Friday is Science Day
Yepperz! Friday is Science Day!
We are going to discuss expansion and contraction of gases in a confined space. How do I make this interesting to a seven-year-old? It's really cool. Hey, I'm 40 and I still get a kick out of doing this in the winter!
- Empty a 2-liter soda bottle. I prefer Diet Coke.
- Put a pan with about 4 inches of water on to boil.
- Get another pan with ice water ready.
- When the water's boiling, remove it from the heat. I put it on one of those things that holds hot pots off the table to keep the table from burning. I think they're called trivets.
- Take the cap off the empty Diet Coke (or whatever it was you drank) bottle.
- Put it in the hot water for about 30 seconds. You want to heat the air inside the bottle.
- Cap the bottle tightly.
- Put the bottle in the ice water and watch it collapse.
When I did this, my daughter's eyes got bigger and bigger as the bottle got smaller and smaller. As a homeschool Dad, it's those "light-bulb" moments that just make my day. Well, today, we're going to go a step further. At a local grocery store, they hand out helium balloons to every kid that walks (or rides a stroller or cart) in. I got a couple of un-inflated balloons. Here's the procedure:
- Prepare the water as illustrated above.
- While the bottle is at room temperature, stretch a balloon over the top of the bottle.
- Put the bottle in the hot water. What happens to the balloon?
- Now put the bottle in cold water. What happens to the balloon?
This will also be part of her writing assignment: What happened to the balloon on the soda bottle in hot water? What happened to it in cold water? Why? I'm learning how to take one lesson and make it many. :) I think that's what a good homeschooler should be doing.
Remember: Train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it. Proverbs 22:6, NIV
Music Lesson
Today, we're going to study music with Sergei Prokofiev. Well, he's not really here, but his music is.
Peter and the Wolf is a musical story he wrote to introduce children to the instruments. Each instrument represents a character in the story. Musically, the instruments work together (with a narrator) to tell the story. I listened to the record quite often as a child, and loved it. Now I have it on CD.
You can probably get it from your local library. Check it out! Most of the recordings have narration. If it doesn't, you can find the narration online at sites like
this one. Check it out.
Today, we've got a diorama with movable pieces courtesy of
Brighter Vision. The pieces have the character on one side, and the instruments on the other. I also found a very entertaining version of the story by Weird Al Yankovic. It's very close to the real thing, but filled with hilarious narration.
Well, on with the lessons! Enjoy your homeschooling adventure. It's the best time you'll
EVER spend with your kids! I promise!
I Brought a Bough Through the Rough weather
I'm homeschooling and I'm faced with a dilemma. First a little pat on my own back: I was the number 8 speller in the entire State of Texas in 1981, when a sophomore. So, I'm gifted with spelling. I rarely have to look up words. Now that I'm teaching, I need to teach my daughter how to do that.
How, then, does one who never had to do something, teach it? I say, "Sound it out," and she does. And she comes up with something that is completely wrong.
Not a problem! Let's look it up in the dictionary, and let's use the title sentence as an example. You'll notice first that the English language - for lack of a better term - stinks. Yeah, everyone in the world speaks it, but few know the intricacies of the language. How many people know that some group - somewhere - keeps changing the rules for writing! I'm convinced that the only reason for the changes is so they can sell more books. Ya know, nobody will buy a 'revised edition' if nothing's been revised. So all these old farts sit around saying, "We'll make it 'normal' for a list of words to have a comma after every entry, except before the word 'and'." A few years later, they need to buy a new Lexus, so they put out a new book. "Let's make it 'normal' to put the comma before the 'and' in a list." And they publish a new book.
So, anyway - you have this series of letters:
o-u-g-h. In any other language (Spanish, French, German, etc.) that series of letters would have a standard sound. Well, in English, they don't. It all depends on which word those letters are used.
- Brought - brot
- Bough - bow
- Through - threw
- Rough - ruff
Why would anyone accept these spellings for these various sounds? Notice that only the word
Rough has the 'f' sound at the end, like laugh. You can't assign a rule for that, because - with the exception of the 'th' at the beginning -
Through is spelled exactly like
Rough. It's also identical to the middle of
Brought. How can one teach this? Identical spelling, different sounds.
Read and
Read is a worse example. The words are identically spelled. But if it's present-tense (I'm
reading a book), then it's pronounced
reed. If, on the other hand, it's past-tense (I
read the book), then it's pronounced
red.
Homeschooling is an adventure. Explaining why we have silly language rules like this makes it even more so.
