Tuesday, June 7, 2011

Cool Science Stuff

As a homeschool mom, I have had to experience many areas of life in which I am not an expert. Period. Totally clumsy nerd. Science is one of those areas. All those theorems and hypothesis and experiment after experiment?? Yawn......BUT, I really dig the cool action/reaction stuff. Know what I'm talkin' bout? Yeah, those "if I do this, here's what happens" kits.  Last year at the NC homeschool convention, I bought the kids some geodes. They were history in like...15 seconds. But they totally loved them. And I was instructed to purchase more this year. So I did. And some other stuff. Then I get home with all of it, and the kids and I are tearing into the packages, and the hubs says, "why don't you open just a few things at a time? Save the geodes for later." Uurrkkk! We all looked at him, and sadly put away the geodes for "some other time". Yes, I was just as excited as the kids.  Here's the pics from last year.


Look at those faces! And, they STILL have them! Ya'll know how fast a kid can lose something he's not excited/interested in anymore.  So, we are patiently waiting on the DAD to let us bust up our rocks.
In the meantime, check out the other cool thing we got.  These are a crystal growing situation. (Yes, I'm sure there's a scientific name, but come on!)  Anyway, you pour the liquid provided into the little base, and watch the crystals grow!  Everyone else thinks its water, but my argument states: If it's just water, they could have told you, "Pour 2 tsp water into base." So I think it's something else.  Anyway, it's really awesome to see the crystals that formed. Check 'em out.
This is at the beginning.

 See how it looks fuzzy?

 This was fully formed.

 Isn't it cool?
Now go get your own, and start playing!!!
Blessings,
Shirley

4 comments:

  1. LOL, I love it! You are such a cool teacher! I remember doing something like this when I was a kid. You know you can also grow your own rock candy right? A science project you can eat too, how cool is that? Actually I get excited about anything that has to do with candy. Here's a link if you want to check it out!

    http://chemistry.about.com/od/growingcrystals/ht/blsugarcrystal.htm

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  2. Looks like you are handling science quite well! I LOVE those crystal thingy's!

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  3. Great pictures of the kids!

    Too fun! In a very similar vein, one of my friends came home with geodes and owl pellets for her kids. Turns out you can 'dissect' the owl pellets and find whole skeletons, and the packaging hers came in (yes, someone went to the trouble of creating eye-catching packaging for owl pellets) had a bunch of different skeletons shown in detail, so you could identify yours.

    A perfect, slightly icky sort of science project for kids. :-) Who knew? I want to buy some for my nephew for his birthday.

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