Science Camp - Day 1

Wow!  This summer has FLOWN by!   We are already on week 6.  WOW.

I purchased this kit off of a daily deal site.  I cant remember if it was 1saleaday, or Woot, im thinking it was WootKids, but dont remember for sure.

 Anyways - Its at a much higher grade level than the boys are so my husband and I decided we would do it with them & read them threw all the activites.  The first group was explaning volume and other stuff, they wanted you to do all this weighing and stuff like that.  We did not.

We filled a measuring cup with 200ml of water

We added an alkselser tablet

We watched it

What is happening to the tablet?  "Its bubbling"

Yes, Is the water level going up? "Yes"

I wonder why that is?

Cool, on to activity number two.  Whats in side a diaper?

An aboorbing plastic you say?  hmmmm

Lets take a look



Cutting diaper length wise

ta da!

Dumped cotton & plastic beads in to measuring cup

adding water - next time will add just a bit at a time

substance thickened.  The boys squished it and felt it, we watched the tiny plastic beads aborb water and talked about how this material works in the diaper

That wraps up day one!

The life cycle of a frog

Another life cycle we have been watching this summer is the life cycle of a frog.

My mothers coworker brought her some tad poles from her pond.

I added some sticks to make sure the baby frogs had something to sit on once they turned and we feed them LOTS of spinach.  What was cool about this batch was they were at all different stages.  Some had no legs, some had two legs, some had four legs, and some were almost frogs.

The next morning one of our tad poles was a baby frog.

Noah got to free him since Eli released the last butterfly

 Go baby frog, be free!

 So super tiny!

I cant wait for more to cycle!

The Magic Monarch

We have spent a lot of time this summer learning about Monach butterflys.  It all started with my mother getting a milkweed plant.  Then we went over to her house and watched the caterpillers eat every leaf on the plant.  Some ran out of leafs before they were fat enough to cooon.  This made my mom sad, so she went out and bought another milkweek plant.

(coocoon in red)

My mother set up an aquairum in her house and she brings the caterpillers in when they are ready to spin their coocons & then the boys set them free.

 Just hatched & drying his wings

 Eli setting him free

 Proud boys

The beautiful Monarch butterfly

  After watching them a while you can predect when they are ready to spin.  So after several phone calls about the poor caterpillars and how they were running out of food, I asked her to buy me some seeds.

 I used milk jugs as my pots and poked holes at the bottom

 The boys helped me fill each container with potting soil

 Opie is always there to give a helping paw

Then we waited until they got bigger.

Here is the problem with Milkweed & Monarchs.  Milkweed is all a Monarch catepiller will eat.  So a Monarch butterfly lays eggs on a plant, the eggs hatch and each caterpiller needs 20 leafs to make it to maturity and cocoon.  Well, you run out of leafs before that happens.  Thus creating my mothers problem of feeling like she needs a never ending supply of milk week.

 

But it is a fun cycle to watch and learn about

This book gives you tons of information & is a good read for learning about the life cycle of the monarch

Homemade Lava Lamps

With the new baby at home we have been looking for fun ideas of things to do while I feed the baby.  Today I set up a lava lamp station

Items used: Tube Rack, Oil, Water, food coloring, alka seltzer.

First E filled the tubes 3/4 of the way with oil, then he filled the remaining 1/3 of the tube with water.  Then in each tube E added food coloring (the more the better)  In a petri dish I had broken each alka seltzer into 4 pieces.  He added one piece at a time and watched his "lava lamp" until each piece was dissolved.

Yellow, Red, Blue and Green Lava Lamps!

This kept him busy long enough to feed the baby, and what fun!

The Naked Egg

When I was little we called this making a rubber egg, I found it on pintrest referred to as a "naked egg"  Because my boys like potty humor I asked them if they would like to make a naked egg.  Of course they thought this was hilarious and wanted to know what I was talking about.

