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 – sept. 30, 2011

 

“The mother’s heart is the child’s schoolroom.”

- Henry Ward Beecher

I am still struggling to find a way to fit our lessons into our busy weeks.  I am so thankful for these posts, where I’m able to focus on what we actually did, and see that it was enough, instead of only remembering what we did not get to.  I have heard that homeschooling pre-K and Kindergarten (I feel we have a foot in both of these places) can be done in just one hour per day.  And so 5 hours a week is my goal – you would think it wouldn’t be so hard to manage 5 hours, wouldn’t you?  You homeschooling mothers that do 5 hours every day… you are amazing!!

Here’s a bit of what we’ve been up to…

 

LITERACY SKILLS:

M has been writing up a storm.  We were recently given an old school desk that my husband had as a child, and we placed it in our breezeway for M:The top opens and there is storage space inside the desk.  I filled it up with lots of goodies: notebook, dry erase board, markers, pencils, his ABC collage and trace book, game book, etc. 

The first thing he did was grab a pen and his little notebook and set to work writing.  Here is his very first all-on-his-own journal entry:Need a translation?  :)  It says, “Matthew loves Mommy and Daddy  I’m 5 years old!”  Not bad, huh?  Some letters are missing and some things are written right to left instead of the other way around, but it is an awfully sweet first sentence if you ask the Mommy or the Daddy. :)  M did this mostly on his own, only asking me how to spell “years” and “old”.

We do a bit of copy work each week too (or more often, if he asks).  I let him decide what he would like to write, and he dictates it to me while I write it out on his whiteboard.  He then copies it into his little notebook.  Interestingly, this gives me a bit of insight into what 5 year old boys think about:“Car!  Go car!  Go scooter!”  Hee hee. :)   This is similar to what you would find in an early reader, isn’t it?  I find it interesting that he despises early readers and does not want anything to do with them because there is often no “real” story involved.  Yet, he LOVES writing similar things and is so proud of himself when he does. 

And, do you think the love of exclamation points is possibly genetic? (!!!)  I like to think we are just very enthusiastic about life around here. ;)  Actually M found out about exclamation points from a bottle of OFF! bug spray.  He recognized the word “off”, and was very excited to learn that an exclamation point gives emphasis to what you are saying, almost like shouting.  Let’s just say he likes to emphasize everything he says. It makes things much more exciting, you know.  :)

 

SCIENCE:

We did some fun science activities and experiments related to light and colors this week.  I’ll be writing about them on Sunday, and linking it up to Ticia’s Science Sunday post, so be sure to check back!

For now, I want to tell you about a great gift M received for his birthday in late August.  Have you heard of Snap Circuits? 

The set consists of metal connectors that snap together (so you don’t have to worry about your child playing with actual wires, although two “jumper cables” are included also), and you can build electrical circuits, using two AA batteries.  You can make the circuits do a variety of things.  There is a motor that makes a plastic fan spin, a music box, other sound boxes, lights, etc.  M has the junior set which came with a book of over 100 electricity-themed projects to do.  There are add-on sets too, which I’m sure he’ll be getting in the future.  He is really into batteries and figuring out how electricity works, so this is perfect for him!  You can learn more at the website I’ve linked to above. Sets of Snap Circuits have won a number of awards, and it is such a great tool for learning.  I’m not receiving anything for writing about this (although I think I may sound like a commercial), I just think it’s an outstanding product and I’m so happy we heard about it.  M works with his set every day, and it’s such a fun and easy way to fit a bit of science and engineering into our days.

 

MATH:

I am finding math work to be the easiest to prepare and actually do these days, but that means some worksheets, and well, you probably know how I feel about worksheets. I am planning on using a lot of the great games found in Peggy Kaye’s book, in future weeks, to supplement: (Thanks for the recommendation, Kim!)

This week however, we did a 1-100 dot-to-dot page, for numeral recognition and practice counting.  M loves dot-to-dots, and he’s working very hard to get to the point where he can work one of these all the way to 100 on his own:

I’ve started posting some blank pattern block puzzles on our fridge for M to work on throughout the week, whenever he wants.  I also place the blocks he’ll need next to it (which means I have to solve the puzzle beforehand, not always an easy thing to do!).  He has done great so far and really enjoys this:

  

We also played “store”, which is great for learning about money and making change, as well as grouping items into categories! Where are my sofa cushions, you ask?  You’ll find out below. ;)

 

CREATIVE PLAY:

M and Daddy had fun this week working on more engineering skills.  They built a huge (HUGE!) airplane out of Tinker Toys:

 

And M spent a little time aboard a ship he made in the living room:   Ah, that’s where those sofa cushions went!  We are currently reading The Voyages of Dr. Dolittle, by Hugh Lofting.  There is plenty of ship adventure involved.  Very exciting stuff. :)  I so enjoy seeing him act out books he loves.

 

FIELD TRIP:

We went on a little field trip to a local art center which has gardens and trails on its property.  We’d never been here before and it was a wonderful experience.  We had perfect weather and were surrounded by beauty.  There were trails splitting off in every direction and we wanted to stay and explore them all.  We’ll definitely be going back!

There was a pretty little creek with lots of bridges:

We walked along the creek, through a little tunnel, which was very cool:

And found ourselves here: 

Beautiful.  Perfect for sitting and reflecting:

We talked a bit about how lakes and ponds, and creeks, rivers, and streams are different… water that is always going somewhere vs. water that stays in its home. :)  I wonder which is happier? 

The art center was next, but we were not overly impressed with what it had to offer.  We liked these two pieces best:

A hanging sphere made up of fabric pieces cut to look like clothing…

and this pony, encrusted with beads, buttons, and all kinds of things.

I hope you all had an interesting and sparkly week as well. ;)

Linking this post up to Preschool Corner and Weekly Wrap-Up.  Check them out for some great homeschooling posts!

Have a beautiful day! :)