Restoration Place

Official Hand Washing Lesson

Why I couldn't think to review proper hand washing techniques with my children at the beginning of the winter/cold/flu season I just don't know. Not that I haven't taught them...again and again, but it become clear to me when doing this lesson that some of the information hadn't exactly sunk in.

Somehow, to the children, having hand-outs or visuals or an experiment of sorts makes it "official", not just something Mom is telling them about for the umpteenth time. Or maybe it was the phrase millions of microbes that grabbed their attention.

A few catchy resources, and the hand washing instruction session become real. ~grin~

I started with a book: Germs Make Me Sick! (Let's-Read-and-Find-Out Science 2) (Reading Rainbow book):

Then we had fun with Glitter Germs.

I put lotion, glitter, a container to catch excess glitter, and paper towels on the table:

I squirted a big glob of lotion on each of their hands and they spread the lotion all over the front and back of their hands:

 

Then they held their globby hands over a container and I sprinkled glitter generously all over their hands. The glitter represents germs. The expressions on their faces were hilarious, but I promised not to post a photo of that:

 

Next, I gave a paper towel to each one and told them to wipe off the glitter:

 

It was very hard to wipe off all the glitter "germs".

Next, we made a trip to the bathroom where I demonstrated the best techniques for washing hands, and how long it should take: 30 seconds. Some sources suggest 20 seconds is enough, others recommend 30 seconds. I'm going for the 30 seconds, just to be extra sure.

Young children have a difficult time knowing when 30 seconds is up, so I taught them to sing the Doxology twice, not too fast, and that would amount to about 30 seconds:

     Praise God, from Whom all blessings flow;

     Praise Him, all creatures here below;

     Praise Him above, ye heavenly host;

     Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

The idea to sing the Doxology while hand washing isn't mine, but I can't remember where I heard it. I've heard of singing "Happy Birthday" twice, but I like the Doxology so much better.

We finished up the lesson by reading through Wash Your Hands...Stay Healthy!.

I think it would be fun to try a Glo Germ Gel Kit. It's available at Steve Spangler (Glow germ lotion plus mini black light) and Home Training Tools (comes with larger black light and is a little pricier).

Deer Skull ~ Winter Find

I know some of you don't like to look at animal bones. Go ahead and click away from here because this is a big animal bone find! ~smile~

When Karl and his friend were hunting last week, they also looked for "sheds" which are the antlers of male deer (bucks) that fall off this time of the year. His friend found a whole deer skeleton mostly submerged in a marsh and gave this deer skull--with antlers intact--to Karl to give to Jacob. He knows Jacob is an avid animal bone collector, and this is a very special find.

The skull needs to be soaked in bleach before it can be closely examined and added to Jacob's collection.

Winter Tabletop Garden ~ 2 Week Update

It's been a little over two weeks since we created our winter tabletop garden, and we've seen some growth:

The rutabaga is just sprouting and the turnip is bursting with healthy leaves. The rest have yet to show any green:

The cats keep drinking the water out of some of the jars and knocking the vegetables down into the water. ~smile~ We fish the veggies out, poke the toothpicks back in, and refill the water. I plan to move the tabletop garden to south window of the house where they can get more consistent sunlight and warmth.

Winter Tabletop Garden

I was inspired by Amanda's beautiful tabletop garden at Hearts and Trees last year and knew we must make our own this winter. Anything green and growing in the house (except for mold in the fridge ~grin~) gives me a lift in January and February.

Our good As We Walk friends came over to join us in the project:

We gathered several kinds of root vegetables: parsnip, carrot, sweet potato, russet potato, rutabaga, and turnip. Here's a parsnip, turnip, and sweet potato:

 

I had already gathered jars, toothpicks, and bamboo skewers (which we exchanged for the toothpicks because they were too big). We poked toothpicks in the sides of the vegetables so that the bottom half would be suspended in water in the jars.

Here they are, in a normally sunny spot (cloudy morning), and all we'll have to do to maintain them is keep the jars filled with enough water so that the bottom of the vegetable stays immersed:

 

I'll be posting updates about the growth of our garden!

Clouds Mini Unit

 

 

We've been doing a lot of cloud watching and identifying lately. When we made the simple mirror nephoscope we intended to continue our cloud study. But we moved on to to other interests, instead.

We picked the cloud study back up again and for the last two weeks or so, we've been obsessed with clouds. Katie, especially. She brings her cloud indentification sheet everywhere we go and and calls out the names of the clouds she sees. She's been our official go-to person for daily cloud information.

A couple of the children's favorite activities were making a cloud in a jar and recreating artists' clouds.

The cloud in a jar was fascinating. The supplies are a gallon glass jar (the bigger the jar, the more dramatic the results), matches, black paper, tape, food coloring (to color the water), large plastic baggie (to be filled with ice):

Fill the jar 1/3 full of hot water and put a few drops of food coloring in. Tape black paper to the back half of the jar. This helps to see the cloud better:

  

Fill the large plastic baggie with ice:

Light a match, and hold it inside the jar above the water level for a few seconds to heat the air and create smoke particles. Drop the match into the water and immediately place the bag of ice across the top of the jar:

 

The cloud forms, and it's thrilling!

 

 

 

They also enjoyed a Clouds in Art project which I merged with Lapaz Home Learning's Cloud Kit (scroll down in the post to see the cloud kit) (Thanks, Theresa!). 

