Sunday, October 28, 2012

Steam Boats!

For the industrial revolution, we actually made steam powered put put boats!!!  Be impressed. Be very impressed.

I've wanted to make a put put boat since last year when Maxwell wanted to make one for the science fair, but we couldn't figure out how to find the materials needed or how to do it.  Then, I found this website: http://www.sciencetoymaker.org/boat/index.htm which uses every-day materials, and easy to follow instructions!  Yippee!

It's an activity meant for 14 year olds, but we've never let that stop us in the past, and although it took us ALL DAY, and Hyrum and Daniel lost interest in making them, we made four WORKING pop pop boats!!!




We learned about Alexander Graham Bell this week as well. There is a well written children's chapter book called "Alexander Graham Bell" a Discovery Book by Garrard publishing.  It was so well done, that I want to get more Discovery books, although they are from the 1960s and 70s.

We made cup telephones to celebrate Bell, and it was fun to see how a simple toy could entertain them so much.  FYI everyone called the telephone a toy when Bell first showed it off.


Also, FYI: Bell taught Helen Keller a bit, and this inspired an impromptu learning about her.  We watched "miracle worker" as part of this, and Hyrum (our temper tantrum king) couldn't stand watching someone else constantly having temper tantrums. Ironic.

At co-op they learned about Mexico and Audubon again. Science was supposed to happen this week, but my boys had too much fun with cousins, and I never got to it.

Oh, and for my records, there's a cute book called "an Illustrated Timeline of Inventions and Inventors."

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