Sunday, April 22, 2012

Science solutions and Knights

Science is one of the most energy and thought encompassing things that I do as a teacher.  The main reason for this is one word: PREPARATION.  I don't have to prepare for reading, writing, math, devotionals, or piano (Maxwell started piano lessons this week).  I prepare very little for history.  But science! science needs supplies, and supplies, and supplies, and a bit of study.

For instance; This is what I needed this week:

sugar
alcohol
vegetable oil
vinegar
Italian salad dressing
corn starch
filter paper
cotton balls
funnel
nail polish
acetone
Whole cloves
Peppermint
Food colouring
little glass jar

Easy enough...right?  But I also needed

iron fillings
copper sulfate
sulfur
test tubes
Iodine

Where the heck do I get copper sulfate?!? Well, I went begging the chemistry teacher in town, and he was very nice.

This week was no special week.  I have a list as varied and odd as this practically every week.

And what is the result? Hands on multisensory learning that reaches child's brains at a better level then just book learning and me being a pretty cool teacher....I hope.

This week we learned about soluble vs insoluble and solutions.  We tested different things to find out if they were soluble:


We also learned how if something was insoluble with water, it might be soluble with something else, like how nail polish is insoluble with water, but soluble with acetone.  (I was not thinking and some acetone got on my TABLE!  ugggg) Maxwell and a few of the boys were a little too excited to paint their nails :)


As for History, we seemed to only get one lesson in this week.  We learned about knights and coat of arms (what specific colours mean and what animals and symbols mean) and made our own coat of arms.


Maxwell and his daddy did a bit of handy man work and made a chicken coop this week.  Maxwell drew up the plans and was very into the whole thing.


As stated before, Maxwell started piano lessons...I'm not sure if he's ready, and I'm not sure if I really want something else for him to practice daily, but Maxwell's Daddy is sure ready for him to learn, so we started going to lessons....it's a good thing I like his teacher.


1 comment:

  1. How do you plan your science activities? Do you and your sisters-in-law take a turn teaching each week? That does look like a lot of prep work and gathering of rather odd materials :) . I don't worry so much about the nitty gritties of science. I think it's all about exploring and learning to ask questions (like "Why is the sky blue?" or "Where does honey come from?") and then going out and answering them. But if you do science as a group each week, then I can see how it can get more involved than that...And really -- I am impressed with the experiments and activities you guys do! :)

    ReplyDelete