03.18.07
Posted in Homeschooling, Kids, Photos, Science at 9:52 am by Christina
My father-in-law, a retired chemical engineer, is a volunteer at the Exploratorium in San Francisco. I think he goes up a couple of times a week and works in R&D on new projects and programs. As a result of his work there, the girls get to go to all sorts of membership and volunteer events, and Jon often takes them up for fun and learning at activities like Physics of Toys.
Sometimes, too, they get to test out projects with him at Camp PooMee (we used to call their weekly grandparent day Camp Meemom when Jon was still at work but it’s been modified for his retirement). This week, they were testing out an activity for April’s Physics of Toys: Green Gadgets for a Blue Planet (which is scheduled right at Earth Day). They built a homemade filter with pebbles, sand, cotton, and sphagnum moss and used it to clean up water contaminated by a lovely melange of kitchen materials: cocoa powder, rice, ground wheat, red and green food coloring, tea leaves, etc. Here they are in action, with thanks to my mother-in-law for the pictures:
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03.09.07
Posted in Homeschooling, Kids, Science at 11:27 am by Christina
Jeff has been doing a lot of astronomy with the kids. They began with nighttime observation (naked eye because our telescope is on loan to someone), learning about the different constellations, seasonal changes, and of course lots of mythology to go along with the constellation and star names. We were very disappointed on our road trip not to have any clear nights in the middle of Nevada or Utah, where the light pollution was extremely low, to see the spectacular Milky Way or any new constellations.
Once home we instituted a new operating schedule for the family, in which Jeff doesn’t work mornings and we therefore have more time for applied homeschooling. (Jamie’s in a stage right now – toddlerhood – that makes it difficult for one parent to manage both him and a hands-on activity.) For his first project, Jeff decided on a scale model of the solar system in our backyard.
The longest diagonal we got was 84 feet, skirting the corner of the kitchen. Katie did some multiplication and division, estimating and unit conversions to arrive at 1008 inches for 3660 million miles, or 7 million miles every 2 inches.
Knowing 7:2 as opposed to 3.5:1 made the math easier for the placement of each planet, and since we were reducing million-miles to inches, a bit of rounding seemed negligible!
In the first three feet out from the sun, three planets went down. Emma was in charge of cutting out the construction paper planets, and Jeff constructed math problems for her to figure as well, once the initial scale was determined.
Jupiter finally landed at 12 feet – that’s only 1/7 of the total distance out to Pluto (yes, we all read and discussed the demotion of Pluto from planetary status, but we went with popular culture and also the solar system placement we were using for mileage information!). More than half the solar system is concentrated in that 1/7 of the distance closest to the sun; I think a follow-up physics lesson on gravity might be in order.
Saturn was the last planet on the deck, and Uranus made it to the hot tub with much homonymic silliness:
No, the sport balls are not part of the solar system!
Neptune landed on the grass, and Pluto was at the sandbox.
The biggest challenge was nonacademic: Jamie wanted to be outside with them, but being a toddler was only interested in picking up the rocks and paper, which was a bit counterproductive.
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