Green Papyrus and Density

This week was awesome.  Science worked out really well.  We talked about the periodic table and how to identify elements.  We talked about how certain elements conduct electricity, and set up a battery with a light attached to wires, and we saw what kind of elements would complete the circuit.  We talked about brittleness and smashed some different things.  One boy saw everything set up and said as a joke "Are we going to smash stuff?"  I said yes, and he looked at me with a silly grin and said "Really?"  We also tried to burn different elements to show different coloured flames, but it didn't work....borax is not as pure as boric acid I guess.

We also talked about density and weighed different things.  We also put different liquids in a test tube to show how they will float on one another because of their different densities. The boys LOVED this experiment!!! Maxwell started experimenting will all the liquids he could find in the next few days.

We also made hydrometers to measure liquid density.  They really worked!

History was really fun this week....for me :)  I love ancient egypt, and Teri Ebert of the Four Year Plan gives a link to some really great Egyptian crafts at http://boiseartmuseum.org/education/egyptian.php  and that is where I found out how to make papyrus.  They suggest making it out of rhubarb stalks, but the only rhubarb I could find was limp and decrepit, so I took the celery out of my fridge and crossed my fingers and ...... it WORKED!!!  I have to admit, I kind of took over in this craft, because I really was excited and wanted it to work.

It took a lot of drying, but in the end Maxwell was able to paint on it.

We also made cartouches.  Egyptians believed that these ovals were magic, protecting the words inside.  That's how important writing and preservation was to them...fascinating (or maybe I'm just a happy nerd).  We did sand art to colour them.  The kids had fun and in the end mixed up the sand to make "rainbow sand"

But it did make a mess....

For Preschool we talked about how the letter "e" says "ehhh?" like someone who couldn't hear you very well, so we made ears.

And for our field trip we went to a halloween party.

Math has been going really well with doing Rightstart lessons and Saxon worksheets.  Maxwell has memorized the song that is the basis for the Rightstart philosophy of this year: