Landis Valley/Hands On House

Apr. 16, 2014

Our co-op took a field trip up to Landis Valley (Lancaster, PA) to tour a living history farm. They had displays and demonstrations of what life was like for the German/Mennonite/Amish community there 200-300 years ago.

It was a little over Seth's head for the most part, but he did love the Blacksmith (anything with ore is interesting, thanks to Minecraft). He also loved the sheep and was disappointed that this was as close as we got:

After a couple of hours of boredom (and a screaming baby), we decided to cross the parking lot and try out the Hands On House (a children's science center). Wish we would have done that from the beginning! 

Making the pinwheels spin using a pump

Following the instructions to assemble a "Thingy"

Self face-painting

Seth's creation

The kids had a great time killing germs, delivering mail, sorting corn and assembling flying birds. They would have stayed much longer if given the chance!

Science Center

Apr. 11, 2014

We scored a great deal on a membership to the Maryland Science Center and decided to put it to good use. Seth had been there once before for a Mummy Exhibit, but this time we just saw all the regular displays. It was a bit crazy with a bunch of older kids running around, but Seth had a great time.

Excavating dinosaur bones

Pulling himself up using a pulley

Pretty proud of himself

Assembling a path for the ball with his friend, Brie.

We were there for three hours and still saw less than half the displays. Can't wait to get back again and hopefully have a chance to see the rest of the Center.

Mammoth Follies

Mar. 5th, 2014

We originally planned to see this play in January (when we were studying dinosaurs), but due to an itty-bitty snowstorm (less than 1/2 inch), the play was postponed until March. The kids were thrilled to finally get to go to the "dinosaur show".

Mammoth Follies isn't going to win any awards, but the kids were in heaven. They loved the giant puppets and the music. Catherine has been asking me to go back ever since we left!

Our group, after the show

Being dinosaurs

Seth's Body

Feb. 2014

Seth spent the month of February learning about his body during co-op. He made this Seth-sized model of the inside of his body that he got to bring home when it was all done. His favorite part was the large intestines (of course). 

Dinosaurs, Dinosaurs, Dinosaurs!

January 2014

January was my first time teaching the our co-op. I got to choose my own theme and went with dinosaurs! I had a lot of fun putting together activities for the kids to do. I taught once each week, so these are some of the highlights:

Assembling playdough volcanoes (which we later filled with red food coloring, baking soda and vinegar)

I think we ended up exploding the volcanoes 3 or 4 times each. HUGE hit.

Matching dinosaurs to their fossilized footprints/imprints (made using baking soda clay)

The dinosaurs and their matches

We also made fossil cookies by smashing some dinosaurs into cookie dough:

They kept their form really well, even after baking:

Several of the kids weren't fans of the cookies since they weren't super sweet.

Oh, well. More for me! (They tasted like shortbread. Delicious).

We also hunted for "fossils" in chocolate chip cookies:

The kids decided the chips were fossilized dinosaur poop.

Why not.

And we assembled dinosaur skeletons using various kinds of pasta:

This was one of their favorite dinosaur activities

Of course, the best part was digging for fossils! I found some dinosaur skeletons at the dollar store, used this recipe to make the plaster mix, then threw some tools and goggles in our kiddie pool and set them loose. (Would highly recommend doing this outside if possible. Sadly, it was around 15 degrees this day so we were stuck inside):

Paleontologist Seth

It was definitely a little crazy trying to keep all five kids interested and focused, but I think they had fun and hopefully learned something! 

I also let Seth and Catherine have some fun popping "dinosaur eggs" (balloons with tiny dinosaurs inside):

Dinosaurs are a LOT of fun!

January Art

January 7-11, 2014

Both of these activities kind of ended up being busts, but that's okay! Art's supposed to be about the process when you're this age (or so I hear).

First, bubble prints:

Allegedly we were supposed to blow bubbles, lay a piece of white paper on top and the color would transfer to the paper. We got some very, very faint prints, but Seth was not impressed.

Next, chromatography: 

Had some mixed results here. Possibly we're just not doing this right, but we had a hard time getting the filters into a spot where they could absorb water but not get saturated. 

Also, the kids pretty much just wanted to drop a ton of food coloring on the filters, which pretty much defeated the purpose: 

A few of the finished products: 

Pretty, even if we didn't quite get the results we were hoping for!

Shattering Bubbles

Jan. 7, 2014

It was really, really, REALLY cold here at the beginning of January, so we decided to try shattering some bubbles. 

