Daddy's home week and I did not blog!

Well last week, we did get some work accomplished, not sure if I will remember it all but here goes...

Monday- science club

This months topic was trees.   Today's class was all over the map in what we actually did though.  The kids started out by going on a leaf hunt to get different coloured leaves.  They then crushed up these leaves to place in a specimen jar of ethol alchohol.  The teacher explained that they were going to draw out the different colours.  He explained why we would see different colours depending on the colour of the leaves.  He talked about that depending on the colour of the leaf it meant it had a certain chemicals in it to make it change colour, I think he mentioned chlorophyll and carotenes.  He explained this well, but I am the organizer of this event and I was organizing when this occurred so I didn't quite hear it all.  I think I need to research this some more as it sounded interesting.  So each group had a jar, we divided in groups of 3.  Each child had a piece of paper that they would write their name in that they stuck in the jar to see the chromatography.  They also had to label their jar with the date, name of experiment and student initials.  I thought this was great experience for the scientific method.   I don't think it was really important for them to label, but great to learn!  So the students then had to wait for the chromatography to happen, this was about 1/2 an hour.

dipping his paper for chromatography

whats funny about chromatography Gigi?

During the time waiting we had the students gather for another talk.  He then talked about nests and how birds build nests, where they build nest etc.  Students then divided up into their same groups and they had a bunch of random things to make a bird nest from, with one major hitch, they had to use a clothes pin to assemble the nests, to demonstrate how a bird would use its beak.  

our teacher today, I found him quite interesting

bird beak nest making

these boys are just too cute!

After building nests it was time to look at our chromatography.  We then jumped into groups again, for about 1/2 hour playing with electricity and circuits.  The groups had to build circuits and see which materials would be conductors or insulators.  They all seemed to have fun playing around with the batteries alligator clamps and light bulb.

these boys were definitely into electronic circuits, I think we will have to have a playdate with circuits

Yes I helped mom