SKS Science: Science Supplies for Homeschoolers

Many of us shudder at the prospect of teaching laboratory sciences to our kids. I know I am guilty of this. In my mind, I remember the chemistry lab at my high school. Rows and rows of cabinets full of glassware and plastic bottles, Bunsen burners, sinks, and a back room full of bottles of powders and liquids. Thinking of trying to reproduce that at home is frankly overwhelming, and I think it is for a lot of homeschoolers. But here are a couple of things to remember:

1. The stuff that requires beakers and flame, gloves and goggles, and dangerous chemicals? That is the COOLEST stuff. That is the stuff that makes balancing equations bearable! Kids all love to measure and pour, combine, make things fizz and pop. This is why chemistry sets have been a toy drooled after by generations of children. So saying "I can't manage it" means that you're foregoing a major part of what makes science awesome for kids.

2. You don't have to stock your lab all at once. Think of your kitchen. When did you acquire your pots and pans? You probably accummulated things over a long time, as you needed it. A set here, a piece there, a collection over here, until you filled your cabinets. Now you have everything you need, but you didn't have to go to the "buy a whole kitchen" store and in one step anticipate every single thing you'd need for a lifetime of cooking. Supplying your home science lab can be the same slow process.

SKS Science is a supply company that sells home science supplies to homeschoolers, teachers, schools, labs, and whoever needs a quick beaker or a sudden petri dish. Their prices are very reasonable, their site is logically organized by brand, by type of science, by product. They have everying you need and even stuff you didn't need. But the best part of their site, in my opinion, is the section of the site where they suggest science experiments and list exactly what you need to do each one. There's a pH indicator experiment (with photos, video instruction). There's an experiment to test the porosity of membranes. Along with each experiment you get a supply list, so you will accumulate your equipment bit by bit.

Yes, you can muck along through homeschool science using mixing bowls and coffee mugs. You can measure stuff in your plastic measuring cups and stir with a salad fork. But if you're serious about science (and you better be), with a small investment in proper tools you can inspire your kids! Can you make a shelf in your cabinet for some graduated cylinders and transfer pipettes? If you grow your collection little by little, I think you'll find your home science lab will be far less painful to construct than you (or I) originally thought.

Homeschool Camp-In at the Virginia Air and Space Center

What a fantastic program. Seriously, if you get a chance to do this, do it. It was so much fun.

This was the program, for the 4th and 5th grade class that Benny was in:

1. Stomp rockets. They made stomp rockets with foam tubes, plastic eggs, paper and tape. Their teacher gave them freedom to do whatever they liked with the fins. Then they went out in the big part of the museum and did many many launches, trying to stomp their rockets, trying to get them into the pickle buckets that had been set up as "planets." Very cool! Here they are working on the rockets:



2. Mars Colony. The teacher talked about how a Mars Colony would need different parts to survive and support itself -- a science and research center, a recreation center, a food and shelter center, and... I can't remember the other one! But the kids were divided into teams and given boxes with different cool materials to create their section of the colony. Then they each gave a little presentation about their creations.

3. Robots. The kids got to build cool robots with Robotix parts, giant beautiful bins of all kinds of parts and motors. After they'd built their robots and figured out how to make them go forward, backward, and turn, they had robot wars where they played a type of soccer with the robots -- trying to push a little block off a table through a goal before their opponent did. This was FUN!

Practicing:



Robot war:



4. Space Freeze. The children went out of their classroom to see a cool demonstration with liquid nitrogen. Everyone loves liquid nitrogen! Here's Benny getting to freeze a carnation and then crush it up. Very enjoyable.



5. Rockets. After the demo, we went back to the classroom and built real actual model rockets with real actual parts. This was very exciting! There was feverish measuring, gluing, and decorating. Then we left the rockets there, to be fueled and launched in the morning.

6. Liquid Nitrogen Ice Cream. At 10 pm, the longsuffering and wonderful ladies in charge of this event made ice cream in the cafe using liquid nitrogen in huge buckets of cream and sugar. The kids LOVED this. Here's a picture of the concoction being made:



Finally it was time to bed down for the night. I had brought the air mattress, at great cost to my convenience in dragging all our stuff in from the car. I had also remembered the air pump, amazingly enough. However, I did not remember to *charge* the lousy, pea-pickin' air pump, and so it immediately died when I turned it on. I did experience a moment of sadness, yea in the midst of this very exciting and valuable educational event, when I realized I would be sleeping on the cement floor of the museum, protected only by my great grandmother's quilt.

