Spring Nature Study

One of the greatest perks of home schooling is the flexibility it offers.  Beautiful spring days beckon us to the outside world and we follow.  Hands on learning and free exploration are the best types of learning.  It is especially wonderful to be able to share these experiences with friends.

They discovered a variety of minnows, crawdads, spiders, moss, and other interesting things.

Science Bob Visits the Chesnee Library!

Our county library system was able to bring in Science Bob to do a presentation for the main Headquarters library, but needed to provide Science Bob with a warm up act before the evening main event.  We were lucky that the library system chose Chesnee library branch for this honor.  Mr. Jack is our own science guru and we love attending homeschool classes with him.  So, we were able to have private homeschool presentation with Science Bob!  I invited several of our homeschool friends and we filled forty seats to see this special program.

The kids were very excited to see Science Bob.  He has been on several talk shows and on Nickelodeon.  They love science experiments and were  thrilled to learn more about science. 

The show was wonderful and the liquid nitrogen experiments are always a hit.  We all got to try popcorn that had been placed in liquid nitrogen.  The cool effect of 'dragon's breath' excited all the kiddos.  Now, Mr. Jack is going to have a hard time topping Science Bob, but he just might!

Fish Tales at Pisgah

Spring has sprung and we made our way up to the mountains for another fun class at Pisgah Wildlife Center.  This month's activity was titled Fish Tales.  The rangers taught the children about the anatomy of trout and guided them on a fish dissection.  Now, my kiddos are not like their momma.  I loved to dissect anything I could get my hands on!  My kids could do without dissecting anything.  However, I believe the experience of dissection is important and to see the internal anatomy of an animal is valuable.  Luckily, they are good sports and don't complain much!

I was able to help with the dissection process and add more information for our group as the rangers helped others in the class.  The children turned from disgust to actually enjoying the process.  I love seeing that! 

We made it through dissection without anyone getting sick and all kiddos talking about how cool it was.  Another science success!

Owl Pellets!

Today, we headed out, bright and early, to The Schiele Museum.  Of course, it was one of the colder mornings we have had this winter.  Thank goodness for seat warmers in the car!  We picked up friends and off to our first dissection we went!

Egee wasn't too thrilled to learn about our trip to dissect owl pellets.  Especially, when she found out what an owl pellet was!  How is she my daughter?  I loved and still love dissecting things.  Not her, but she knew there was no way around it and didn't grumble much. 

Little Man was indifferent. He likes adventure, but owl pellets didn't seem overly exciting to him.  Oh well, he enjoyed it once we began.

They both did a great job picking out the small rodent bones from the fur of the pellet.  It was like an archaeology dig!  Their friends had a great time, as well. 

Afterwards, we explored the museum and had lunch out.  We just love being able to enjoy adventures with our home school friends.

Engineering

Last week, the children had Chesnee Library class with Mr. Jack.  For the past few months, Mr. Jack has been on a kick building things out of straws, masking tape, and aluminum foil.  This month was no exception.  The children have a blast with these simple materials.

The project was to design a container that would protect an egg when dropped.  The instructions were to use only straws, rubber bands, masking tape, and aluminum foil.  The egg was not to be taped into the sling and must be able to be placed into the sling and removed from the sling, without damaging the container.

The children were to work in groups of two or three.  However, some decided to design their own.

Egee and Princess couldn't figure out how to design their container.  I offered advice of building a few large triangles and work from there.  Little Man began working with C-Man and J-Man, but ended up working on his own.

The room was filled with creativity.  No two containers looked alike.

Finally, it was time to test the containers.  Would they protect the egg?  Mr. Jack decided to go ahead and let them tape the eggs in the sling. But, Egee decided not to tape her egg.  She wanted to see if the container we built would really work.  The others taped their eggs.

Mr. Jack dropped the containers from waist level (3 ft).  All survived this small height.  If they had not used tape, only three would have survived.

Next, Mr. Jack dropped the containers from 6 ft high.  Several eggs cracked from this height.  Egee's and three others survived.  Again, her egg would have been the only survivor, if not for the tape.

Egee was proud of her container.  (Even though Mom helped a bit.)

Egee's and Princess' egg drop container

Balloon Rockets

Thursday, the children attended the Landrum Library Home School Program.  Ms. Nancy has really stepped out of her element this year and has delved into the world of science!  The kids were excited to make balloon rockets.

Ms. Nancy had the children line up chairs on the far side of the room.  She talked to them about thrust and how it make a rocket climb into outer space.  (After the program, on our way home, I talked to the children about Newton's second and third laws.  They found it interesting and started to ask all sorts of questions of what if and why.)

Once Ms. Nancy had explained the experiment, everyone became busy tying string to chairs.  Out came the balloons and the children immediately began blowing them up.  Moms' threaded the string through straws and children scurried to find tape.  Rockets began to fly down the string and a few balloons around the room.

Everyone was busy testing which balloon worked best.  The children readily changed out balloons.  Of course they pulled the straws off the string, so moms' had to rethread the straws. 

We had a great time with the balloon rockets!

The Onion Experiment part 2

Here are more pictures of the onion experiment.  The kids are busy trying to predict if we will get onions from all three groups.

This onion has really been on a growth spurt.  It is the one that we used the cut bottom root portion for the experiment.

The roots just continue getting longer.

Here is our whole onion that had little roots to begin with and had sprouted leaves at the top.  The roots are really starting to grow!

The top has added a bit of growth.

This is the top cut from an onion.  The leaf has grown downward into the water.  We are starting to see mold growth on the onion and no root growth.

The leaves on top have not grown.  The children don't think this onion will grow a new onion.