Kindergarten Science Experiment Failure

Let's start with the experiment that worked:

Congratulations, the wet bread in the test tube turned moldy.

 I didn't need to buy a science kit for this one as I am capable of letting bread mold on a weekly basis.

Yeast experiment failure #1: 

The first and second had sugar and yeast and water and were suppose to immediately bubble and overflow in time. The one labeled "c" did not have sugar and was suppose to do nothing. Guess I shouldn't have used that same stir stick for all three. Geez, Mom!

Yeast experiment failure #2: The balloon took three hours to blow up, when it was suppose to take 30 minutes. It at least popped in the end, so the boys thought that was cool. 

Yeast experiment failure #3: So this is when I finally realized that the kit came with bad yeast. Oh, by the way, this all came from "The Magic School Bus Germ Kit" off of Amazon. Don't buy it. That is suppose to be bread. 

Another reason not to buy the germ kit: It didn't even have the agar I needed to do the bacteria experiments. Thanks a lot Ms. Frizzle! (from Magic School Bus)

So I thought fast as my boy thinks we need to do an experiment daily. I vaguely remembered something about mixing oil and water to make a do it yourself lava lamp. All I did was oil and dyed water. I am pretty sure I was missing an ingredient or two. It looked cool for awhile.

Eventually it just looked like a lot of colored, wasted cooking oil. At least Tobin thought it was fun.

Here is another example of me trying to do an experiment based on memory. I was in the grocery store, and I saw some lettuce that was long and attached at the bottom, and I remembered seeing the pinterest idea of showing water moving through a plant. Only problem is, after actually reading the article, they used a certain kind of cabbage that attached at the top, showing the color moving in a really vivid and beautiful way. My experiment was a flop.

Go to the following link if you want to learn how to do it right:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mslaura/4023084459/

Lessons learned? Well, my 5 year old already knows I don't know everything. I learned to actually read directions and ingredients lists FIRST.

Most importantly: Remember to just keep swimming, just keep swimming, just keep swimming, swimming, swimming...they can't all end in failure! 

Learning about God's Beautiful Creation

The boys love singing "He's Got the Whole World in His Hands", and their favorite verse is "He's got you and me brother." We made our creation lapbook modified to show the brothers together.

here is the link to printables//lapbook idea: http://www.lapbooklessons.com/CreationLapbook.html

My favorite part on the lapbook, was  the boys' answers for what their favorite number was.

 Tobin said "#1 -  because he likes to win" (he is so my child).

 Jonah said "654-3211 - batman's phone number" (he is so his father's son). 

We enjoyed the beauty of the flowers God created:

we bagged up some of the blossoms to make out own watercolors

We crushed the petals, and then boiled them in water.

 They sorta turned out, but they weren't bright on paper. Still a cool science experiment.

We painted anyways with watercolors and q-tips. They loved making cool hairdos on the tops.

Neither child wanted to do the dot q-tip idea. Oh well.

My creative 3-year-old added some of the flower petals to his tree.

This week, our first full week back, served as a review. We reviewed creation, as that was the first week in My Father's World that we did back in January. I was surprised how much my 5 year old remembered. He knew day four was birds and fish before I even said it! We also reviewed alphabet and numbers, and we started our 100 day count and calendar again.

 I do plan on continuing My Father's World this fall...when it is L for Leaf and A for Apple time. For now, I am enjoying making my own unit studies. I am getting a taste of different styles of homeschool right now and sorta testing the waters. Planning unit studies is very time consuming, and hard to organize. That being said, it is enjoyable to customize what my boys are going to learn on a daily basis.
As always, this journey is... to be continued...

Tadpoles

After our butterflies flew away last spring, the boy's grandpa brought them a surprise from his pond: tadpoles! They are not the easiest animal to maintain. In the end we only had one turn into an itty-bitty frog.  Still it was really cool to watch and witness such an amazing transformation.

day 1: straight from the pond

 day 2

day 8

day 20

day 21

day 25

day 27- last day

L is for Leaf and B is for butterfly

Rewind back to March of this year. We had a great run with My Father's World Kindergarten curriculum from January through February. We learned about Creation week, went through our entire alphabet in lowercase, learned s is for sun, m is for moon, and then L is for leaf. Only problem was, there were no leaves on the trees the first week of March. So, after I spent thirty seconds explaining the leaves would be back soon, and that grass was a leaf....my 5 year old took matters into his own hands. He remembered the butterfly garden that came with the curriculum, and he decided it was time we talked about his favorite subject: bugs. We ordered our caterpillars, and we enjoyed the beautiful spring weather while we searched for God's smallest creatures. 

I don't think my kids will ever forget the butterfly experience we had. It was just amazing.

chasing butterflies

learning lifecycle with pasta

butterfly snack

                                        

painting their wings

 painting their toes to make catterpillars

our finished art

 little brother wearing his wings (big brother was too cool)

Scrapbook: silly faces recreated three years later

I had not planned on recreating this scrapbook page, it just came naturally. Both of my boys love making silly faces. I remembered after I took Jonah's pictures the other day (that he requested I take), that I had done this before. So I started searching my scrapbook archives, and I also found that it was exactly three years ago that Tobin had made the same silly faces! Funny how things repeat with two boys that are so different from each other. Of course Jonah is wearing batman. He doesn't wear anything else, so I had to make a couple thematic changes. I left as much the same as I could get away with. My happy scrappy pages:

 Tobin, August 2010

Jonah, August 2013