Science Sunday: Identifying footprints in the mud

A few weeks ago when the kids were playing in the mud we found some footprints, or something odd in the mud.

Which led to the discussion of who could have left that.  That’s when I came up with my brilliant idea, which might or might not of ruined one of my plastic bowls.  I made a small batch of plaster of paris and poured it over the print.

But, I’d made too much, so I wandered around the yard pouring it into anything that vaguely looked like a footprint.  About 10 minutes later, thanks to the Texas heat, they were all dried up.

After much discussion about the different molds we had, we decided one was Mac’s footprint, that mystery was solved.  Another was from a child’s tennis shoe, next one solved.  A third was the impression from digging in the mud with fingers.  The others we could never successfully identify.

Do you ever find unidentified footprints in your yard?  Later I found an alphabet animal footprint chart which would have been helpful at the time.

 

 

 

Let’s see what others did this week:

Each week I’m spotlighting a few posts that were shared previously.  Many posts get linked up later in the week and they don’t always get as many clicks as they deserve, so I’m trying to spotlight a few posts every week.

Source: homegrownlearners.com via Ticia on Pinterest

 

I love Homegrown Learners incorporation of music and science into one to make a water xylophone. 

Source: homeschooljournal-bergblog.blogspot.com via Ticia on Pinterest

All Things Beautiful shared part 3 of their homemade terrarium, I’m storing this away for when we study botany.

Source: myjoy-filledlife.blogspot.com via Ticia on Pinterest

My Joy Filled Life shared their homemade rockets to go with their astronomy studies.

 

Source: kathysclutteredmind.com via Ticia on Pinterest

Kathy’s Cluttered Mind shared their bug specimen board (no bugs were harmed in the making of it).

 

 

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Science Sunday: For real Water and Air Pressure

 

 

So, obviously I never got that post fixed last week.  First I was wrongly reported as having malware, so I had to work on that.  Then I had two very hyper little girls who wanted lots of attention.  LOTS of it.

THE QUESTION: Why does the water stay in the straw when you put your finger on it?

 

THEORIES: There’s something stopping it from getting out.  We don’t know what.

First I had them figure out what I was doing differently than them that kept the water in the straw.  They tried several different ways of holding the straw to duplicate my keeping the water in, but didn’t figure it out until I showed them what I did very slowly.  Then I heard:

 

“OH!  It’s just like the Thumb pot at Williamsburg!”

Talk about making a Mom proud.  They’d drawn the connection between this and the gardening tool they’d seen one time.  It also work based on air pressure holding in the water until you take your thumb off the top.

 

This one is from Farm to Market.

 

 

But, they still hadn’t completely figured out what was keeping the water in while my thumb was on the straw, so on to the next part.

 

Next we did the water and air pressure holding the index card on even though the cup is upside down.  A similar principle holds the paper up as holds the water in.  I asked leading questions:

What’s under the cup.

If there is no liquid in the cup, what is still in the cup?

After a while they realized there was air in the cup, and there was air pushing on the paper and air pushing on the water in the straw.

 

See, if I put my thumb on top of the straw, there is no place for the air to move into where the water is, it creates a vacuum, and the water cannot move out.  The same theory works with the cup and the water.  If the water is to the top of the cup, there is nowhere for the paper to go because the air pushes it up while the water is pushing it down.  Of course eventually the water soaks through and the paper falls, but for a short time it’s “Amazing Mommy!”

 

So, that was my quick science experiment we had because I was trying to cool down my son’s tea.

 

Let’s see what others did this week:

No Doubt Learning shared about their solar week.  I’m wondering what the results of her evaporation experiment would be here in Texas during the summer.

 

I don’t think I’m brave enough to try the light bulb experiment All Things Beautiful did in her microwave.  I have a bad track record with fires……..

 

The Usual Mayhem shared the science behind a brain freeze and some suggested cures they tried.  I figured at least one of us is going to get one this summer, I also found out I’m 90% more likely to get one because I get migraines, well BOO.