It took a little but of finagling, but we managed to get a few to shatter! 

Bubble

Shattered!

We got smarter and started blowing the bubbles inside the house and carefully placing them outside (trying not to let them pop in the wind). This bubble deflated rather than popped, but still fun! 

It was also pretty sweet to watch the ice crystals forming in the tin under the bubble. After about 30 seconds outside, they would start to form. Then they would form very rapidly until the entire tin was frozen. Very cool to actually watch crystals form!

Candy Cane Science

Dec. 18th, 2013

I raided the internet for ideas of what to do with the (ten billion) candy canes we had hanging around during Christmas. 

First we tried dissolving some candy canes in water:

They did dissolve, but the kids weren't super impressed with this one.

Next we tried bending candy canes: 

Ours were melted after only 8 minutes, but I let them cool for a minute and they hardened enough to pick up.

And the bending began: 

The final products: 

Once they hardened, they hardened QUICKLY. 

We had a few break before they realized the bending was done.

The kids LOVED this one.

Will definitely do again next year.

Color Wheels, Air Pressure and 3D Shapes

November 7th, 2013

I decided to let Seth have a little more control over some of the things we did at school, and, of course, he picked some of the fun science experiments! First up was a color wheel using colored water and paper towels (blame Blogger for the crooked picture). We set it up and let it sit for a few hours to see what would happen: 

A few hours later the empty cups were full and we had some new colors on our wheel! Seth recorded the new colors and wrote down his favorite colors (pink and purple). 

We also did a fun experiment with air pressure. The kids LOVED watching the bottle spray water all over the place as the balloon deflated.  

We also started learning about 3D shapes. After introducing the shapes to Seth, we had a good time making some 3D shapes out of toothpicks and marshmallows. Then we went on a shape hunt around our house! This was a great way to reinforce that a circle is not a sphere and a square is not a cube (which is really confusing at first): 

This was a lot of fun, but it sure was hard to find anything pyramid-shaped in our house!

Candy Experiments & Gratitude Leaves

November 4th, 2013

We put some of our Halloween candy to good use for school! First we did an experiment about whether the candy would sink or float in a bowl of water. First Seth wrote down his hypothesis (above), then performed the experiment: 

After observing the candy, he would go back and write down his conclusion and see whether his hypothesis was right (FYI--pretty much everything he got floated). 

Next we opened our M&Ms and Skittles and sorted them by color. Then we made a bar graph to compare the colors and did a little math using the graph. It was easy for Seth to recognize when the bars were equal, and to see that a bar with two more squares meant that there were two more yellow candies than blue ones. But he had a hard time translating that to addition--instead of comparing the two columns and just adding one or two more, he would try to re-count the entire column. 

To kick off the Thanksgiving season, we made gratitude leaves and hung them around the house. I drew leaf shapes on construction paper and Seth would cut them out and draw a picture of something he was grateful for.  

And then we hung them all over the house to remind us of all the things we're grateful for! (Seth is apparently very grateful for broccoli soup). 

Co-op Sick Day

October 28th, 2013

Our kids came down with a mild case of Hand, Foot & Mouth which we decided not to share with our co-op. Since we were missing a day of learning about plants, we headed outside for a nature scavenger hunt.

We saw lots of great plants, leaves, rocks and bugs, but this was the highlight: we now have TWO Catherine the Wooley Bear Caterpillars. One for each hunter. 

For Halloween I changed up the "Roll a Pumpkin Game" we played last year. Instead of one die, we used two. Seth would have to add the two dice together to find out what to draw. Great addition practice and fun watching Seth's pumpkin get covered with all kids of crazy things. 

I decided to use the white board to help Seth practice reading some of his sight words in context. He's really good at reading them off a list but tends to stumble over a few of them when they're in a sentence. I tried to make it fun for him, but he still doesn't really enjoy reading for school. I'm learning to kind of back off and just give him lots of chances to pick things up on his own. Comic books are great for that (we love Tiny Titans), and we also love the Fly Guy books. 

Mummy Exhibit

October 4th, 2013

Seth has been obsessed with mummies lately, so when his dad found out there was a mummy exhibit at the Maryland Science Center, we decided to send the two of them to see the mummies (and we got a great price on the tickets thanks to October being Homeschooling Month at the Science Center). 

Seth's favorites were the animal mummies, but he loved the whole thing. And the picture above is all his dad took as proof they actually did go to the exhibit...no mummies, but it is the Science Center!