Science Experiment – Air Pressure / How Birds Fly

{I have been having the weirdest problems with scheduling posts lately.  You might have seen this post in your reader last week, and then had it disappear if you tried to look at it on the actual blog.  Too much mommy brain + too little coffee = crazy and incompetent.} 

As a final (whew!) bird-related activity, we did a little experiment to show how air pressure works using two balloons.

An experiment and balloons?  It doesn’t get much better than that if you are a 3 year old boy. :)

The way birds are shaped and the way they move their wings causes the air to move more quickly above them.  Quicker-moving air = less air pressure, so the air beneath them exerts the greater pressure and keeps them aloft!

To demonstrate that fast-moving air lowers air pressure, I blew up two small balloons, tied a length of yarn to each one and then hung them from our sofa table so they were level with one another.  You want them to be about 3 inches apart. 

Ask your child to think about what will happen to the balloons if he blows a straight line of air between the two of them.  When we blow directly on an object it moves away from the force of air, so it makes sense (sort of) that the balloons would move apart.  M was sure they would get “wider apart”, as he put it.

Here’s what happens:
They move toward each other and bump!  The still air on the sides of the balloons is exerting more pressure than the fast moving air between them, so it pushes them together! Pretty cool, huh?  ;)

You can do this with a strip of paper that you hold near your bottom lip – blow air directly over it and it should rise.  Or try two cardboard tubes on a table side by side with an inch of room between them; use a straw to blow air directly between them and watch them roll towards one another!

For more science fun with kids, go see Ticia’s Science Sunday posts!

Have a beautiful and blessed Mother’s Day! :)

Books of the Week – 5/8/10

Here are M’s favorites from the past week:

Edward and the Pirates, by David McPhail This was recommended to us by Kim at Educating Crumpet.  She thought M would enjoy it and she was right!  It has enough adventure and excitement (like Edward’s mom riding into his room on a white horse – really can a book get any more interesting or exciting than that?) without being frightening at all.  Edward can read and the pirates can’t, and this has sparked some sort of small flame in M – he is “reading” a lot lately (meaning books he’s memorized… I’m one of those moms that doesn't want my child to be reading on his own at 3, not that there’s anything wrong with that if you do. ;) ).  It’s a fun book and one I’m glad we got!

The Moon Might Be Milk, by Lisa Shulman This one was listed a week or two ago at Mouse Grows, Mouse Learns.  We found it at the library and M wants to read it at least a couple of times a day.  I’m not sure what is so fascinating about this book (it’s cute, but nowhere near the top of my list), but he really loves it!  The little girl and her animal friends are trying to decide what the moon is made of… flour? milk? sugar? butter? egg?   Turns out, it’s made of all these things when her Grandmother uses these ingredients to make moon cookies.  It gets my mouth watering every time and I think we’ll be trying the recipe that’s included sometime soon!

I’m linking this up to Mouse Grows, Mouse Learns, and to Feed Me Books Friday.

Have a beautiful day! :)