Make Your Own Invertebrate

Joshua used this make your own invertebrate activity today. He came up with this organism called Voom which is in a mutualism relationship as well as a commensalism relationship.

Writing a Story with Just a Few Words

Animal Classification

Our First Eggs

Maple Tapping

Hydrogen Powered Car

Bean Experiment Tests

We looked at the outside and discovered the inside.  We found all six parts of a bean.  We had a lot of fun.  I hope you have fun with your experiments too!  I liked doing it, so I think you will too! 

--Joshua

Experiment from Janice VanCleave’s  Biology for Every Kid.

Raisin Experiment

We put raisins in water and let them sit overnight.  And the raisins turned from tiny, small and sticky to seed size and were hard and not sticky.  They were bigger than they were before.  It happened from osmosis.  I liked this experiment.  I hope you do too!  I am Joshua.   

                    Before                                            After

(Experiment found in Janice VanCleave’s Biology for Every Kid: 101 Easy Experiments that Really Work.)

Joshua’s $.30 Painting Project

   

It took me a while and I was inspired by my littlest brother, who was only two.  I liked his ship design and mixed colors too!  But I didn’t mix them in the paint cans, I mixed them on my ship.  It was a lot of fun!  I hope whenever you paint, you’ll have a lot of fun too!

Laptop Deconstruction

The Amazing Inventor

One  day a boy was a great inventor.  He had made ten cars, five kites that fly on their own, windy or not windy.  Whenever nighttime came, he dreamed about making a mistake in  building something.  One  day he decided to take a walk in the woods near his house to see what he could find.  At first, he didn't know what he would see whenever he reached before he went to the forest.  A green leaf fell on his head in  the middle of the forest.  Whenever he got home, he had brought back sticks and the leaf that fell on his head. He  made  a toy tent out of the leaf, which was very big, and the sticks. He had four leftover sticks and two  leaves that where shaped like a head and were very small and were stuck on two of the  sticks.  So he  used the four stick and the  two head-shaped leaves and one marker to make two people. So he liked his tent and two people. 

And so he tried to make a jet pack. The first and second time it did not work.  And the third time, it did work.  So it was on his completed table.  That night he did not dream his normal dreams of making mistakes in his work.  Instead, he dreamed that he got lost. 

The next day, he built a boat to go across the river in the middle  of the woods.  Whenever he got across the river, he found that there was a hut there.  Not the kind that someone would  live in, but of the kind that no one lived in.  So he made it his secret hideout to invent things.  He brought his jet pack there, the tent, and the people.  Then he went home to go to sleep because it was bedtime.  The next day, he went to the hideout and found that the jet pack, the tent, and the people were missing.  And he found that where he left them was by a window that was open, facing the river.  And so he went down the river. and found the jet pack acting like a boat with the people and the tent on top of the jet pack.  It was stuck at a dam.  And he brought them back to the hut.   The end.

The Fire Cat

 

I never knew that a cat  could have spots. I liked the book.  The fire  cat wanted to do something big.  He did in the end. Read the book to find out!

 

 

 

Absolute Zero

This video (from Nova) was about people making things very cold.  I liked the Bose-Einstein condensate the best. It's amazing how it could defy gravity.  I think that if a man grabbed another man's hand and then put on a ring of Bose-Einstein condensate, they would both freeze. 

Giants

I watched a video on the computer about giants and this is a link to them.  I was most amazed at how big the people were.  One was even taller than the ceiling in my house. I was also amazed that their bodies changed so much because of their enormous growth. 

Snow Day!!!!

We got about 6 inches of snow and finally got to play and sled in the snow.

 

A Couple of Big Turkeys ")

Joshua made this beautiful turkey to decorate our Thanksgiving table out of a Pringles can. Keith said he made a Pilgrim and Native American out of cans as a child. I looked for a template online and could not find one, but I found this site that offered a cute turkey template. He had a blast doing this! He put the turkey together all by himself.