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Science Sunday: starfish

 

 

You remember how ages and ages ago I asked for recommendations about starfish, and then I lost my camera with the pictures of what we did?

 

Well I found it.  Or more accurately, when I made the kids clean out the dog’s toy box of all of their stuff they found it.  My guess, I had them clean and they put it all in the dog’s toy box.

 

Needless to say I was not a happy Mommy.

 

First we looked as the starfish my Mother-in-Law had given us from a trip she took and picked up for them.  I’ve been holding on to these for quite some time.  We noticed the little bumpy things on the bottom and talked about how those are little suction cups that let the starfish move around.

 

After we poked around and looked at them under a magnifying glass, I said we were going to try and see what it was like.  Then one at a time I ushered my unsuspecting kids into the bathroom and they got to play with the plunger in the toilet.

After I was suitably disgusted by their fascination (and they now think of the least excuse why the bathroom needs the plunger, racing downstairs to get it), and they managed to not cover my bathroom floor with water.  We continued on to the next part.

 

Then we cut out a starfish from sandpaper and recorded our observations of what it felt like to try and move like a starfish.  We did a similar craft before, a couple of years ago for our ocean animals book.

 

I’d like to thank: Fantastic Five, Alex Nguyen Portraits, Books 4 Learning, and Enchanted Homeschooling Mom for all coming up with some fun ideas to do.  Between all of their ideas, links, and suggestions I could have spent a couple of weeks on starfish, unfortunately my kids interest level was not as high as mine.

 

Does anyone else ever run into the problem of being more interested in a topic than their kids are?

Let’s see what others did this week:

Fantastic Five combined science and art for a fun astronomy lesson.

I loved the idea of using a rolling pin for a pulley from Quirky Momma.

 

Next Gen Homeschooler did a great job of trying to earthquake proof buildings.

 

Dottie’s Homeschool Universe shared about rocks and how they’re formed.

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Don’t forget to have a link back here somewhere on your front page.

 

Oh, and one last request: If you have any posts, old or new, about land animals I’d love to see them linked up.  We’re going to be studying land animals next and my land animals pinterest board is rather sparse.

Science Sunday:

Way back when we were studying Thomas Edison I got Snap Circuits Jr. to do with the whole group, but one of the other moms convinced me not to because of the large numbers of kids involved at the time.  So, I’ve been saving it for the perfect “Mom, I’m bored….” activity.  Aside from my standard response of “Go clean _________”, that answer they don’t like so much.

 

 

Well, earlier this week Jeff took Batman to work with him, leaving me with Superman and Princess.  I was at a bit of a loss what to do with 2 of the 3 kids, I knew if I did any art projects Batman would be sad he missed it, and I didn’t want to do any lesson from our curriculum because then Batman would be missing out on the work……  You get the idea.

 

I got the kit out and we got to work trying out different experiments with it.  I have to say I highly recommend this as a way to introduce early engineering and electricity, you can’t really hurt yourself or seriously cause any problems because of the design.

 

The projects are straight forward (or at least the first few), Superman and Princess were able to do them with some help, and after completing the first project once were able to repeat it without much help from me.

 

I foresee this being something we fiddle around with from time to time as we delve into it more.  This will also be great for answering their many questions about electricity and such stuff…….

 

Cool posts linked up last week:

Cloud in a bottle from All Things Beautiful.

Solids and Liquids using melted crayons from Learning in Mayapur.

Pine Cone Hygometer from Tiger Chronicles.

 

How about you guys?  This is probably the most open-ended science kit I’ve ever seen.  It has about 100 projects you can do in this one kit, and there is a lot of opportunity for hands on learning.  Have you found any kits like this one?  There’s several others in the series that I can see eventually buying, in particular the one for making cars.