Fortunately, my socially adept son procured a pump for us by asking other people with air mattresses, and we were in business. Benny pumped it up himself, with his foot. The children were allowed to pick anywhere in the museum to sleep, including under airplane wings, next to space capsules, and all kinds of exotic locales. Benny chose to set up next to the Christmas tree that was decorating the museum. Nice and bright, all night. Okay, so here is our campsite:



Here was my view, looking up, when I woke up in the morning. This bank of windows probably had something to do with the fact that I was cold all night:



Apart from my anti-camping whining, the experience was quite wonderful. And the best part of all was the next morning when we launched the rockets. I have a video, but it's still on my camera. Here's the picture I took with my phone:



Thank you, huge and amazed thank you to Louise Schaeffler and the Virginia Air and Space Center for a program that went far above and beyond my expectations. There were families that had come from as far as Lynchburg, and it was totally worth it! A brilliant job by the teachers and organizers, and a wonderful experience for the children. Please do this again -- we will be back!

Mad Science: Science Classes, Enrichment, and Fun

Last week we went to a summer camp expo at Newcastle Elementary down in Virginia Beach. We were invited to come and play and dance and dress-up to support the promotion of the Art of Dance Princess Camp. Sadie wore a princess outfit, Benny wore his prince costume, and both kids played the violin and passed our brochures for Miss Monique. Cuteness:



The act that stole the show, however, was Mad Science. This showstopping pair of test-tube-clinkers drew the biggest crowd, wowed the most kids, and created the biggest dry-ice-related spectacle. They were bigger than the live rabbit, better than the peacock feathers -- I think they would have even outshined a free cupcake table. Benny was riveted:



I had never heard of Mad Science until I approached them as a sponsor for the G.U.E.S.S. Homeschool Science Fair. Before I met them, I wasn't sure what they did or why kids would be interested. After I saw their display and watched the children gather, it took about 30 seconds for me to start nodding my head -- I got it. All the children at the expo were gathered around, cheering for the experiments, wanting to get a "vapor shower" and hanging on every word of the pair in the lab coats.



Jen and Heath Marcus are funny, charming, and really knew their stuff. I can't imagine a child being immune to the draw of the oversized beakers, the interesting substances, and the spectacular visuals. So, wonder of wonders, joy of joys, I discovered this week that Mad Science is having a homeschool science class at the Kempsville Library. Of course, after investigating the schedule, I found it's during our ballet class, so we can't go! But you can!

To find out more about it, click here for the flier. This six week class is only $80 and meets on Thursdays from 10:30-11:30. If we weren't in ballet class, we would be there. We will definitely be checking out their offerings for fall and for chemistry summer camp and NASA summer camp. They also do science birthday parties.

Mad Science will be coming to our science fair to do a short demo of their show while the judges deliberate. I can't wait. I'm sure it will be a hoot.

Snotty Science

We had a great treat today during our weekly science club. Ben and Shira's Dad is a pathologist. He made a special trip home during work hours to teach the children how to make cultures. I haven't seen Marc in a teaching role before -- he was great! He has kind of a booming voice and a very energetic, expansive presence, and the kids *really* enjoyed learning about agars and the little wire thing that he fired and then cooled in water, and he took time with each of them to show them how to properly make the culture. Although some did not follow protocol. :D



They made cultures of their mouths or the insides of their noses. That is, spit or snot. So, given that there were children named Shira and Chloe, and then there were children named Ben, Benny, and Joshua... I will leave you to guess which ones chose which type of germs to culture.



Did you guess yet? Yes, the boys all chose snot and the girls both used the sterile swab to get a chaste and delicate spit sample. It's funny how they don't suprise you, you know? Heh. The most hilarious part of the experience was watching the boys digging for "really wet ones" as Marc was egging them on -- those looks of serious concentration all around the table as their fingers went waaaay up, and everyone's excitement when Benny announced he felt a cold coming on. Good germs! Whee!

