Fun Stuff

We just kind of go with it most days. I've decided that I am not all that hyped up on specifically what he is learning as long as he is learning and enjoying it. Right now,we are still talking water. Some related to oceans and some not. One day he announced he would like to learn more about sharks. So, we first drew and labelled a shark and it's parts. We talked about how a shark is made of cartilage which he has since asked about other animals and if they also are made of cartilage. After we created it, I cut it into a puzzle and let him reassemble it. Fun times!

The other very ocean specific activity dealt with coral reefs. We read a couple books, youtubed it and then ollie created his own picture using his dotters, a couple pom poms and some glitter. After he made his masterpiece, I had him tell me a bit about it (a coral reef). Some of his description included colorful and lots of fish. Smart boy!

As you know, in an earlier post I mentioned that we had started talking about density. The next two experiments dealt with density. Both boys participated and loved it! For the first activity, I filled a vase with water. Then I had ollie pour some oil in it. We first watched how the oil all settled to the top. Then, Ollie & Dawson got to add food coloring. The food coloring, being more dense than the oil sunk down below the oil and then burst into the water creating a really cool effect. This activity came from a blog called, "Play Create Explore." Really cool site. Lots of great stuff!

Our final activity, had three components. First of all, my boys love using straws to blow bubbles so I thought "why not?"And secondly, they loved pouring things together. This activity was awesome. I took a few household liquids and put them into separate glasses. I used edible stuff because I don't want them to drink something or get something dangerous in their eyes. I used oil, water with food coloring, corn syrup and pancake syrup. For the first part of the activity, the boys tried to blow bubbles into each liquid. Some were near impossible to blow bubbles in. Then we poured them all together and watched where each settled. Ollie quickly discovered that the more dense a liquid, the harder it was to blow bubbles! Yay for hands-on learning. The pour the liquids together I took from an activity I did in a college elementary ed class. The straws was just me using my brain! After we finished, ollie and I created a "chart" with the liquids labels and colored to match.