We got 4 eggs, two for each boy, and soaked them in vinegar

Immedatly the questions started "Mom what are the bubbles doing?  Are they eating the shell?  Is that how the egg will be naked?"  I was not expecting the questions to start until the eggs were "naked" so I was very excited at their curiosity

Now to wait....what happens next?

One egg broke while we were waiting for it to become naked....so we had 3 eggs

Touching the eggs.  How do they feel?  What happened to the shell?

What else can we do with them?

 Poke them?  Lets bounce them!

oops too high!

This was fun!  We will do it again for sure!

Glow baby glow!

Tonight we had fun with glow vinegar and glow beads. I got the idea from a cool web site called the play at home mom

I set up the activity for the kiddos

The activity included 4 test tubes with glow vinegar, two jars of glow vinegar, and two containers of glow beads, and a  black light.  To make glow vinegar you first make glow water.

Glow water: fill a container of water & soak a green or yellow highlighter in it until highlighter is clear (the orange did not glow in the dark).  Add a very small amount of glow water to your vinegar.  It can be very, very diluted and it will still glow.  

Adding baking powder

wow look at that mom!  How did you make it glow?

Elis turn!

Now its time to play with glow beads to make glow beads you

soak your polymer beads in the glow water (found in the floral section at walmart)

 We ran them down our hot wheel tracks for extra fun, we also took turns just bouncing these in to the container

My kiddos hands

daddy's hand.

It was a fun glow in the dark adventure for all!

Noah's 6th Birthday

Mad Scientist Birthday Party

My oldest son just turned 6. (What is going on?)  We had a fun mad scientist party for his birthday.  It was a hit!


Invitations:

 

Purpose: Noah Murdock’s 6^th Birthday Party
                    Hypothesis: Mad Scientist parties are more fun.
Date:

 Time:

Location: 

Information: Rsvp to

I put this in a word document and sent it to our local printing company.  Very inexpensive invitations & he loved them, he thought they were so funny.  Now its party time!

When the children arrived they each were given a lab coat (a white t-shirt cut down the middle) a radio-active science badge, a bow tie & safety goggles

Then it was time to do experiments.  I had everything pre-measured, which made things so much easier. 

We did 6 experiments.

The first was poloymer squares, or silly squares, we put the dehydrated silly squares in our test tubes and set them aside to look at, at the very end of the party.  I also had some in a test tube that I had hydrated the night before so they could see how big they get.

Next we mixed our goo.  I found some goo kits in Targets dollar bin.  There are recipes for home made goo at Steve Spangler Science as well as tons of other cool ideas, the good just intimidated me for some reason, so I was glad to have a kit.

Insta Snow!  This stuff is so cool.  I had bought some around Christmas time & the kids love to play with it.  I pre measured one scoop in each test tube, then the kids dumped it on to a plate & added the pre-measured water.  They were amazed when it grew! 

Lava Lamps.  This one was my favorite.  You have your test tube filled 3/4 of the way with cooking oil, then you fill the other 1/3 with water (oil and water were pre-measured so they just added to the test tube)  Then each child adds food coloring.  You talk about whats going on, why are the oil and water not mixing.  Then each child had an alka seltzer broke into four pieces.  You add one pieces at a time and it makes a lava lamp!  So cool.

I thought we would finish the indoor science experiments with a messy one.  Test tube volcanos

Each test tube was pre-filled with colored vinegar, we gave each child a plate and had them hold the test tube over the plate as they added the baking soda.  Lots of "cool" and "wows!" were heard.  Then we all washed our hands and headed out side for the BIG grand finally.

Mentos and Coke

I should have had several bottles of diet coke and mentos for this.  After this one the kids started yelling "do it again! do it again!"  But we couldn't

I made his cake in the shape of a Volcano & cut out room for a cup (plastic) then we added dry ice and warm water.  The kids thought this was so awesome!  And it was easy to make.

This science party was a hit!

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30th birthday Party

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