Definitely good for a Dad to come in on this one and encourage the booger behavior. That way we moms could stand off to the side and make clucking noises while we took pictures. Shez got better pictures -- I await her blog on it. Secretly amused. Next week we will check in on how the kids' germs enjoyed the sheep's blood agar and oxygen.

UPDATE: I see that Shez has *already blogged* about this very important experience that we shared today, and she has included a picture of Benny digging away, up to the second knuckle, and me standing behind looking stern and disapproving. AS I SHOULD BE. *wink*

Egg Drop Contest at the Virginia Air and Space Center 2008

Great day. Good times. Lots of homeschoolers rocking the museum with awesome engineering. Here are some pictures and videos:

Benny and Sadie after their drops. Benny won second place in the two-egg parachute category at 114 grams with both eggs surviving the fall. He also won the prize for the most creative entry in that category:

Here's Sadie with her contraption, which failed to protect its egg. Video of her drop is below:

You can here somebody speculating that she's 18 months old. She was dressed up as a fairy and her egg was pink and sparkly and frilly, but darnit she's in PRESCHOOL! :)

My entry was "Egg Drop Soup" and it did not protect its egg and did not win anything.

I didn't get any pictures or video of Benny, partly because I pushed the wrong button during his drop and ended up filming my collarbone for like 5 minutes. So ironically the one in the family who built a successful contraption and won prizes did not get documented!

However, I do have video of our friends Zoe and Ben. Zoe won in her category for the lightest successful contraption! Very cool.

Here's Zoe's drop:



And Ben's drop:



So I did get *some* good video! Just not of my own children! :) :) I was proud of all the kids in our little group: Josh, Austin, Zoe, Phillip, Ben, Shira, Benny, and Sadie. We were all very good sports, supporting each other, cheering and hollering, and celebrating physics. It's such an awesome event, because little brainy smart kids get to receive hoots, cheers, and yodels just like the football players. I deeply enjoy myself every year at the Egg Drop contest. It is a great experience for the children and the adults alike.

Benny's Awesome Experiment

Benny blogged about an experiment we did today with different types of paint and different sizes of papier mache forms.

Benny's Blog.

Here are some of his findings:



This is all in preparation for the egg drop contest this Saturday at VASC.

Caterpillars to Chrysalides

Grammy gave Benny a butterfly house for Christmas, and we sent away for the caterpillars to inhabit it. They arrived very tiny, and then grew very large, all without leaving their little food-filled jar. I'm not going to say it wasn't kind of gross to see them eating, pooping, and growing, all in a very small space. But it was also kind of amazing because at times we felt like we could almost see them getting bigger if we watched for 5 minutes straight. Now they are all chrysalides, and we will move them into their new mesh house, and wait for them to turn into monkeys.

My True Screw: A Physics Song for Learning about Screws

Another song about physics for elementary school!

Here's a link to the song sheet as a PDF:

Here are the lyrics:

MY TRUE SCREW

A screw is a shaft with a helical groove
Or thread wound around it in a helical way
You use a screwdriver to make the screw move
Righty tighty, lefty loosey,” as Joshua would say

Chorus:
Screw Screw Screw!
Are you a true simple machine?Or are you just another helical inclined plane?

A screw translates torque into linear force
When you turn it, that’s torque but it doesn’t just spin
It also goes straight down — that’s linear of course
“What goes around goes down!” say the Silverberg twins

Chorus

The drive of the screw is the slot in its top
Where you put the screwdriver to turn it around
It might be a cross, a line, square, or teardrop
“A proper tool for every job,” as Benny has found.

Chorus

Have you heard of Archimedes
He perfected a wonderful screw
To lift water or an object up
Like a golf ball, or a hot turnip

A screw inside a pipe
Is a screw of a mechanical type
A screw with a point on one end
Is a fastener screw, my dearest friend

Note: There are specific names in the song, which obviously would have to be changed to your children's names. To replace "The Silverberg Twins" with one name (if you don't have twins in your group) just say "says Rudolph again" or whatever name you need.

And here's the video, in which I completely bargled the lyrics, but as long as I have children to jump on my head and correct me, who cares:

Levers La La La: A Science Learning Song to Teach about Levers and Simple Machines

Preparing to teach Benny's Lego League team about levers, I realized that I myself knew nothing about levers. I vaguely recalled that a crowbar is one, and that force times distance equals knit one purl two Francis Bacon. Beyond that, I was in the dark. When I was 18, I took a class called University Physics, where these things were probably discussed. OR maybe not. The people in my class may have all been well beyond the study of simple machines. Maybe I was too, at the time.

