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Lately, my 7 year old is really into how things are made. Today’s question was “How is a Light Bulb Made?” And so we headed over to Google’s Video search to see if there was anything good available. Here are two 5 min. videos that pulled not only my 7 year old’s attention but also that of his older siblings. One is for an incandescent light bulb and the other for a flourescent bulb. Enjoy! …Shannon How An Incandescent Light Bulb is Made How A Flourescent Light Bulb is Made
 Experimenting with water flow It’s Spring in our area of the world and full of life – trees are leafing out, seedlings are emerging, flowers blooming, and the kids really don’t want to be inside. So we are spending more time outside. One of the things I love about homeschooling is the flexibility we have to change our location. We can homeschool from anywhere – even outdoors. Charlotte Mason is well known for her stance on getting kids outside and observing the world. And I agree with her. I’ve intentionally set up our days so the kids spend as much time outdoors as possible. However, that doesn’t solve the need to get some schoolwork done. We incorporate gardening, butterfly and bird watching into our school days during spring time. But I’m also known to send the kids outside with their reading or lay out in the grass with them reading aloud. And – to just play and follow their creativity, which in itself often leads to more schoolwork than I could ever assign them. Another way to incorporate outdoor time into schoolwork is with notebooking. Spring science notebooks cover art, science, and language arts in a way that is a lot of fun and easy to do. And the Kids love to show them off to others. This year instead of doing full science notebooks, we are just doing notebooking pages in a blended notebook, but it works and the kids love it. If you are new to notebooking, here’s an article from Cindy Rushton, aka the Notebooking Queen, on what you can include in spring science notebooks. Enjoy! …Shannon
It is Spring! Why Not Begin a Science Notebook? 11 yr old working on a notebooking project Today being inside just tortures me! It is STUNNING outside! Even the little birds are begging us to go outside. Are you like me, dying from “cabin fever” and ready for spring? This is the perfect time to begin Nature Notebooks! Not only will you have an abundance of treasures awaiting your exploration, but these are perfect days to try something fresh. Ready? Let me help… Chances are you already have many things that could be included in a Science Notebook around your home. Look for those “goodies” that do not have their own special place and add them to your Science Notebooks. This is the perfect opportunity to develop “a place” for those “goodies” while developing a nice product for displaying all the growing knowledge of nature all while your children are keeping special memorabilia! One of the things that I like about using supplies intended for scrapbooking is that there are so many products that enable us to keep bulky materials safely inside of our notebooks. Not to mention, scrapbooking makes EVERY notebook so much cuter! And,to imagine that we call this “school!” Want some ideas of things to include in your notebooks?
You can add a lot of life to your Science Notebooks with special supplies you find along the way! I have found that the little touches have made our notebooks so much more fun and in the process hooked my children. Encourage your children to use die-cuts, frames, stencils, shapes, and edgings galore to make their notebooks fun and beautiful! My children now beg each weekend to work on our binders/scrapbooks. We have taken these simple skills into other projects for our Science studies such as creating books or booklets, making cards with pressed flowers, sketches, poetry and Scripture verses, and displaying our collections. The key is to just have fun and enjoy making your notebooks all yours! Happy Notebooking! Cindy About Cindy Rushton Cindy Rushton is the hostess of the Ultimate Homeschool Expo, the very first online homeschool convention.
Last summer, my daughter’s Chemistry curriculum introduced us to the idea that YouTube could be part of our homeshool science curriculum. Everyone would gather around the computer to watch the explosive reactions of alkaline metals hitting water and beg to watch it again. Since then, we’ve periodically used Google’s Video search to find other free online videos that demonstrated a concept or inspired our own experiments. As with anything, there’s a lot of junk out there we don’t want in our kids’ heads, but there is also some wonderful experiments and demonstrations that we wouldn’t be able to do on our own. We use these videos as springboards of conversation – not just on the topic, but also on safety and appropraiteness of the content. This week my 9-year-old ran across this video on how to make a simple “bb gun” from a toilet paper tube, a balloon, a penny. From this, we discussed velocity, force, safety, when it is okay to replicate the experiment and when it is not, and what we could change to test how it work under different conditions (different type of tube, different balloon sizes, a different type of projectile, etc.) Over time I’ll share more of our favorite videos with you. But for now, here’s my 9-year-old’s find for the week: Safety Alert! I’m a big believer in over emphasizing safety. When watching any science videos or demonstrations, it’s always wise, especially with active, indepenent-thinking, creative children, to explicitly discuss when it is okay to replicate an experiment and under what conditions…and be sure to explain why or ask what would happen if they don’t follow the safety instructions.
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