bounces around some more like a ball, continually freezing and thawing, building layers of ice. Eventually the ball becomes heavy enough to fall……..that is hail!

Here is Kaden’s drawing of how hail is formed.

So b/c of our Creator’s surprise rain/hail storm, one that lasted much longer than the usual couple minutes, we moved on to rain and hail today.

It was a delightful day!

                  We began our weather study today. 

The following two books are what I've been using to plan the unit. The first one, Weather!, was written by a fellow homeschooling mother. It is wonderfully written; very engaging and super informative. Even I, the self-proclaimed weather girl, learned a few things! It also has wonderful experiments. The second is chock full of just that, experiments.              

  We created weather journals. Here is Jayda's first page.

Then we started by learning what the atmosphere is and it's layers.

A couple things we learned:

we live in the troposphere

jet planes fly in the next layer, the stratosphere, it's also home to the 'ozone layer'

meteors or 'falling stars,' burn up in the mesosphere

the Northern & Southern Lights are in the ionosphere

outer space is in the furthest layer, the exosphere

Here is Jayda's journal page with the atmosphere's layers

 Then we included a couple experiments from the books:

1. The first proves air takes up space and has weight.

We suspended a ruler from a hanger with two empty balloons, the ruler was level.

Then we blew one of the balloons up, that made it tip to one side, proving that the air has weight.

2. How much oxygen is in the air?

We poked one end of a pencil into a clean soapless piece of steel wool. Moistened it and proped ip the pencil -- with the wool on top -- in a dish of water. We covered it with a measuring cup.

Now we are to let it sit for 2 or 3 days and see what happens.

We'll keep you posted!