What I chiefly remember about University Physics was that I was in the middle of trying to get my school to boycott table grapes and thereby save the world from injustice. I'm pretty sure I missed a few labs and maybe even the final. I got an A the first semester, a B the second semester, and from there things got really bad and I ended up an English major. I'm sure my physics professor wanted to crack my head like a nut on several occasions. I was a terrible student. Really terrible in an epic, timeless way. Rotten. At the time, calculus was giving me hives.

Anyway, now that I have two bright young students on my roster and am no longer so completely absorbed in electric guitars and oppressed peoples, I went to the library and learned about levers. And, because I am me, I wrote a song about it to teach this info to the children.

Here is a link to a PDF of the song sheet lyrics:

Here are the lyrics:

LEVER LA LA LA

In a first class lever, the fulcrum is between
The force and the mighty load
Which might be water or a kid named Jean
You use a first class lever to paddle a canoe
A seesaw or a scissors or the
Shoehorn in your shoe

Chorus:
LA LA LEVER
La-la-la-la-la-LEVER
Your load is so heavy and your fulcrum is fixed
But LA LA LEVER
La-la-la-la-la-LEVER
If I apply some force today
We can lever all your troubles away

That's not all the levers we've got
Let's give the second class lever a shot

In a second class lever the force is at one end
The fulcrum's at the other end
The load is in the middle but the bar won't bend
A door is a second class lever, and a wheelbarrow's one too
If you like to use a nutcracker
Try lever number two!

Chorus

That's not all the levers we've got
Let's give the third class lever a shot

In a third class lever it's the fulcrum, then the force
Then the load on the other side
Which might be an apple or a stick or a horse
Your arms are third class levers, your legs are levers too
And shovels, slings, and spoons
When you use them to fling food.

Chorus

And here is a video of the Legodiles (plus one extra little brother) singing the lever song:



Here's my chance to publicly apologize to Dr. Fulcher for being a rotten student. Homeschooling a seven-year-old is a perfect chance to start over on physics, and this time I'm paying attention.

***

Interested in more Little Blue Ideas? Try the Idea Box for homeschooling ideas and more.

Back to NASA: Kennedy Space Center

We couldn't stay away. We are supernerds.



On the NASA tour bus:


Viewing the launchpad, currently all full of shuttle:


The shuttle crawls down this road from the Vehicle Assembly Building to the launch pad at 1 mph. The whole thing is so heavy it "pulverizes" the road every time, and every time they have to rebuild the road.



Saturn V Rocket. Model below, real thing above:


Benny as Jupiter in the "Mad Mission to Mars" show:

Kennedy Space Center

Here are some pictures from the Kennedy Space Center.

The Space Shuttle Simulator:





Satellite of Love (inside the old Atlantis):



IMAX in 3D:



Benny and a guy in an astronaut suit:



The children in an Apollo crew capsule:



Exercising our Latin:



Pretend lunar rover:

NASA Open House and 90th Anniversary

Yesterday the NASA Research Center at Langley threw open its hangar doors and welcomed the public to celebrate 90 years of knitted brows, furiously scribbling pencils, and AHA! moments. Even though it as a gloomy, rainy day, we went to see NASA, because, you know, they aren't exactly known for being hospitable and they probably won't do this for another 10 years.

I'm not really sure what the children absorbed. They are 7 and 3, and not really up on composites and air traffic control and 1000 mph winds. Benny loved following the map around and interacting with everyone and asking questions, and Sadie enjoyed the balloon animals and picking up the titanium models of space shuttles and sitting in cockpits. Since they're so young and this was such a dense experience, this trip gets filed with the stuff we do to give them background information when they revisit the subject later. Now they've stood directly under the mechanism used by the Apollo guys to practice docking. Here's Benny standing under it:

I however am old enough (theoretically) to absorb this kind of information, so here's a list of the things I learned:

1. Electron Beam Welding is strange. One guy at one table was telling us that buy building the piece by melting down a wire with a computer, layer by layer, they avoid wasting the metal that would have to be hollowed out and discarded or scraped off and discarded. Another guy at another table was telling us how they scrape off and eliminate everything that doesn't go in the piece, and it gets flushed away because it's all submerged in water. So, huh? Either way, the models were cool. I held titanium! Have I ever held titanium before?

