Science Experiment #2 – Color Changing Liquids

Our second experiment in our science kit used red cabbage powder (which looks purple), citric acid, and baking soda.

We put water in two cups, then added the cabbage powder to each and watched as the water slowly turned a very pretty purple.

M added citric acid to one of the cups, then baking soda to the other. The first one turned a pinkish red and the second one turned blue! The citric acid and baking soda are both white, so M did not expect the color change at all!

Then M had a little fun adding more citric acid or baking soda and watching the colors get darker or lighter. Soon he mixed them together and this started some pretty pink fizzing. :)

Of course, soon everything was dumped out into the tray together and M examined it closely:

Eventually I gave him a small cup of vinegar and a little bowl of baking soda. He kept scooping the baking soda into the tray, then he used a pipette to squeeze a little vinegar onto the baking soda piles. To quote M, this was “super-fun”! :)

Baking soda is a base, citric acid is an acid, and the cabbage powder is a neutral. The cabbage juice is a natural dye, and adding a base or acid to it will cause it to turn either red or blue.

For more science fun, check out Adventures in Mommydom!

Have a beautiful day! :)

Science Experiment #1

Our first experiment in our fun science kit was a basic introduction of acids and bases, called “Dancing Powders”.

We set up our cups and poured water into one of them. We scooped 2 ml of citric acid into the other cup, then added 2 ml of baking soda in and mixed the powders together. M ready to go, but patiently waiting for Mama to take a picture.

Then M used the scoop to add a small amount of water to the powders:

Sure enough, they danced! Everything got all bubbly and we talked about how we heard fizzy sounds and pop! pop!

I realized all over again how amazing simple things are when seen through a child’s eyes.

He continued scooping and pouring the water, and had the time of his life with this simple experiment. At 3, it doesn’t need to get any more complicated than this! :) He was intrigued for well over 45 minutes. We repeated this experiment no less than 6 times!! (“Again! Again!”) We even tasted the citric acid and talked about how it tastes like lemons. Yum for me, not so much for M.

Eventually it turned into this: M dumped everything into the tray (an old metal pan) and stuck both hands in. :) The bubbles formed around his fingers. We tasted this and it tasted salty. We talked about gases and how the bubbles were releasing the same kind of air that we make when we breathe out. M was fascinated with this idea and asked about a million questions. Whew.

The baking soda, citric acid, cups, and scoop were provided in the kit. It was a wonderful experiment and experience!

For more science activities, visit Adventures in Mommydom!

Have a beautiful day! :)

Science Experiments – ooh! ahh!

M received this great Christmas gift from an aunt and uncle: (Mind Blowing Science is one of many science kits made by Scientific Explorer, a division of Elmer)

This is an awesome science kit with everything you need included, except some basics like water, a tray, etc. It has a list of experiments with detailed instructions for each one. The neat thing about this is that the experiments build off of one another and go from pretty simple to super-cool! :) It’s best to go in order so what was learned in experiment #1 can be further explored in #2 and so on.

We are having so much fun with this, and M is really, really into it. In recent weeks I’ve been thinking about adding more science to our school time, so this came at the perfect time! I’ve decided to start posting each experiment, one per week. Stay tuned… :)

Have a beautiful day! :)

What I want for Christmas – Confessions of a Mama-teacher ;)

I have a feeling a lot of moms out there who homeschool or do any sort of tot school or preschool at home with their kids are a lot like this (Dear God, please don’t let me be the only one)… I can’t think of a thing I want for myself for Christmas, but I could give you a list 5 pages long of things I’d love to have for M – toys that help him learn and develop many different skills while having fun.

I just love browsing through quality online toys this time of year; there are so many great things out there that would fit well with the activities I do with M. 

I thought I’d share some great deals with you on some fantastic things I’ve found… and it’s a great way for me to remember what’s on my wishlist when a little extra $$$ comes my way.  (Oh, Santa ??)

Take a look at all these lacing cards and lacing activities.  They  have every shape imaginable, even some that are dot-to-dots at the same time.  Isn’t that brilliant?  M would love the construction and tool ones.  And such great prices!!

And here is a group of ABC and phonics center kits.  There are so many possibilities with these.  There’s even a math center kit, a sequencing story kit, and several science kits that I need to keep in mind for a couple of years from now.  I am practically drooling, hee hee. :)

So, now that you know all this, send me presents!  OK, that is just a joke. ;)  Please don’t send me presents.  But do take a look around the site and the pages I’ve linked to.  You’ll be seeing me post about this site again, and you may just get a little present yourself sometime soon. ;)  For fun, let me know which item would be on your wishlist.

