Science sunday – oct. 3, 2011

Light and Colors and How Our Eyes See Them

Last winter we made a very cool pinhole camera that helped us understand how light enters our eyes and helps us see.  This week we did some more activities in relation to this idea.  This time we added colors into the mix.

Lesson: Light bounces off of objects and into our eyes, while absorbing some colors and reflecting others.  White light is made up of all the colors of the rainbow, hence we see the colors of light that are reflected from objects, and the other colors of light are absorbed by those objects. 

Got that?

Really this is a pretty complicated concept to grasp (at least for me!), so these activities were mostly just for fun, and to give M’s 5 year old mind something new to grapple with.  {He is a mind-grappling sort of boy, and never happier than when he is trying to understand how something works. ;) }

We began by talking about the cones we have in our eyes.  These are little cone-shaped cells; some of them respond to red light (and tell our brain we see red), some respond to blue light, and some to green light.  M had to get a magnifying glass at this point to see if he could find the cones in my eyes.  He couldn’t and he is feeling a bit skeptical about the whole thing still. ;)

First experiment:

I drew a red circle on a piece of white paper and we stared at it for about a minute, trying hard to focus only on it.  After a while we looked away and stared at just the white paper.  We could see a “spot” on the white paper that looked greenish-blue.  Why does this happen?  Well, the red cones get tired of looking at all that red for so long and  take a break when we look away; the green and blue cones are still working and so instead of seeing white, we see white minus the red, and end up with a greenish-blue spot.  M thought this was a bit like magic. :)  That’s a much easier explanation, isn’t it?

 

Second experiment:

After looking at a blue circle, looking away made us see yellow.  Yellow is what red and green light mixed together make.  M was pretty amazed that they didn’t make brown, because (he knows from experience) that red and green paint would make brown.  We talked about how we would eventually get black if we mixed all the colors of paint together, but if you have all the colors of light (a rainbow) mixed together you would not get black, you would get white.  How could it be pitch black with all that light shining?  Black is the absence of any light. 

We used our color paddles (pictured at the top of this post) and two flashlights.  I think we should have been in a darkened room for this to work correctly… and we will have to do it again some time.  We tried mixing red and green light by holding the red paddle over one flashlight and the green paddle over the other flashlight and then shining them both onto the refrigerator.  We saw this:

Maybe there is a tiny spot of yellow in the middle there?

Then we tried mixing red, green, and blue together (should have given us white) and got this: 

Ah, well.  Interest was waning at this point so we moved on… (really, I think this was supposed to have been done in a dark room; if you try it and it really works, let me know!).

 

Third experiment:

For fun, we decided to color some circles and see how they looked while spinning.  We have a handy-dandy little set of Snap Circuits that includes a motor and a plastic fan.  We simply taped our colored circles onto the fan and flipped the switch to watch them spin.  You can do the same thing by following these directions at kids-science-experiments.com to spin your circles with string.

Here are the designs we went with, and how they looked while spinning…

Red, blue, and yellow:

Red, blue, yellow, purple, green, orange:

Silly pictures:

Actually, the first two did not look quite so “stripey” as they look in these photos.  They were more like the bottom one, but more solid. 

I am linking this up to Science Sunday, check out the other science activities there!

Have a beautiful day! :)

Learning by Heart – Frogs

“The mother’s heart is the child’s schoolroom”
– Henry Ward Beecher

~M is 4.5 years old~ 

May 18th will be our final day of “school” here – I can’t believe it is just around the corner!  To be honest, we aren’t doing all that much right now.  The weather is unpredictable, and I’m trying to go with the flow… not planning too much and saving what is planned for rainy days.

We have had an unofficial frog theme going on for a while.  I’m not sure how it all started, but I think it was the song “Froggy Went A-Courtin’”, which I taught to M in early March for some reason.  (I have always loved that song!)  And then there were some Frog and Toad books by Arnold Lobel that M picked up at our library.  Have you read any of these with your child?  I’ve heard of them quite a bit, but have had trouble understanding the big deal about them.  Well.  Now I do.  They are hilarious, and obviously Mr. Lobel understands children.  M loves these books.