2. They keep NASA brains in big tanks.

3. I have to learn to do balloon animals. The girl that was doing the NASA balloon animals was doing such awesome, incredible, ridiculous, huge, life-altering hats that I was eaten up with envy at her ability. I have to learn to do this, it will definitely improve my parenting, my homeschooling, my entire world. The pictures of that are on my camera, I didn't take any with my phone, but man. You have to take my word for it. She was phenomenal.

4. NASA needs more funding. The word we heard most often from the locals was "budget." This was not said in a hostile, irritated way as in, "Why don't we have a budget?!?!" but in kind of a sweet, sad, nostalgic way like, "I remember when we had a budget..." and then the person would wipe away a tiny tear. All over the facility, we saw scientists trying hard to bend their research to something commercially viable, to make the whole thing profitable, but I just got the feeling that what they really want to do is crunch numbers, try new things, speculate, and be pure scientists.

I suppose this is a conflict which has been going on since the beginning of time, but I just wanted a little less sadness and a little more glee. The next time I talk to a candidate, I'm going to ask not only how they feel about homeschool laws, but also how they feel about NASA. NASA needs buckets of money. And I haven't even started on the appearance of the place -- it looks like a community college, built in the 50s, which has never been improved or expanded, except to add giant wind tunnels. There are rusty pieces of equipment lying around that have just been dragged out and shot, there are containers from trucks rusting behind buildings, the whole place needs a facelift. I know that when there's not enough money for pure science, there's not enough money for cosmetic updates, but still.

I hope that if there are any NASA scientists reading this right now, they don't take this as a criticism. Maybe if there are any NASA scientists reading this right now, they're just glad I got the message in terms of the political significance. I got it.

5. NASA scientists are awesome to talk to. We had a lot of really interesting, informative talks with people who had most certainly given that same talk or explanation, or answered that same question, maybe 200 times already that day. Not ONE person was irritated, not one sounded bored or tired of the repetition, nobody cut off the children's questions or our questions. Every single person was totally nice and kind and smart and helpful. And that's saying something.

6. There is a whole lab devoted to breaking stuff! There are huge, interesting, insane-looking machines designed and used for ripping things apart. According to science, you have to break something to see how strong it is. That makes sense metaphysically too. I liked the breaking machines.

7. Composites are made by combining fibers with a matrix. I have nothing to add to that statement, because that is the total sum of my learning on that topic.

8. I like the show "Big Bang Theory" on TV. Do you watch it?

9. I must not have been paying attention. What is wrong with me that I didn't learn 10 things at NASA? I feel like I should be able to say something about flight simulators or acoustics or heat shields, but you know I would just be googling it after the fact, and that would be cheating.

10. Dan now thinks I know lots of people. I ran into blogging friends, and playground friends, and karate friends, and all kinds of friends. You might conclude that I am such a social butterfly that the percentage of the population of Southeast Virginia that attended NASA's Open House, when applied to my number of acquaintances, produced a large number of attendees that I knew. OR, you could assume that the type of person I know is the type of person most likely to go to NASA's Open House. And that would be good research. Here are some blogging buddies we ran into outside the Journey to Tomorrow exhibit, where the kids saw a live moon rock:

Thank you, NASA, for a very interesting Saturday. If I didn't learn enough, it's not because you didn't try, and there's always Dan, who absorbed and processed more information than the rest of us put together. We are nerds, we are superfans, we are technology dorks; of course we had a good time. NASA, we love you. Just tell us who to vote for!

Lego My Pulley

Last week our Lego League team learned about pulleys. Pulleys are apparently simple machines that you use to make things lighter, so your little scale hickamajig reads THREE instead of SIX. Getting the scale thingy down to three is exciting and means that you win the game of pulleys! The three moms in our Lego League are open-minded but basically clueless when it comes to machinery. Fortunately we can read and are staying a lesson ahead of our six-and-seven-year-olds. Also fortunately, our six-and-seven-year-olds are happy to inform us of every little thing that we don't already know, six or seven times each.

