THE AMAZING BRAIN

I am sure by know you have probably worked out that Science is my all time favourite subject so it will come as no surprise to you that today once again we "did" science.  Thankfully the kids have the same love of science as I have so we all enjoy learning as much as we can about it.

Today and Wednesday are Apologia human anatomy and physiology days and today the boys and I were reading lesson 10 which is the Nervous system extended, since we covered the nervous and endocrine systems in Lesson 9.  I choose this course for the boys as I felt it was too detailed and elaborate for a 5 year old to take in and have been following RSO for Princess Perfect instead. I obviously haven't translated this to her so when it is time to work on Apologia she tends to come along and listen in on the lesson anyway. Well I am surprised at the amount of information she is taking in and will definitely be purchasing an apologia notebook for her next year! 

After reading about the various lobes within the brain and how it is "divided" up she ran off to make a clay model of the various areas and I made labels for her to stick on.

 

Somehow I doubt she will forget this lesson!

OUR BLOOD MODEL FOR RSO SCIENCE

This week Princess Perfect has been studying the circulatory system and we made our own scrumptious blood model to illustrate the various functions of the four parts of blood. 

The plasma was maple syrup.

The red blood cells were lollies and were perfectly shaped with the little dent in the middle!

The white blood cell was the lima beans

The platelets were lentils

 

Ok, only the lollies where scrumptious and were the sugar free variety so allowed to be sampled.

Of course the plasma is naturally straw coloured, it is only the blood cells that make it red.

Unfortunately the red blood cell ended up being bigger than the white blood cell in this experiment as lima beans was all I had to depict the white blood cell !! 

Princess Perfect then completed the accompanying worksheets describing the various duties of the four parts of the blood. 

THE WAY THE WIND BLOWS

Today our page out of "The science and history project book" was on the way the wind blows and we also created the third in our tools built to record weather.  The previous tools being the rain gauge and the hygrometer.

The first experiment showed how the weight of a particle affects how far it travels and the effect this has in creating various sand dunes. 

The used a hairdryer as our wind and noted that the smaller particles of the sand went further down the ice cube tray then the larger particles.

 

 

Then we made a simple weather vane and spoke about anemometers and how they are used to measure wind speed. 

 

Our cat thought it was really tasty!!

 

 



The lessons in this book are fantastic and so quick to pull together into a lesson that the kids really look forward to every week. 

BFSU - LESSON C1 - CONCEPTS OF ENERGY I

Today we studied BFSU Lesson C1 - Concepts of Energy I - Making things go.

The objectives where:-

1. Recognise and describe how things do not go, work, move, or change by themselves.  Something additional is required.
2. In any given situation, identify the "something additional" as: heat, electricity, lighr, or movement.  Which are knows as "forms of energy"
3. Describe that many things (gas, wood, batteries, and a food) are not energy by themselves, but contain stored energy that may be released.
4. Recognise and tell how various devices (light bulbs and motors) change one form of energy to another.
5. Recognise that energy is not created from nothing. It must always come from another source.
6. Recognise and state how energy is never changed into solid, liquid, or gas and visa versa.

We split these objectives into three parts, forms of energy and what they do, storage and release of energy and energy changing from one form to another.

I made four energy cards and a number of action cards and asked the children to match the energy cards to the various action cards as in the below pic.

 



Obviously those with a physics background will realise that we are taking some liberties in the definitions but it is simply to convey the concept, without getting bogged down in detail.   Once the concept is understood teaching the definitions is simple.

Our discussions lead us on a walk around the house to view where our electricity enters and the fuse box which lead us to a discussion on safety.  We also had a long discussion on fridges and how energy is involved in the freezing process.  Food was another topic that came up, and the cycle of light energy in photosynthesis creating food for plants that then get eaten by us to release energy. 

Our accompanying book Charging about - the story of electricity by Jacqui Bailey was perfect to introduce how electricity is created and we ended off viewing a youtube clip on a hydro-electric power station and marvelling at how loud the rushing water was!

