Boiling points, chromatography, and Crystals

Science was canceled a few times because of sickness or family week, or whatever, but we did do some.

One week we learned about freezing and boiling points. We saw how adding ingredients (like salt) to water affected the freezing and boiling points. We also made "instant ice" which didn't work with the little kid class because my water wasn't cold enough at that point-blah. At least it worked with the olders.

Next class we learned about chromatography. We also did "walking water" as part of this, but as I was doing it, I kind of realized it wasn't chromatography, because instead of separating mixtures, we were putting things together, but oh well.

We also learned about crystals!!! We made borax crystals, sugar rock candy crystals and eggshell geodes. We also broke open some real crystal geodes.

Of course, the borax and sugar won't be ready for some time (actually, at this moment, the borax has been finished.)  It ended up being A LOT of work for yours truly after the kids had gone: making super saturated solutions and containers with dangling crystal starters to make crystals in.

Honestly, I'm a little scared my sugar crystals won't work. I have the best recipe, but I didn't follow it because my pots were too full, and couldn't fit any more sugar, so I'm worried it doesn't have enough sugar.

Metals and Solubles.

For science, we had a lesson on metals. We talked about all the characteristics of metals and did experiments to exemplify those characteristics. We talked about luster, conductivity, solidness, malleable, elasticity, ductile and hardness, and here is a photo of me listing them as we explored each one, but you can't read it very well.

The next week we talked about Soluble vs insoluble. We made water/oil lava lamps as part of this which everyone loves:

We also brought out the nail polish and talked about how nail polish is not soluble to water, but it is to acetone and then we brought out the nail polish remover. Guys, during this lesson 8 years ago, I wrecked a table with nail polish remover. I was not going to do this again. I put on a table cloth.

Well, the kids got really carried away with the nail polish (I think most little boys have a secret hope of playing with nail polish and can fully feed that hope when their science teacher tells them to) and I didn't clean up right away, and there was a HOLE in the table cloth, and my table noticed. Whaaahhh.

Reactions

For science, we've been learning about reactions and how certain things effects reactions, such as heat, light, surface area, concentration, and of course catalysts, and what better catalyst is there than mentos in coke:

We also talked about exothermic and endothermic reactions. I wanted to do elephant toothpaste for this, but it was a major fail. BLAH! I need good high concentration hydrogen peroxide!!!

But we didn't have science the next week because it was COLD. Really cold. So cold, that vehicles didn't start and people would start coughing by just going outside.

Carbon Dioxide, and the Water Cycle

Science- we had two science clubs since I wrote last time. The first week we learned about oxygen and carbon dioxide. We did things on air pressure too if I remember right. This year I actually remembered to get ready for this lesson and made some carbon dioxide indicators from a lime solution. These take over 24 hours to prepare, and I usually forget to prepare that far in advance, so this was the first time we actually did it, and it worked!

Next week we focused on the water cycle (perfect timing for watching Frozen 2 which in a round about way talks about it.) As part of this we showed how hot water rises and cold water sinks. Red is hot and blue is cold. In the purple one the red had been on the bottom and they mixed immediately.

I also had them draw pictures of the water cycle.

Pretty cute eh?

Periodic Table, Density, and Molecules.

Science has been going as smoothly as possible. Since Cayleen's not here, the kids have watched science related movies downstairs while I teach the other group of kids upstairs. One week lots of kids couldn't come, so we had a combined lesson. I won't lie: that was nice.

One week we spent the time figuring how to tell the difference between elements. We found what elements conducted electricity, we did the Moh test on some, we heated some up, we saw which were magnetic, and my personal favourite, we burned them and saw the colour of their flames (boric acid makes some awesome green flames.) I'm sure there were other ways we categorized elements too that I can't think of right now.

Then we played "Periodic Table Battleship" to get the kids to feel comfortable with the table and where the elements were. 

I also made this movie about the element symbols that are odd, to help them remember them.

The next week we learned about density I made a song for that, but it isn't nearly as impressive:

The big experiment of the day was putting different kinds of liquids into test tubes to make a density rainbow:

And this week we talked about molecules. This included talking about mixtures and compounds. Mixtures are just physical changes where the elements are just next to each other and can easily be separated, and compound is a chemical change where new molecules are formed.

We read the Adventures of Adam the Atom (love that book!) and made cake, and hardboiled eggs, and we took sulphur and iron and mixed them together, and separated them out again with a magnet,  and then melted them together. We also made molecules out of candy (it was a yummy science. Well, yummy and stinky. Stinky because of the sulphur.)

Dry Ice!

And as for my science club, I did my most epic class of the year, if not of all time: DRY ICE!

Not only a dry ice party, I Halloween Dress up dry ice party!

I spent all morning running to Lethbridge to get it (the man was super kind. I told him I wanted 20 lbs and he said that would be $70 and I was crest fallen, so he asked what it was for and I said it was for classes to to science experiments with kids, and he gave it to me for $20.) You have to go to a welding supply store in Canada to get dry ice. In the US you can get it everywhere.

I had tons of moms and Dustin helping me, and we did it all: we did huge bubbles and small bubbles and even "boo" bubbles, we did fake liquid nitrogen to freeze gummy worms in 30 seconds, we made a carbonated drink and ice cream, we put out fire, we wiggled coins, we had floating bubbles, we "carved" a pumpkin in an instant, and we blew up balloons (I'm sure I'm forgetting some of the stuff we did.)

But not only did we do all that, we did it TWICE! There were almost 40 kids in total. Crazy

The only thing we didn't do twice was....ummm...a dry ice bomb.

Not sure the neighbours appreciated that.

Don't you love the endermen? Maxwell made that hat, and its eyes glow and can hold speakers for the endermen song to play.

States of Matter and Polymers

And as far as extracurricular that I'm in charge of, science is going great. THERE ARE SO MANY KIDS! There were 20 (TWENTY) kids in my older class one week. That's as big as a "real" school!

One day we did a club about the three states of matter. They were pretty cute when they tried to blow up a balloon that was in a glass beaker. They turned very red in the face:

 The kids' favourite day is, of course, polymer day where we play with oobleck (cornstarch and water) and make our own slime. We also put pencils through plastic water bags and skewers through balloons among other experiments.

And this week we did the changing states of matter which had exploding film canisters, lots of ice-water-steam demonstrations, and the BLOWING UP OF A MICROWAVE. yep.

Well, my microwave is actually still intact. But the plate I put in it is shattered. I was trying this experiment:

But I didn't watch the video in preparation, and I thought I would just put this entire bar of soap that's at least 4 years old in my microwave and that it would work. Yeah, it didn't, so I thought it needed more time....then more time...that bar of soap is all dried out and just shattered my plate which sounded like the microwave exploded.

But at least blowing up balloons with baking soda and vinegar worked (Just look at the delight on William and Abraham's faces!)