Then one of our nature center classes was all about frogs and toads and we learned so much!  It was perfect timing!  I wish I had brought my camera!  We learned that toads are bumpy and prefer to live on dry land, while frogs have smooth skin and prefer to live in ponds (mostly).  Both have a nasty-tasting liquid that comes from a bump behind their eyes (and sometimes other areas of their skin)  that keeps other animals from wanting to eat them.  Both come from eggs and are called tadpoles when they hatch.  You can also call them polliwogs. :)

And so a mini frog unit was begun.

M cut out pieces from this lifecycle wheel and put them together (with a little help) to make a frog lifecycle chart: He really enjoyed doing this on his own.

We did a quick activity to learn about webbed feet, and how they work.  No photos of this, but you can learn about it here.

M made a little Frog nomenclature book (and fell in love with the stapler in the process; pretty much every piece of paper in our home is currently stapled in some way).  I intended to make cards for him to match up, but realized that he would get more out of it by just making the whole thing himself.  I found the cards here, at Montessori Print Shop.  M colored the appropriate area on each card and labeled it, then we made it into a book.  This was a big hit – I guess I need to remember that now he is getting to the age where he will enjoy making his own materials instead of having them made for him!

M’s nomenclature book (I promised him I would show you the entire thing, so here you go!):Front cover

head, eyes

mouth, neck (or “heck” if you prefer, heehee)

body, arm
(Actually he was supposed to copy “trunk”, and “foreleg”, but chose what just made more sense to him. 
A writer’s prerogative, right?)

hindlegs, webbed feet (minus the “webbed”)

He has his father’s penmanship. ;) 

Just for Fun…

These were miscellaneous activities that were out on M’s shelves for him, and tied into the frog theme.

Color by Number – I found this coloring page in an online book I purchased quite a while back.  I printed it and then made a color key for M, curious to see how he would do with this kind of thing.  He really enjoyed it!

Pin Punching shapes – the large shapes used for these were also in an online book (Scholastic had a lot of their books on sale for $1.00 earlier this year – what a great deal!).  I printed these out on colored paper, then M used a large push pin to punch holes all the way around.  Once they were perforated, we punched the picture out.  He enjoyed this more than I imagined, and did all 5 of the pictures I had out for him.  This proves that he can focus on something that takes a lot of time when he wants to!

 

Mosaics – I found these great little mosaic pictures at Dollar Tree.  They have been a huge hit, and great fine motor skill work:

 

 

And, of course, we read lots and lots of books about frogs!

Frog and Toad Are Friends, by Arnold Lobel:

Frog and Toad Together, by Arnold Lobel:

The Frogs and Toads All Sang, by Arnold Lobel:

Frog and Toad All Year, by Arnold Lobel:

If You Hopped Like A Frog, by David Schwartz:

From Tadpole to Frog, by Wendy Pfeffer:

The Adventures of Grandfather Frog, by Thornton Burgess:

 

I’m linking this post up to Preschool Corner and Weekly Wrap-Up; be sure to check them out!

Have a beautiful day! :)

 

Preschool Art (and sensory) Project – making Soap Clay

I have had this little project in mind for ages.  I first heard about it from MaryAnn Kohl (are you surprised, really?  You know we are her biggest fans).

We bought 2 bars of Ivory soap, and M used our cheese grater to shred the soap.  As much fun as playing and molding with the soap was, I think grating it up was M’s very favorite part.  He loves using a new tool!  Believe me, I would not let him do this at a much younger age, and I was right beside him the entire time, making sure those little knuckles didn’t get grated too.  I’m happy to say not a drop of blood was shed in this activity. :)  That’s always a good thing, don’t you think?

watching the soap flakes pile up in the middle of the grater

We ended up with about 2 cups of soap flakes.

M poured in a tiny bit of water at a time…

And stirred, until it began to form into a ball:

Then the fun of grabbing a glob of it in his hands and squishing it all up began:I had to get in on this action too!  The smell, the feel - it was a great sensory experience.   