We set up different shades of blue (and some white) card stock and cotton balls:

 

Next, we printed and cut out the small Clouds in Art paintings:

 

The children each took several "paintings" and tried to recreate the artists' clouds:

 

Some other great resources we used were those shared by Melissa at In the Sparrow's Nest. Melissa's Cloud Unit Study is very thorough--in fact, we're not done exploring her ideas. The strawberries dipped in chocolate will be next! (Thanks again, Melissa!)

We might do the Clouds in Art Mini Unit Study Notebooking Page Set offered by Amanda at Hearts and Trees. We ordered and enjoyed her Winter 2007 kit.

By the way, our cloud study wasn't generated by our science curriculum--it's one of our many rabbit trails and we plan to follow it as far as we want.

Earthquakes ~ Christian Kids Explore Earth & Space ~ Unit 2, Lesson 6

We spent an afternoon this week learning about earthquakes. We're using Christian Kids Explore Earth & Space as our main earth science guide, but it's functioning merely as an idea generator at this point. I'm somewhat dissatisfied at its skimpiness. I plan to write a review of the book at some point; right now I'm too busy gathering ideas to extend it.

We began with reading about earthquakes, doing map work to locate the earth's faults and plate boundaries, and watching simulations of earthquakes online. We had already looked at picture books on earthquakes and watched a couple of videos last week.

Next, we built a Geoblox earthquake model. It was easy to print out, color, cut and assemble:

 

 

Jacob was inspired to build his own seismometer. He was determined to produce more authentic seismograms, which he could then analyze with a Richter scale:

 

 

We simulated earthquakes and produced many seismograms.

The links in this post should help get you started if you need to pad (or even just begin) your earthquake studies.

Have you used an earth science book, curriculum, or anything to guide your earth science learning that you can recommend? I'm not particularly interested in something Christian per se, but I do want something that's beefier than what we're currently using.

Think! Blog ~ Week 6 Challenge - Bridges

The Think! blog challenge this week is to build a bridge from the required materials which will hold as many pennies or quarters as possible (Goldfish crackers, which seem to have overtaken the house lately, were not part of the materials list):

 

 

Katie: 31 pennies and quarters, Maggie: 44 quarters, Ben: 23 quarters, Jacob: 100 quarters.

The children are so very excited to participate in the Think! challenges, and they were somewhat bent out of shape that I completely forgot about it last week.~smile~

Volcanic Eruption Activity

Yesterday afternoon was volcanic. We watched videos, read books, colored pictures, investigated pumice, made a Sculpey lava flow, and created an erupting volcano. Even with all that, I think the boys could have kept going the rest of the afternoon.

We're on Unit 2, Lesson 5: Volcanoes of the Christian Kids Explore Earth & Space and there are perfectly good instructions for simulating your own volcanic eruptions in the lesson, but I already had this kit stashed so I brought it out:

Never mind that I neglected to read all the instructions and gather necessary household items beforehand, and didn't have club soda, and didn't want to make a plaster and sand volcano that would have to dry 24 hours before creating the eruptions--we were erupting a volcano that afternoon!

Good thing I know how to make a giant glob of salt dough, and had a few liters of Coke sitting in the basement (for the Steve Spangler Mentos-Coke geyser).

The children globbed the salt dough onto the kit's plastic volcano form:

 

We prepared the eruption ingredients:

 

Filled the volcano's crater with Coke:

 

Threw in the kit's tablets (which are mostly baking soda and red food coloring), and watched the eruptions:

 

 

Of course, you don't need a kit (or even salt dough) to create an erupting volcano. Just Google the phrase "baking soda volcano" and have fun!

Blog: Think! A Program Designed to Encourage Kids to Think Outside the Box

Think! presents weekly challenges for kids to come up with creative solutions using only the list of materials and parameters provided in the challenge.

This is week four and the current focus is to elevate an apple as high and as for long as possible using marshmallows, toothpicks, straws, plastic caps (from a water bottle, etc.), and lifesavers (we used Cheerios, an approved substitute).

The children were very excited about the challenge:

 

 

Once you've completed the challenge, you can submit your photos to Think!

We might not be able to participate in every week's challenge, but we're going to do as many as we can as we love "science-y" inventive stuff around here.

Hope to see you there!

Simple Mirror Nephoscope ~ Determining Cloud Direction

A mirror nephoscope is used to determine the speed and direction of the clouds. You watch the image of the clouds in the mirror and use a compass to determine which direction they are coming from and where they're headed.

We made ours in the simplest way, and it only shows the direction of the clouds. I purchased a 15 x 13 inch mirror from a craft store and purposefully left it in its protective cardboard frame. Next, using a marker, the children wrote abbreviated compass directions on the edge of the frame.

Then we took our large compass (easier to see with four children crowding around) and lined up the north side of the nephoscope with north on the compass:

Next, we watched the image of the clouds slowly make their way across the surface of the mirror:

Sometimes there are too many heads in the way. Better to do it one at a time:

We saw that the clouds were coming from the southwest and moving towards the northeast.

Advanced nephoscopes determine the direction and speed of the wind, as well as the speed and altitude of the clouds.

Different versions of easy-to-make nephoscopes can be found here (we're going to make that one next) and here.