Learning by Heart – week 16

 

“The mother’s heart is the

child’s schoolroom”
– Henry Ward Beecher

{M is 4 years old}

We were fighting colds (and losing) this week, so not a lot happened on the preschool front.

Here are a few of the activities I threw together on the spur of the moment for M…

Hammering “nails” (golf tees) into a cardboard box:Honestly, I’m not sure what, if any, skill this works on.   Practical life, maybe?  But it sure is fun.  He used to love doing this with styrofoam, but cardboard does not give as easily as you might think and gave him a new challenge.  He decided to add some colored paper to make a design:And then he turned the whole thing into a surprise for Daddy.  The “design” on the left is a smiley face, and on the right he used the golf tees to spell his name.  What?  You don’t see it? ;)

More “picture pies”, like those mentioned in last week’s post:

 

About a year ago I found a little wooden puzzle on sale at Michael’s.  They are basically tan gram pieces, except the two large triangles that are normally in tan grams were cut into 4 medium-sized triangles.  I’ve looked all over the internet for printable puzzles to use with these, but haven’t had much luck in finding ones large enough to actually place the pieces on.  I finally picked up a book full of puzzles (I can’t remember the name and I’m too lazy to go look right now).  I’ve copied a few of the puzzles and enlarged them.  I’ve been placing a new puzzle on our fridge every few days and M has really enjoyed doing them.  He does need some help, but I’ve been very impressed at how well he’s done with these:

I glued magnetic strips to the backs of the pieces, and used wood glue to make the 4 medium triangles into 2 large triangles like a traditional tan gram set would have.

 

We have had some beautiful weather, and M bundled up to go outside and ride his bike on the cleared-off driveway.  Ah, the feeling of freedom that comes from a bike. :)

 

And, of course, there was some valentine making.  I will not bore you with the hundreds of valentines M made, but I’d like to show you the ones he was most excited about:

These are for Max and Thor, two dogs.  Yep – he loves them and a whole lot of love went into making these valentines. :)

 

We also baked up some yummy valentine cookies, which we also painted.  I think I first saw the idea over at The Artful Parent - she used food coloring and water for the paint.  I’ve been reading MaryAnn Kohl’s book, Discovering Great Artists, and in it she mentions egg yolk painting, which sounded awfully interesting to me, so we decided to combine the two ideas.  We whipped together an egg and some food coloring, painted it onto cut out heart cookies, and had a lot of fun!

  

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

Have a beautiful day! :)

 

Science Sunday – melting ice and floating air

Well, we did two experiments this week…

experiment 1 – melting ice:

M wanted to make colored ice, which he does from time to time (and likes to melt them in his bath water), and somehow this gave him the bright idea of doing a “simonasperiment” (science experiment) with ice: make ice and see how long it takes for it to melt.

I remembered Ticia’s family did something similar a while back, so I asked M to think of different ways to melt ice.  We came up with 4 ideas:

1. let it sit out in the room
2. let it sit in hot water
3. put it in the microwave
4. sprinkle salt on it (this idea was my contribution, and he thought I was nuts, hee hee)

So, we filled 4 small snack containers with water, and set them out in our extremely cold breezeway (which gets used as an extra freezer in winter, seriously), and brought them in when we remembered them about 3 days later. ;)

M predicted that the microwave would melt the ice first, the hot water would be second, the salt would be third, and the ice block sitting out in room temperature would take the longest to melt.

We checked the clock and wrote the time down, then quickly put one in some hot water:

 

One in an empty bowl:

We poured salt on the third one:

Then we put the 4th one in the microwave for 30 seconds on high: We kept checking it at 30 second intervals, and it was almost completely melted at 4min, 30 seconds.  It took a total of about 5 minutes to melt the ice in the microwave.  This was the one to melt the quickest, so M’s prediction was correct, but it took much longer than I imagined!

M was correct in all of his predictions!  The warm water melted the ice in about 17 minutes (we changed the water 3 times during this time in an effort to keep it in warm water), The salt-covered ice melted in 2 hours and 38 minutes, and the ice left out in the room took 6 hours to melt.

 

experiment 2 – floating air:

This was another experiment from this fun book:

We filled our kitchen sink and gathered up several things that looked empty, but were really full of air – a pan, a plastic bottle, a bowl, and a cup.  Each of these things floated in our sink, until we filled them with water.  Filling them with water made them sink:

We tried putting glass pebbles in the empty bottle to see how many it would take to make it sink.  We found that the bottle would only sink to the depth of the pebbles.  Any air in the bottle made it float, regardless of how heavy it was getting.

I told M how sometimes deep sea divers use special balloons to raise things from the bottom of the water to the top.  We grabbed a spoon, which we knew was a “sinker” from our previous “sink or float” experiment, and dropped it in the sink.  Then I blew up a balloon and tied a very short piece of yarn to it.  We place it down in the water and tied the other end to the spoon.  Because the balloon was full of air, it went back up to the surface, and brought the spoon with it, making it float just beneath the surface of the water.  M thought this was very cool.  Air is pretty strong stuff!

We also learned how submarines work.  Subs have chambers that fill up with water, making them sink.  When it’s time to rise, air is blown into the chambers, and pushes the water out, making the sub slowly rise to the surface. 

I made a hole in the bottom of our bottle, and another hole in the cap (which was not a very easy thing to do, let me tell you).  We filled our “sub” with water and it sank to the bottom of the sink.  Then we inserted a straw into the hole on the lid and M blew air into the bottle, which pushed the water out the hole in the bottom:and that made his submarine rise to the top.  He loved this, and did it over and over again!

Be sure to check out Science Sunday for more great science ideas!

Have a beautiful day! :)