Science Sunday: North Carolina: tar and water proofing

North Carolina is nicknamed the “Tar Heel state,” I read a couple of reasons for this but it all boiled down to there is a lot of tar there.  Tar was originally used for water-proofing boats.  I don’t have any boats to try water-proofing with, but I have paper.

North Carolina Tar Heel State

 

First, I smeared the various things that have been used for water-proofing onto the papers and let that soak in for a while (I gave it about 30 minutes).

 

 

Then each of the kids got to take turns putting water with an eye dropper onto the various pieces of paper.

 

As you can see it was very exciting results.  I was even surprised by some of them.

 

I wasn’t too surprised the butter and oil repelled water, those I expected because they were used in the colonial time periods to make cheap semi-translucent window coverings that were somewhat waterproof.  The paint also didn’t surprise me because we used paint to seal wood against water for our houses.  The rubber glue and the Elmer’s glue did surprise me.  Elmer’s because it is water-soluble, and the rubber cement because I only put on a very thin layer.

 

Of course the plain old paper immediately soaked up the water.  I want to repeat the experiment and keep checking back to see if it has soaked in, that was my original plan, but some of the papers were thrown away right away.

 

How about you guys?  Anything fun this week?  Any surprising new discoveries?

Science Sunday: Pumpkin and other fruit science

Though now that I think about it, I’m not sure that a pumpkin is a fruit………

 

I got this unit from Currclick, and was going to do all of the projects, but just ran out of time between going out of town and Superman being sick this past week, we only got to the pumpkin one…….

 

It has 5 experiments for the price of 35 cents, that’s right less than a dollar.  This is where I start having a hard time paying a lot for things, between the freebies on blogs and deals like this………. By the by click on the picture to go to the product.

 

Well, the pumpkin one, was the traditional “does the pumpkin float” experiment, and measuring it with a nice little printable.  We did that a few years ago, and I was curious to see if they remembered the results.  They did, so the wow factor was kinda gone……

 

But, there’s a twist:

 

Based off what you learned from the pumpkin, will the other fruits (and vegetables if you’ve got them easily findable) float?

 

 

They had a suggested list, but I forgot to get all of the things they suggested, so instead we tried: apple, orange, and tomato as well.

 

We did an initial guess and they decided the orange and pumpkin would float.

 

 

Once we got to actually recording our predictions they changed their hypothesis about what would float.

 

They ended up predicting that all of them would float.  This was also a great opportunity for me to review the terms hypothesis, theory, and prediction with them.

 

No pictures of the actual floating Afterwards we drew a picture to show what actually happened.  SURPRISE they all floated!

 

Have you ever repeated an experiment with your kids?  Did they remember the first time you did it?

Science Sunday: Jungle Quicksand review

I bought this ages ago for my nephew who at the time was really into experiments and such stuff, and then I moved before it was time to give it to him and it disappeared into the boxes, and I dug it out years later, and it just never seemed quite the right time to give it to him.

And then I was looking for something to occupy my kids for awhile, and decided to try this.





It comes with what you see pictured above, a small flimsy plastic thing, some white powder (that when you read the instructions you discover is actually cornstarch), cardboard cut outs of grass and the sign, and two animals.

No, really that’s all that’s in there for $10.  If I’d known then what I know now I wouldn’t have bought this kit.  But, I was young and naïve and wasn’t aware that the world of blogging would teach me how to do the same thing.



They recommended pouring in a small amount of water and then mixing it with your hand.  I accidentally poured in too much, so I just went to my pantry and dumped my entire box of cornstarch into the bowl.

That was much more satisfying.
I spent a while with the kids talking about the properties and such, and they had fun letting the animals sink and get thoroughly messy.  After a while they wanted to do more, so I sent them outside.


And thanks to it, I got a good 30-45 minutes of time to myself to work on cleaning the kitchen.  Pretty impressive considering it was about 100 degrees outside as they’re playing.

So, do you have any kits you've bought that were a total waste of money?  So far, I'm two for two.