More kitchen science

There were some literary endeavours this morning, when M continued her novel (about C, her piano teacher, and potatoes) and K wrote her Uncle M a story in celebration of his new job entitled 'Uncle M and the steering weels'. K demonstrated an understanding that one of the uses of the apostrophe is to show where letters are missing, albeit with slightly wobbly spelling: 'But he cold'ot reach the steering weel', which goes nicely with the sign for her bedroom door that she made yesterday which demonstrates the other: 'K's room'.

This afternoon we returned to the great science experiment book and talked quite a lot about density today. If I had planned to do a couple of experiments which had a common link, then K & M would probably have rebelled and gone off to play with playmobil, but fortunately they each chose an experiment which coincidentally went rather nicely together.

Firstly we made a 'Fizzy Fountain'. Take one plastic bottle, 3/4 fill with vegetable oil, top up with water, add a few drops of food colouring and add some effervesant powder (book says tablet, but I bought sachet by mistake and it worked okay, although might have been more spectacular with a tablet). Then talk about why the bubbles rise and fall.

Next get some playdough and marbles out. Drop them in a glass of water and talk about sinking and floating and a bit more about density.

Then roll out the playdough instead make it into a boat shape and put it back into the water...... and find that you haven't rolled it thin enough and it still sinks, which gives you more to talk about. Then re-try more successfully.

Finally, just because it's fun, make a non-Newtonian fluid.

Aka Slime or Gloop!!

An afternoon in the kitchen.

Yesterday we spent pretty much the whole afternoon in the kitchen. About ten minutes of it were spent setting up an experiment to grow crystals (from powdered alum and borax).














The results were quite variable (I don't think we put enough alum/borax in most of the jars), but here's the best one today.




















Then K spent about 2.5 hours making jammy dodger type biscuits. The reason it took so long, was that she did it pretty much on her own with very little help (that is until I had to help hurry her along, otherwise it would have taken even longer and she would have been rather late for her ballet lesson!)

On a science roll.

Following on from yesterday we got talking about the centre of gravity of things (M and I tried leaning without falling over like the Tin Man in The Wizard of Oz) and K and I found everything it said about gravity in the numerous encyclopedia and science reference books we've got.
So today we covered

• mass and weight
• gravity
  
• how weight changes because it depends on gravity
• Newton's 3 laws of motion (and demonstrating them by shoving different sized books across the floor)
  
• Archimedes' Eureka moment
  
• that 2 similar sized balls of different mass took the same time to fall to the floor,
  
• which meant that the reason a feather took so much longer was not because it was lighter, that air resistance is like air friction.

And to add to that, we've got some more experiment ingredients ordered on the science front. M has been composing on the piano (the girls' piano teacher is ill so they didn't have a lesson today and M thought it would cheer her up) and K has selected a recipe ready for baking tomorrow.

Friction between my children?

We're on a roll with these science experiments (I would very definitely recommend this book!).

Here's K doing an experiment in reducing friction between a cd and the table, using a sports bottle top and a balloon.

And here's a lot of friction between my girls! Two books with pages interlaced and them trying to pull them apart. To use M's current favourite word - Impossible!

Utterly amazing science stuff.

I bought this science book a while ago http://www.amazon.co.uk/Science-Experiments-Robert-Winston/dp/1405362863#_ and left it lying around in the hope that the girls would pick it up and get interested. It wasn't until I sat down and had a look myself that they noticed it though. There are over 100 experiments in there and well over half of them can be done with just things that you probably have in the house, so of course K & M both chose experiments that needed something we didn't have!
In the meantime we've had a go at the two different types of paper aeroplanes (dart and glider) but the thing that I found literally jaw droppingly amazing was one that explores the idea of the centre of gravity. I don't know if you can make it out in the photos, but in the first one there's a whole tooth pick stuck through the pair of forks balancing on the glass, in the second it's burned away right up to the edge of the glass and it looks absolutely impossible that the forks can still balance, but they do!

Starting simple

As I've mentioned previously both K & M have a couple of things that they'd like to learn how to do this year: knitting and cooking.
We're doing pretty well on the knitting front and they're both knitting reasonably competently (although I do have to undo and sort out problems occasionally) and with a bit of help they can cast off as well now. So once they can cast on, pearl and increase and decrease that's pretty much all you need, unless you want to get really fancy (in which case I'm going to have to find someone to show me!).
Today we made a proper start on the cooking front (other than baking which we already do reasonably frequently). The reason it's taken a while to get going is that trying to persuade the girls that starting simple is the way to go has been a bit tricky, but today I made a suggestion that M thought was a very good one and K was happy to go along with. So the girls made their own tea - eggy bread. M had a square and K cut out a man-shape and they went down very well and they're planning on making some for Granny when she comes in a couple of weeks time.

Baby toys - worth keeping?

We were at a SureStart centre this afternoon and we found some bricks with letters on. M got to work almost straight away and with very little help indeed came up with the following 'story'. I think I might dig out the bricks/foam letters/magnetic letters again!