Science around here lately

Science.  It's really a favorite around here, and the kids have been doing some fun things the last few weeks as we have been exploring new curriculum, or discovering fun things on our own.

April got to dig into her new Elements of Science kit.  She is super excited about it.  I didn't get any pictures of her first experiment, but it involved watching iron shavings turn rusty :)

Also, along with April's Elements of science kit she will be doing Exploring Creation with Physical Science this year, and it finally came.  I have no pictures of her doing it yet, but she is on a roll. 

Swimming creatures.
 >>>We are moving right along in Zoology 2.  Last week the boys did a really fun "try it" making gyre's with hair dryers.  The hair dryers were almost too powerful, blowing water everywhere!  But, it was fun, and they eventually got it just right and saw how the cheerios moved in a circle on the top of the water.

Notice how Aaron isn't touching his hair dryer.  He did it once, then wouldn't touch it.  Apparently my little pep talk about keeping the hair dryers out of the water kind of scared him.

 See, there's proof he actually held the hair dryer!  See the water going everywhere?  They had to figure out how to angle it just right.

To go along with the boys' curriculum this year I purchased the full set of The Blue Planet.  Look at all those discs!  We were not disappointed.  The boys have already watched 2 of the discs.  They love it, and it is a great addition to our zoology 2, swimming creatures book.

Just for fun.
A few weeks ago (actually before school started, but it goes with this and I never posted about it) the boys found this Ultimate building book by Steven Caney, and loved it.  They wanted to build all kinds of things, and the neat thing is that most of the building projects in this book used things you could find around the house or outside.  I might have to put this one on a wish list for my engineering little boys who love to build.

One of the projects was building a dome out of small disposable cups.  Lucky for Aaron I had a costco sized pack of them!  He stapled them together, but we found that the staples didn't hold too well.  He wants to try a different method next time.  I told him he would have to wait until we could replenish our cup supply :)

That was a project that this 8 year-old could definitely get into!

Games.
I don't know if this is exactly science.  It's technology, logic and fun, so I guess it counts!  Daddy found this game, Robot Turtles, while looking for fun logic puzzles for April's birthday, so he went ahead and bought this for the boys to play for a fun educational game.  We opened it up, and it has been a fun one for the younger set to play.  I love growing our game collection with these kinds of games.

That's about it for this edition of science around here lately! 

Desiree