Have a beautiful day! :)

Tot School, Christmas-style – Dec. 20, 2009

**M is 39 Months Old**

This post will be some of the Christmas-themed activities we’ve done in the past couple of weeks. We’ve had a productive, relaxed, insightful, and just plain fun time on my “blog-break” (more about that in future posts).

First, this is how I’ve been finding M first thing many mornings:(sorry for the blurry photo… these old hands of mine aren’t very steady before my coffee, heh) – he’s been sitting in front of the tree, all lit up in the dark, playing with toys so sweetly and quietly. I think he is really soaking up the magic of Christmas and those Christmas lights – remember how special they were when we were children? :) I’m loving this stage with him.

Music:
We have been singing and making music quite often now that his instruments and song book are out and accessible all the time: (Don’t let the blank look on his face fool you, he really does LOVE doing this!)

Fine Motor Skills:
This was a great post from Allie at No Time for Flashcards. However, I really didn’t feel like making one on my own so I gave M some yarn (instead of wire) and some felt I had cut into squares and cut a slit into the middle of – M strung the felt pieces onto the yarn, then we formed it into a wreath and hung it on the tree:
I made these fun rubbing plates using cardboard from a cereal box:I used a cookie cutter to trace the tree, star, and angel and free-hand drew the snowflake. Then I went over the drawings with hot glue. M used them with newsprint and crayons: This was a little tough for him because the paper slid around quite a bit. Here are the best samples of what he did: I plan to make more of these for other holidays – they were fun and really held his interest. He must’ve done dozens of these in the past two weeks.

Sensory:
I filled a large pan with “pretend snow” (shaving cream) one day and M played in it with his little cars for TWO HOURS. I am not kidding. TWO HOURS. There was a mess to clean up, which took me a good 15 minutes. But it was worth it for TWO HOURS of him being involved and interested in something. :)He asked for it again another day and played with it for 20 minutes, sigh. (ugh, look at that kitchen floor. So old and ugly. If anyone wants to give me a Christmas present, a new kitchen floor would be perfect. :) )

Math Skills:
M has really taken off with his understanding of patterns recently. He is really getting it. We did our pattern Christmas lights again, this time in an ABCABC pattern. At first he insisted that it could only be red, green, red, green, etc. Then I talked to him about how we sometimes play games with Daddy and we each take a turn, even though there are three of us. We ended up naming the green lights M, the red lights Daddy, and the blue lights Mommy, then strung them up – he really got it! At the end we were calling them by their colors again and he understood perfectly. We even did some AABB patterning and he picked up on that too! Yay!!

We did a quick counting game with some cardstock Christmas trees and pom poms. I drew little spots for 30 pom poms to go on each tree, then we simply took turn rolling the number cube and putting that many pom pom “ornaments” on our trees to decorate them. The first one to have all the spaces filled won.
I found some Christmas pattern mats here, and printed them in black and white. M was really into this, so I went back and printed a lot of the non-Christmas ones from the same site. The fact that they were black and white instead of colored like the ones we normally use provided just the right amount of challenge to M to make it interesting. He enjoyed “coloring” them with the pattern blocks.

Literacy:
M practiced spelling his name with this ornament stringing activity I made for him. You can read more about that here.
Religion:
We’ve really been enjoying our Jesse Tree stories every evening. I switched to a green felt Christmas tree to see if M would actually hang the ornaments on the tree. He has put some on the tree, but some are still in the “air” too. Such a silly boy sometimes. :) He has really learned a lot from this project, and is always so excited when it is Jesse Tree time!

Nature Center Time:
We are enjoying our Nature Center classes so much, and they just keep getting better and better. I’ve decided to start adding these into our Tot School posts so we’ll be able to remember how much fun we’ve had!

A couple of weeks ago we talked about what animals do when it snows. Did you know weasels turn white (except for the tips of their tails, which turn black) in winter? Or that frogs dig down deep into the mud and turn into frog ice cubes? :) The kids had a snowball fight inside with cotton balls, made candy cane animals,

(It’s a reindeer!)

and went ice-skating on wax paper:M had a ball. We are out of wax paper or we’d be doing this every day. I even tried it and it was fun for me too!

The next week “Nature Santa” visited and read a story about Christmas trees in the forest to the kids:
His glasses were fogged up here because he had just come in from a zero degree day.

M got to make bird feeders with bagels and seeds, and one with fruit loops on a pipecleaner: These are hanging in our yard waiting for the hungry animals to discover them.

