18 March 2010

But rather give myself to science..

When I first began homeschooling, I was a reluctant science teacher. Reading books or doing math problems is SO much easier. BUT, my children's enthusiasm has begun to rub off on me. They love science experiments. I often use them as a reward for completing other tasks. "If you clean your room, we can do a Science experiment!"
These two books are a hit in our home right now. The top one, is cohesive, and each experiment uses prior knowledge to build on new concepts. It uses real scientific terms but requires materials that I tend to already have around the house. It is a winner.
We've only done one so far out of the above book, but it was a bag bomb. Yes, a bomb. The kids were playing something to do with Star Wars (blah, blah, blah), and I whipped up some bombs to include in their play. The experiment involved the ever popular baking soda and vinegar concoction in a zip lock baggie, but we got to discuss things like liquids, gasses, solids and carbon dioxide. Very fun.
Our science experiment involved a cabbage wash to test ph balance.

Acid, base, or neutral..
Changing the liquids color to report ph balance..
Hypothesis, writing, reading, scientific method..
(Sorry, Mom, we used that Diet Coke you were saving here for our science experiment :))

4 comments:

rowena___. said...

nice! where did you find the book?

FWIW, the cabbage experiment was one of the first things we did when i took a fabric dyeing workshop 12 years ago.

Julie Clark said...

This is the hard one for me too. Mainly because I don;t like to get things messy. I think I have got to learn to LET THAT GO if I am going to homeschool a passel of kids! Thanks for the book recs!!!

Tough mama said...

The first book I found at a sale our library was having, and the second was a gift from mom!

Mandy said...

i can't think of a better thing to do with a diet coke. :)