How to Make Your Own Laundry Detergent

I found a wonderful post on The Simple Dollar about making your own liquid laundry detergent and thought that I would give it a try.  It turned out wonderfully, but it didn't start off so well.  I started the water boiling on the stove while I helped Joshua shred the soap.  I looked up and out of the corner of my eye I saw flames!  I had caught my hot pads on fire by turning on the wrong burner.  Keith was sick and was soaking in the tub trying to feel better when I yelled out, "I'm on fire!"  I have no idea why I said that, but it came out.  I quickly poured some water on the hot pads, turned off the burner and all was safe.  Joshua told me, "Wow, that's the first fire we had."  I took this as an opportunity to "teach" the kids what to do in case of a fire. :) Ahh, teachable moments...

Science Center Trip

We were in St. Louis for an eye appointment, so we took the opportunity to go to the the St. Louis Science Center for the day. We hadn't been there for a while. It was a beautiful day and we were able to play and learn outside as well as inside. We got to see two science shows. The first was the Science of "Peeps" (the marshmallow candy). They did a lot of different things to the peeps and compared the end result to the control peep. The boys were amazed at what the liquid nitrogen did to the peep and then they got to feel the floor after the instructor poured some on the floor. Dry and cold...very unexpected.

Joshua got to volunteer in the second science demonstration about Carbon Monoxide. He turned the crank to make electricity for light bulbs. They compared different types of light bulbs. Joshua did such a great job ;) that they gave him a compact florescent bulb to take home. He is currently using it in his room. He was disappointed that we had "the wrong kind of light bulb" in his closet. He is going to help us be Green one light at a time! :)

Little Trains Save the Day

One day at the Roundhouse of the little train family, they were just waking up.  But then, Little Train's owner looked at his thermometer for rescues and realized that there was a job for Snow because of Brutus and Victor.  There was a job for Fire on the whole other side of the place.  They also needed Snow for that rescue, too.  There was one rescue, they needed every train for that one.  It was caused by Brutus and Victor. 

Then the next day, Little Train and Snow realized they needed to  be combined.   Brutus and Victor took down the master map.  So then they unplugged the cord.  They sawed off part of the cord and attached it to the railing of a building.  Then he put Brutus, his train, inside the copy machine.  He plugged it back in and it started to copy Brutus. 

And then the map turned back on because they plugged the cord back in.  Everybody jumped out of their seats when they saw the new lines on the track from Brutus and Victor.  The Professor sent out a call for a train that was willing to go to the new section of track.  The only one that came was Old Rust and Tex.  Then he saw them, but a whole bunch of planes came along on the toughest train's trailers.  The Professor said that they could all go because he didn't know that he would have planes.

So he sent everybody to go.  The planes would look at the top.  The trains would look exactly where it was.  Then they went along to go see what was going on.  But he didn't know that they had put a big boulder on the tracks.  The trains did just as they were going to let all the planes take off.  They yelled and said, "Wait, we have a problem.  We need your help!   There's a big boulder on the tracks so we need you to fly us over the big boulder"  The toughest team said, "We don't need your help. We'll just push the boulder out of the way!"  So it was settled. 

They tied a bunch of ropes to the planes and then they tied them to Old Rust and Tex.  Old Rust and Tex flew over the boulder while the toughest went right through  the big boulder.  Once they got there, they started being copied.  Everybody jumped out of their seats when they saw that they were being copied  along with Brutus and Victor. 

They realized that walls were coming up on every side of them.  The planes couldn't take off, but the toughest team had an idea.  They unhitched their trailers and they drove and they drove and broke out the first piece.  Then they helped everybody else get out. 

But then he saw something horrifying. The toughest team's hook was falling into a blaze of fire.  Snow got copied along with Little Train and they were in the same slot.  And then they fell out into one piece.  They saw a remote control to the train.  They got it before Brutus and Victor.    They got every problem solved with their new train, except for the one that Brutus and Victor always tried to stop their teamwork. 

The End.