For science, one week we learned about sound and vibrations. We made cup telephones as part of this, and I guess this is a photo of that, but really it's of the cute Barrys with their crazy hair!
And the other week we learned about the different kinds of energy, but mostly kinetic and potential energy. As part of this, we had film canisters (I feel so old that no one knows what film canisters are anymore!) and filled them with denture cleaners (which work like alka seltzer tablets by fizzing in water) and they blew up like rockets and they LOVED that.
And just so you know, our homeschool group is GROWING! It was crazy! One day, there were about 24 littles in my class! I've NEVER had a class that big, and it seemed like so many things went wrong, and I was a bit frazzled. We were learning about pressure, and one of the funnest experiments we did was to walk on eggs. Not one was broken during the littles, but some did with the olders.
By the time I had the older's class, I had gone home and gotten some supplies I had forgotten, and the olders were just about 13 kids, and they were the steady kids I've known forever, so I calmed right down, and it was a good experience.
We had an emergency mom's meeting after that, and talked about how to accommodate all these kids. I am now teaching THREE science classes, and for the littles, they are shorter classes (which I'm not sure I love, but I think works.) Cayleen really is the backbone to this whole thing, and I just love how she was wearing a name tag with "William McKay" on it last Monday.
The groups were still pretty big, even though they were split up. Here's a pitcure of some of my crew to give you a bit of an idea of our "smaller classes."
The next week we learned about Newton's three laws of motion. as part of this, we learned about centripetal force, and if you can't tell because it's a blur, Daniel is swinging a cup of water in a circle with out the water spilling out.
The first Co-op day (we didn't get started until a couple of weeks ago) I taught about Forces. Mostly gravity. We talked about Newton, and we talked about how it doesn't matter how heavy an object is, it will fall at the same speed.
One of the ways we showed this, was by playing with parachute men.
The other time we went for science, we learned about friction. Of course we did one of my favourite activities EVER of shaving cream on the ground. It was some slip-sliding fun!!!
We also dragged each other on the floor using garbage bags. It was easier with the light littles, but not so much for the olders. By the way, we have almost 20 kids in each group!!! Crazy!
We learned about the ear and we dissected...just kidding we didn't dissect anything, but we did make a model of an ear. If you clapped in front of it, it would make ripples in the water.
We also learned about DNA and heredity. I wish I spent more time on this. I remember loving learning about this from my highschool biology teacher.
Did you know you can make it so you can see the DNA of strawberries? Well you can, so we did.
Also, we turned ourselves into strands of DNA to understand mitosis.
We also had a class on plants. This is of our flowers that we put in coloured water.
We did the nervous system. That week we had nothing to dissect. I will never forget four years ago when we had a brain! Since we didn't have a real brain, we made "brain hats." I found themHERE. They took a bit longer to make than I thought, and we had already done some things to test out memory, reflexes, and reaction times, so the littles didn't get their hats done.
The next week, we talked about the digestive system. The butchers said that there was NO way that we would want a stomach, intestines, or gallbladder. In fact, he said he had a gallbladder explode on him before.....yeah, Ill pass. But we DID get a HUGE liver and a pancreas.
We cut up the liver and put it in hydrogen peroxide to show how the liver transforms the hydrogen peroxide in your body into oxygen and water. It worked really well.
We also talked about how long your digestive system is. We used a hose to mark it all off. (Thus this post being called "Blood GUTS and a Cold War rant.)
We included teeth as part of the digestive system (instead of bones) and talked about how to keep good care of them. As part of this, I gave them all "disclosing tablets." Only my kids took them during class, and it was a big hit.
Next week we talked about the excretory system and skin. They both excrete liquids, so they go together, right?
We dissected a kidney. Honestly, the more I learn about the body, the more I appreciate it.
We also did a lot of skin things. Specifically about sweat.
I have a friend whose dad is a butcher, and he's been so good to me in the past, and he got me the tongue, esophagus/trachea, lungs and heart (all still connected) of a cow! Seriously, it was awesome!
When I got it, I was a bit worried. It was in this bloody see through garbage bag, and it just seemed pretty gruesome, but I was undaunted, and brought it to school.
We learned quite a bit about lungs from doing experiments that didn't include the cow lungs, including proving that our air is mostly carbon dioxide when it comes out by putting out a candle, showing them a homemade lung model, and how much air your lungs can hold by blowing into a jar filled with water.
And then came out the lungs (that was still connected to the heart and tubes) it was so big when straightened out, it took up most of the sled I brought to contain it!
We watched this awesome youtube video to help us dissect it:
I think my favourite moment was when Heather Burton came in and the look on her face was not of disgust, but of absolute love of learning. She wanted to know everything.
I certainly learned a lot. It's one of my favourite dissections I've ever done. I was amazed at how easy it was to see the different air and blood pipes and how those pipes became smaller and smaller until they interchanged oxygen with one another. Also, I didn't realize that your trachea is made up of cartilage hoops all the way, to make sure your air passageways stay open.
Then the next science class we did was about the heart. I had prepared hearts to dissect, but then I had the heart that was connected to the lungs that I kept. HOLY COW there was a huge difference (get it? Holy cow?-moving on.)
We used "We the Curious" Youtube again, and we saw the heart strings, the different chambers and everything.
The red one I'm holding is the fresh specimen, and the brownish grey one is the prepared. It was so hard and smelly. It makes me only want to use fresh specimens ever. It's a whole lot cheaper too! (Free from my friend!)
We had so many activities to do about the circulatory system, that each club (I have a younger and an older) didn't get to all of them. I had these "blood type" tests, and I had never used them before, and so I thought you just pricked yourself and then sent it in to get tested, so I thought that wasn't interesting enough for the Youngers, so I waited until the older came, but then I realized that you could find out your blood type IMMEDIATELY! Cool? Yes.
I only had five tests (one for each of my kids) but I decided that I would do it with anyone willing to get impaled by me. (I'm glad that their parents are my friends because I forgot to ask permission!) and it was so cool to see how the blood reacted differently with the different chemicals on the paper.
The three non-McKays were all O+ and the McKays were all A-, and I'm so grateful that we had at least two different kinds! We looked at their blood under the microscope. It isn't red under the microscope, it's clear!
And this week we learned about muscles. I wasn't prepared as much as I should have been. I had them watch a few extra Brainpops this week while I finished up my tendon-hands. But they were worth it, they were pretty fun:
You can't tell in this photo because for the older I ran out of coloured string and used fishing line instead, but there's tendons running down every finger. The rest of them were better than this one, but I forgot to take a photo during science club.
We also did a few activities to feel and be aware of our own muscles.
Alberta is letting homeschool co-ops get together as long as they are in a facility with insurance. I'm not sure exactly what that means, but I'm pretty sure the Alternate School counts, so we got permission to do science there!
It turned out some more kids came, because it was "sanctioned" by the government, and moms who want to make sure they are following all the rules weren't sure about my at-home science, but now they're back, and it's so good to see them!
We skipped learning about mammals for now, because I thought it would be more impactful to learn about all the systems of the body before we dissect a foetal pig. One girl was so hilarious when I told them my plan of putting the dissection on hold, she said "Wait, can we please make bacon from the pig?"
LOL too bad there's a ton of chemicals in my prepared specimens!
Maybe in the coming weeks we'll have fresh specimens. I've asked a local butcher to help us, and he's helped us in the past, so I'm hopeful.
This week we learned about the skeletal system. We talked about the strength and structure of bones, the joints of bones, and we spent a long time on the spine.
We actually made an edible model of the spine which was the highlight, and it all worked out pretty good!
(The balloons are the heads connected to the spines.)