We tried using a play dough mold to make some dinosaur-shaped soap, which would have been so cool!  Except there was no way to pop it out of the mold without completely destroying it.  Maybe if we had left it in to dry a bit, but neither of us had the patience for that.  This was a hard plastic mold.  I really think a silicone candy mold or even cookie cutters would have worked much better.

So, M ended up adding some food coloring (blue, because that’s all we had, ha ha), and rolled it into some bath crayons.  They really work well, and he could hardly wait to take his next bath. ;) 

We will definitely do this again.  It would be a fun project for Mother’s Day – maybe add some dried flowers or oatmeal?  And use a flower-shaped cookie cutter as a mold.  The food coloring from the tub crayons does not seem to leave any stains, so a bit of color in the soap is apparently ok, which opens up a lot of fun possibilities, doesn’t it? ;)

Definitely a successful sensory activity, and not a bad art project either!

Have a beautiful day! :)

Craft Time – Pretty Patterns for Mother’s Day

Wow, can you believe Mother’s Day is just a few days away? 

Over the weekend we made some cute flower magnets for M’s grandmothers. 

This craft was inspired one Sunday morning at IHOP (International House of Pancakes – yum, yum, yum!).  On the walls, there were framed papers, with egg-shapes cut from them, and patterned paper underneath, making pretty Easter eggs. 

With quick help from photo-shop, here’s an idea of what they looked like:Anyway, I really loved these, and tucked the idea into that little craft area of my brain.  When I saw a pack of pretty spring-themed scrapbooking paper at Target for 50 cents, I knew just what we would do with it.

However, it all turned out differently than the plan in my mind.  Doing the cut-out presented more of a challenge for M than I expected, and it looked more like a card than a piece of artwork.  We will probably do something along those lines sometime, but for now we modified the plans as follows…

Supplies: White cardstock, colored cardstock (we used yellow), marker, something to make a large circle and a small circle (lids), simple cardstock flower template, foam sheets or scraps, scissors, glue on a saucer, small paint roller, patterned paper cut into squares or small rectangles.  There was no measuring for this – I just snipped a few strips of paper into pieces.  If you want to make these into magnets, you’ll need magnets too.  I usually have a roll of magnetic tape from Walmart on hand.

Pour some glue onto your saucer, water it down a tiny bit, then use the roller to cover your white cardstock with a thin layer of glue:

Then, begin covering the cardstock with pieces of patterned papers; some will need to overlap in order to completely cover the paper:
                        look at those sweet baby hands!

 

Once your cardstock is covered, roll another layer of glue on top: 

While that’s drying, draw one large circle for each flower you are making on your colored cardstock, and cut them out: (M has 4 pairs of scissors, but couldn’t find any of them, and was allowed to use my sharp ones under close supervision.)

Draw small circles on foam (M picked pink) and cut them out too: 

Once your paper-covered cardstock is dry, use a template, or freehand draw two simple flowers: 

Cut them out. You will need the sharp scissors for this:

Dot some glue in the center of a large circle:

Pop on a cut out flower, dot it with glue in the center:

And stick on a foam circle:

We trimmed the yellow circles a little bit, and put magnets on the back, and now we have pretty magnets for Grandma’s and Nama’s refrigerators. :)     I love the variety of textures used on these (see the glitter and glossy spots?)!  Using fabric scraps instead of scrapbooking paper could add even more texture!

 

Some other ideas for Mother’s Day…

Paper plate and tissue paper flower suncatchers:

Foam mosaic flowers (or any shape mama likes): M made these for Easter when he was 2 years old (pre-blog).  I cut the cross and flower out, gave him scissors and strips of foam to cut the tiles, and he glued them on.  I still love these.  I put a little magnet on the back and they’ve been on our fridge ever since.  It would be fun to revisit this project now that he’s twice as old. :)  I think these would be perfect for Mother’s Day too!  And super-easy for just about any child to do.

I’m linking this up to Kids Get Crafty!

Have a beautiful day! :)