We even got to eat a pancake breakfast with Santa! M had the time of his life until….
it came time to actually meet Santa and talk to him: He was suddenly very shy and completely forgot to say all the things he had planned on saying. :) It’s ok though because Mommy has Santa’s phone number and will be giving him a call to let him know what M would like. ;)

For more Tot School posts go here.

Have a beautiful Christmas with your families! :)

Tot School

November 22, 2009

 M is 38 Months old

My camera battery died in the middle of tot school one day so some photos of just the activities were taken later in the week... like 5 minutes before I wrote this post. :)

ABCs and Pre-writing:

M is going through some anti-craft phase right now, and this includes the craft pages for our ABC book.  He loves cutting and pasting for the collage pages though: So, apparently we will now have an ABC collage book.  I’m hoping the craft pages will make an appearance again sometime soon, but I’m leaving this kind of thing totally up to M.  Here are his Ll and Oo pages: (This was when the no-crafts discovery was made.  M cut the letters out, but refused to do the rest, so yours truly did it in a futile attempt to get him interested.)

On a more positive note, he was totally into the tracing pages.  We “read” his book together and then he practiced holding the dry-erase marker correctly and traced the letters:

We also did our cardstock letters and glass pebbles activity (both from Dollar Tree!): He loves this.  It’s simply setting a letter out and then tracing it with the pebbles in the same way you would draw the letter (start at the top, go down, etc.).

For the very first time we had a sand tray to trace letters.  I was hesitant to do this because I thought at some point M would just want to play in the sand, most likely getting his little cars involved.  We had a little talk about how this is only for drawing letters, shapes, or numbers in, and he actually did pretty well.  He did experiment with just doodling in it too, which was fine with me.  We used this with our sand letter cards: He really did a great job.

We also matched up our Mama and Baby letters with these fun cards (Dollar Tree!):

 

He’s been playing quite often with a fishing game I made 2 years ago (he loved it then and still plays with it frequently) : The fish have letters on them and metal grommets for eyes.  The fishing pole has a magnet on the end of the string to catch them.  The chair, in case you were wondering, is M’s “fishing bridge” and the floor there?  “Floaty Pond”.  :)  As opposed to other side of the room, which is “Sinky Pond”.   Yep!

Pre-literacy Skills:

I have a subscription to an email full of free samples from Dover Publications.  The email comes weekly and I always save a ton of things.  One was these Opposites cards: M was very interested in this – of course he knew about opposites, but didn’t know the term for it.  He enjoyed matching these up and I plan to print more for him soon.  He would say “If it isn’t hot” (and grab the hot card), “then it’s cold!” (and match it to the cold one). 

Fine Motor Skills:

He played with another I Spy Sensory Bin – I found some great new things to put in it for him – a little hammer, screwdriver, pliers, and saw – such cute and tiny things!  We also used a variety of other things found around the house.  I didn’t have a theme at all… but he loved it!

And a Curious George puzzle:

 

Large Motor Skills:

After reading about how important a workout of large muscles can be in a boy’s learning, we did our movement cards before a lot of the other work.  M always enjoys this!

Leaping :)…

 

Math Skills:

I thought this would be a super-fun activity – connecting dots to make shapes: M was interested at first, but quickly moved on to something else.  The idea for this was here.

I found some wooden tan grams at Michael’s  ($1.00 – you should go now!)  and printed a couple of puzzles for him:

 

Size sorting with Bob the Builder trucks (loved this activity and the next one, of course):

 

And size sequencing with Scrambler, also from Bob the Builder:

 

History:

We have been reading some great Thanksgiving books and I told him the basics of the first Thanksgiving with this flannelboard set: He listened very well and then told Daddy the story later!

 

Life Skills:

This week we took the drawer locks off of M’s dresser drawers and he was given two new jobs – put his own clothes away after they are folded, and pick out his own clothes to wear each morning.  He is loving this new-found freedom, such a big boy!  And while the clothing choices are not ones I would’ve made, I’m very, very proud of him!  And now I know that the red shirt is way too small and needs to be packed away. :)

Nature and Science:

We also had a class at our local nature center all about apples this week.  M had so much fun taste testing and graphing his favorite apple, cutting an apple to see the star inside, and even squishing an apple to make cider!  The children were all given their own apple seed and we went to a beautiful sunny field where they planted them. So much fun!  I need to start including our nature center experiences in my tot school posts – we always learn so much there!

For more Tot School, go here!

Have a beautiful week! :)