REAL SCIENCE ODYSSEY - LIFE

Along with BFSU, I am using Apologia for the boys and Real Science Odyssey (RSO) for Princess Perfect.  Although she loves to sit and listen in on the Apologia stuff we do! 

We are following Life in RSO at the moment and every lesson is very hands on with a great experiment to go with it, but I do find that you need to supplement loads with other books!  That is fine though as, since I have covered a lot of this stuff with the boys before Princess came home, I have loads of books sitting on the shelf. 

Below is our study of a plant and animal cell where we used jelly and fruit to illustrate the cell and then she got to eat it after! 

PLANT CELL

 ANIMAL CELL

YUMMY!!

 

 

BFSU SUNDAYS

 

 

This Sunday we studied Lesson D1 - Gravity in BFSU.  The three topics we discussed were The concept of Gravity, Horizontal and Vertical and gravity - the orbits of heavenly bodies and satellites. 

 

To explain horizontal and vertical we made a plumb bob for the vertical and used a spirit level for the horizontal. 

 

 

Princess Perfects' teddy got a free ride around the room to illustrate the orbiting of heavenly bodies and satellites in relation to gravity and centrifugal force, which apparently the boys knew loads about from watching a backyard science episode.

 

 

We finished off with a page from The science and history project book.  Todays experiment was What is humidity?

 

Dad made an awesome hygrometer to measure humidity.  We sprayed the paper towel with a spray bottle filled with water and the "needle" flew into the air!

 

 

 

To experience and discuss transpiration we tied a plastic sleeve around a plant.

 

It didn't work too well as our cat decided to investigate and knocked the sleeve off whilst we were inside working on the hygrometer!

 

 

BFSU

On Sundays, as a family, we always do a lesson from Building foundations of Scientific Understanding by Dr Nebel.   I absolutely love BFSU!  It is aimed at a K-2 audience but I am starting this with all three munchkins as I think it will fill any gaps they may have in their scientific understanding. 

We are following a similar flowchart to what is in the book and so far we have completed lessons A/B1 - A4.  I am busy creating a poster to illustrate what we have learnt so far and will publish that as soon as I am done.

Todays lesson is Lesson B2 - Distinguishing Living/biological, Natural Non-living and Human-made things.  Off we went into the garden to find specimens to classify.

Whilst I thought it would be pretty straight forward, it wasn't!!!  It took me a good few minutes to get my head around the living/biological label as it wasn't as straight forward!!

In our living/biological category we had a flower, tree bark, wood, a leaf, a shell and a few critters - a snail (trying to make a get-a-way!) a worm and an ant.

The natural non-living items are rocks, soil, stones and clay.

 

 

Our human-made items where a bit of pasta, an ice timer, a wooden knight (chess) a bit of lino and a piece of old pottery.

 

The objectives for this lesson where:-

 

• Correctly assign an item to one of the three categories, Living or biological, Natural nonliving and human made.
• Recognise, name, and describe key attributes that enable the above distinctions.
• How we make seperations, ie Orientation, Symmetry, Tenuous quality, etc
• Recognise and use the following words in their proper context : Biological, resources, raw materials and conservation.

 

The previous lessons we did on BFSU are:-

 

Lesson A/B1 - Organising things into categories

Lesson A2 - Solids, Liquids and Gases.

Lesson A3 - Air as a substance

Lesson A4 - Matter I: Its particulate nature

 

A little humour :- When we where studying Lesson A/B1, organising things into categories, I gave smarty pants and princess perfect a task in the local library to illustrate that they understood the lesson.  I asked them to locate a book "Secret seven Well done by Enid Blyton" and bring it back to me.  Smarty Pants ran off to find a computer to look up the reference and Princess Perfect ran off to near the front of the library. I followed at a distance and overheard her asking the librarian, "Um excuse me ma'am could you possibly tell me where the secret seven aisle would be in the library."  Ha,ha, definetly thinking outside the square!