Carbon Dioxide and China cont.

For science we learned about Carbon Dioxide.  There were a few experiments I had wanted to do that included lime water which indicates carbon dioxide, but I made the lime water wrong I think, so I had to skip all of them.  That was okay, because the experiment that did work was really fun.

We combined baking soda and vinegar to make carbon dioxide (baking soda and vinegar is always a hit.) and poured the carbon dioxide gas over a candle to extinguish it. They loved this.

We talked about how yeast makes carbon dioxide and bacteria in cheese makes carbon dioxide and how dry ice is carbon dioxide and creates carbonation in soda, and had a bread, swiss cheese, and root beer snack to drill this in.

We continued to learn about China by doing LOTS of origami.  Maxwell has without doubt inherited my love for creating things out of paper.  He can make some things on his own and has been pouring over our origami book all week.

We also ate noodles with chopsticks in honour of China.  I had tons more China activities that I was wanting to do, but I'm leaving for our christmas trip tomorrow or the next day, and I just got too bogged down, (much to Maxwell's dismay.)

For preschool we learned that the "g" says gggguh like someone who is trying to lift heavy weights.

And for field trip daddy took the boys snowmobiling.  What a good daddy :)

And that's it until the new year.  I hope to do a bit of reading lessons on our trip, and I'm sure we'll have educational field trips, but other then that, I really hope this will be a trip of RELAXATION!

Bye for now :)

Ancient China, paper, and oxygen

I have absolutely loved learning about ancient China with my boys.  They were masters of invention!  Compasses, wheelbarrows, boat rutters, kites, gunpowder, and even the printing press!  (but there were thousands of print characters, so it never really caught on, so I'll still give the credit to Gutenberg)

And of course, they invented PAPER.  This was my favourite activity that we've done so far.  I made paper years ago, but this time around I got a wonderful kit from Arnold Grummer that worked so well, that even Hyrum made wonderful paper with hardly any help. Maxwell of course made a few pages...

It ended up to be GORGEOUS paper with bits of flower pedal fibre embedded throughout.

We also painted some paper lanterns.  It was only AFTER we did this activity that Maxwell and I read in one of the books how lanterns were used during the new year for luck.

For Preschool...yes I did preschool this week, I was just a bit too frazzled until now to do it again....we learned about the letter "f" and put on wings to fffffly.  Hyrum loves the songs and learning more and more.  So rewarding.

And for science we learned about air, namely the oxygen in the air.  We reviewed air pressure (which was easy to do after our hurricanes winds last week that blew down our fence!) and air displacement.

And we taked about oxygen.  We made oxygen from yeast and hydrogen peroxide.  We showed how fire went out with out oxygen.  We showed how elements in fruit left and combined with oxygen to "rust" but didn't if it was covered in citric acid.  We did a few other things that taught us about oxygen, I just can't remember right now.

For field trip we had a Christmas party.  I love this time of year!