Dancing Corn experiment (great for Harvest/Autumn)

With the cooler months here and some more fun to be had with corn, the children and I did a Dancing corn experiment! It was SOOOO successful, we all loved it! SO much so that we demonstrated it at the Children's Home school show and tell Morning tea here in Poatina!
All the directions and what to do are from the link.... give it a go it's a real WINNER!!!

 Everyone took it in turns to stir or add ingredients.

 

 Is it dancing yet???

 Now to add the vinegar.....

 Can you see the excitement in Sophia's face now that 

something unexpected has began to happen!!

 Now look at the joy! LOVE THIS!! We have clapping!

 

 

 We all watched it for ages, little corn kernels dancing around in the jar!

Gotta have more fun science days like this.... ROLL on the new term!
Smiles The Torrents'

Cloud experiment - Tuesday Science day

Looking at the weather is a great way to get the children excited about science!! The other week we took some inspiration from all the rain we were getting and decided to make our own Rain Cloud in a jar!

 Gather the supplies....

 "Mik, mik" Sapphire says!! (baby talk for mix!)

We found THIS great experiment......

Sophia and Esther went with green food colouring, while Zeke and Hannah did the more traditional blue colour.

 

Here it is when it first starts.......

slowing starting to fill up and therefore begin to rain!!!

 Here comes the rain!!

Now for the downpour!!!

Once the experiment is done things start to get, well........

 

When dealing with shaving cream, it is clearly a need to end up playing and getting messy with it!!!
Hey isn't a messy child a happy, learning child??
Such fun to be had on Tuesday science days!!
Smiles The Torrents'

Mummified Apple Experiment part two (Egyptian unit study)

 We have now finished our Mummified apple experiment!! YAY it was such a great science project and each of us really enjoyed it! In the end (as expected) the Apple in the salt preserved the best, it still looked like an apple.... the most interesting was the vinegar apple, it looked like it had swollen up, even like it had got bigger!! It was very strange!! Then lastly apple by itself just went off. Take a look at our findings!!

 

 sifting through the raw sugar and bicarb powder....

 

 All the apples and their labels after a week!

 

 

 

If you are studying Ancient Egypt then I think that this experiment is a must!! I've seen you can also do chickens.... might not try that one!! hee hee!! If you want to see part one of this click HERE and to see where I got the instructions from click HERE!
Smiles The Torrents'

Mummified Apple Experiment-part one (Egyptian Unit study)

For our Tuesday Science day we recently did the Mummified apple experiment! All the children LOVED it and were all able to take part, which is a wonderful thing when you have sooo many ages to work with!
Hannah in particular is really getting into our science days (totally am thrilled with that!!) you can see it in her face in the coming pictures!!
All the instructions we got from HERE at another fellow homeschooling blog, it was nice and easy to follow!

 getting all the ingredients ready for the experiment

 Preparing the apple pieces

 Zeke wrote all the labels for us

(including pictures of the apple so he didn't have to write it 12 times!!)

 Esther was able to help "wrap" the apples and Sapphire liked eating them!!

 Measuring out the salt (we only used 1/2 cup for each of our cups!)

 

 

Ta'da!! The finished cups! Now all we need to do is wait a week and see what happens!

Smiles The Torrents'

Make your own Sundial {experiment for children to go with Egyptian unit study)

Each and every Tuesday we have science day ( I loved the routine HERE!) During the term we are looking at many different things that the Ancient Egyptians did. This time around we made a human sundial (after all the Egyptians didn't have clocks like we do!!)
I got my inspiration from HERE and then added my own twist. I read somewhere if you face the sun at 12 noon then that is south. So we drew a circle around ourselves and marked the spot we were standing with a S for South while looking at the sun at 12 o'clock (Tassie time!) We then traced around ourselves in chalk. We kept going back each hour and tracing around our shadows seeing the different marks for each hour (just like a sundial!!)

 this is Hannah's circle,

 she loved to do different poses for each of her hour marks!!

 here you can see the 12 and 1pm markings.

The last reading we did was at 6 o'clock! It was super awesome and the children were HEAPS impressed seeing just how the sun moved sooo much!! (we didn't get a chance to take the picture of all the shadows drawn in as we forgot before they all got washed away!!)
I would certainly recommend this activity/experiment with your treasures! It was super fun, easy and very effective!! YAY!!
Smiles The Torrents

Water unit study: Shark Experiment

In term 4 we studied water/swimming. Each Wednesday the children and I did an experiment. This one is all about Shark skin! It works A TREAT!!! Love it when they come together!!
Firstly we all sat down and talked about sharks and what we knew about them, then I asked them what they thought shark skin would feel like? It was thought that they would feel smooth! Time to do the experiment! I gave each child some very course sandpaper and asked them to colour all over it in selected shark colours.

Next we took THIS shark picture and placed it down on the table following the 

experiment instructions HERE. 

 

 

I ironed over the paper and when it was done the children got to feel first hand 

(with their very own shark) what their skin really does feel like!!! 

 

 

 They were all blown away with amazement!! It was totally awesome!!!  

 Hannah and Zeke also had to label shark parts

Afterwards we cut them all out and added them to our water scene!! YAY for a successful Wednesday science day!! Smiles The Torrents'

Jellyfish in a bottle {science experiment}

I found this awesome experiment to do with the children HERE and couldn't wait to give it a go on our Jelly fish week. So Wednesday was the day and it turned out really great! I love it when an experiment goes well, it certainly is a blast for our treasures when they do too!

This term is seeming to fly by and with our Swimming/water unit study well under way and everyone is having fun learning and growing in information about all sorts of things related to water!
Next week we are going to do the shark for our animal, Zeke is looking forward to that!
Smiles The Torrents'