Here's Benny stretching his pulley cord thingy around his pulley wheelie thingies:



They tell me that if you want the pulley wheels to go opposite directions, like gears do, you have to twist the cord between them. Or something. Is it tiresome when I go on and on about "thingies" and "whatsits"? I'm not being coy, I promise you. I genuinely am that blunt-headed about physics. It all takes me back to that classroom during my last semester as a chemistry major, when I was taking something called "University Physics," an honors class with all the smarty math people that I was trying to hang with at the time. Shortly thereafter, I switched over to hanging with the smarty literature people, and felt much better. The math people always kind of looked at me in a vague, kind, lordly way. Well, here I am with physics again. Celebrating another day of living.

I like to build dog houses with my Legos. Is there any important principle to be learned from constructing a red and blue dog house with a front and back door?

Here's Ben demonstrating his lifting device:



Ben and Benny building away:



Here's the other half of the team, heads bowed over their pulley projects:



This week's assignment was to build a fishing pole, which Benny did this evening with Dan. They made one with one pulley, two pulleys, three pulleys, and you know, the darn Lego fish weight got lighter and lighter to wind up with each additional pulley. It was amazing.

So, does this mean that if I make myself a pulley necklace, I will see some results on the scale? I bet I could fit twenty five Lego pulleys onto a stylish choker. A few sequins, a dangling brick or two, who's with me? Let's accessorize our way to glamorous supermodel status. It's only a Lego (pulley) away.

Meanwhile, Benny will now demonstrate the more practical uses of pulleys: feeding worms to the fish in Broad Bay.

Homeschool Day at the Norfolk Botanical Gardens

Today was one of two "Homeschoolers Take Over" events at the Norfolk Botanical Gardens this fall. We missed the last one because I procrastinated about registering and it filled up, but this one we got to attend, even though it was almost practically sort of gently raining, and the kids had a lot of fun.



Here come the homeschoolers! Look out, deciduous holly tree collection!

We were divided into three groups, and each group travelled with its own "garden teacher" through different stations where we learned things and filled out the little workbook we'd received at the visitor's center. Here we are learning about the caterpillars. This was very relevant to Benny, given his recent interest in the topic.





Benny urgently asked to see the milkweeds and monarchs. Eventually he located them himself. This isn't technically milkweed, but it's something else that is similar enough that the caterpillars like it. The garden teacher couldn't tell us very much about monarchs, but fortunately we were with a throng of overly informed homeschoolers. All through the tour, they educated the garden teacher on the ways of the Sioux Indians, the eating habits of monarchs, uses of papaya, etc. I love homeschooled kids. They're so awesome and insane.



Finding these caterpillars prompted Benny to say, "AT LAST I FOUND A MONARCH CATERPILLAR! IT HAS ALWAYS BEEN MY DREAM TO FIND ONE! AND NOW I HAVE!"

Here he is examining the caterpillars with his magnifying glass:





Here they are in the rose garden, making bath salts with rosemary, epsom salts, and a baby food jar. Very cool. Sadie accidentally dropped hers onto the stone floor of this little gazebo, smashed it, and caused an international incident. Brooms were called in by radio, literally. For some reason, I got the feeling that our particular garden teacher was a little fed up with my particular children by the end of the day. Of course, it could have been that she was tired of getting corrected on horticultural fine points by 10-year-olds .

The roses are just coming on now for their second big bloom of the year:



Here's Benny making his rosemary bath salts:



Here's Sadie reading one of the signs. She kept insisting that she had to read all the little labels on everything, and she "read" each of the as very detailed instructions on how to look at and enjoy the plants. I said, at one point, "You know Sadie if you want to learn to read, we can work harder on your letters and sounds so you can read those for real." She gave me a withering glare and said, "I can wead them for weal now." Well okay.



According to Sadie, this one says, "Please look right at this flower and love it forever."



Here we're learning about the uses of tropical plants.



Benny specifically asked me to take this picture. Later, riding the shuttle tour around the garden, I asked Benny what was his favorite part. He said seeing a "real coconut" was his favorite thing, because that had always been his "dream." So many dreams, so little time. Fortunately, we don't have to waste any of that time at school, so we can look at caterpillars and coconuts all day.



Benny asked me to title this post, "Benny in the World of the Rain Forest" but I hardly think I'm going to take advice from someone whose lifelong dream is to see a coconut. :) After all, he has his own blog.