Science Notebooks

Think!: Blindfold Drawing

We needed a project yesterday. Something a little silly, kind of fun, something to give us a breather from the grind. I looked up the latest Think! challenge, Blindfold Drawing. Perfect. We blindfolded ourselves, drew blindfolded for a short time, switched papers, drew some more, and Voila! A masterpiece to color, with lots of giggles.

Building Bridges

In the fall, the fine young gents chose to do a bridge-building study. Third-grade gent has ambitions to be an engineer who builds bridges "and other stuff." Well, sort of. He's either going to be an engineer who cooks and plays music for fun, or a musician who cooks and builds bridges, or a famous chef who designs bridges and kitchens and plays several instruments. And why not? We started our bridge study with this amazing book:

Bridges: Amazing Structures to Design, Build & Test (Kaleidoscope Kids), by Carol A. Johman.

The book is a wonderful blend of information and hands-on practice. We had a grand time making human structures to demonstrate the principles of tension and compression. The fine young gents learned about different occupations involved in bridge building and drew and labeled their favorite of the three basic types of bridges.

And the fine young gents started building:
Third-grade gent started with a single sheet of paper across two books. Will it hold a car? He took notes on his failures and successes. He ended up with an accordion-fold sandwiched between two flat pieces to give his Hot Wheels a sturdy smooth bridge.

We've only gotten halfway through the Bridges! book. We keep getting sidetracked by other fantastic building resources, like Bill Nye the Science Guy's video, Structures. Check out these egg structures!





We also got the idea for this bridge of straws and pins from a Bll Nye video:
The gents wanted to explore and discover construction using household materials, too. They made a maze for the Minotaur, a ziggurat, pyramids, and refrigerator box forts. They built bridges using stacking cups, dominoes, marbles mazes, pick-up sticks and (of course) wooden blocks.
I stepped around and over block bridges, mazes and houses for weeks.

The holidays afforded construction opportunities with a new set of materials. What can you make with graham crackers and leftover icing?
Or gumdrops and toothpicks?
Or gingerbread and candy?
And we've been doing challenges from one of our favorite blogs, Think! No pictures, so no posts, but we've kept ourselves busy. Eventually we'll finish our Bridges! book, but not (I think) our bridges study.

Next up, the book the eldest of the fine young gents spotted the day after Christmas and went, "Oooooooooooooo."
I didn't see him for nearly an hour.

ReRun: A Mathematician's Lament

Originally posted 3/08

"A musician wakes from a terrible nightmare....
Since musicians are known to set down their ideas in the form of sheet music, these curious black dots and lines must constitute the 'language of music.' It is imperative that students become fluent in this language if they are to attain any degree of musical competence; indeed, it would be ludicrous to expect a child to sing a song or play an instrument without having thorough grounding in music notation and theory. Playing and listening to music, let alone composing an original piece, are considered very advanced topics and are generally put off until college, and more often graduate school."

From the introductory paragraphs of this article:
"A Mathematician's Lament," by Paul Lockhart.

If you love mathematics, read this article. If you have hated mathematics since you stepped foot in your kindergarten classroom, read it. If you were dumbfounded by division, befuddled by algebra and confused by geometry, read it. If you're teaching a young person (or people) mathematics, or if you have a child who is or will be learning mathematics, read it.

Actually, if you're teaching a young person anything, read this article because it's got a lot to say about teaching. And about math. And about learning.

Read it right now. Really.

Go ahead. I'll wait for you.

Who knew that I could be blown away by an article about teaching, about learning mathematics? For real. I'm not exaggerating for effect. I nodded my head. I laughed. I scribbled all over the paper. I said "Yes!" and "Exactly" right out loud a couple times. I read the article during a fine young gent's gymnastics class, and I'm sure the people nearby were a little leery of the crazy lady muttering to herself as she read.

I was inspired to be a better teacher. By a math article. Go figure.

I was always a bit of a math-o-phobe myself. Until I got to college and stopped attending my math classes. Instead I read the textbook, muddled through on my own....and loved it. Statistics, trigonometry, the other math classes I took that I can't remember the names of. Suddenly I got it, I understood math, all by myself. I turned in all of my homework, but I only attended class when I didn't understand the assigned lesson. It usually took ten minutes to figure out what I'd missed, then I'd work on my English papers until the end of class because I thought it would be rude to get up and leave while all of the other students sat and listened politely and quietly. (A side note: Handing back a midterm test my trigonometry instructor pointedly remarked that three people scored above 90%, and he was happy to report that the two people who scored above 95% actually came to class regularly. He looked right at me while he said it, to where I was hiding away behind the tall guy in the back of the classroom. I got a 93.) My point is that I found math classes excruciating. But I found out that I kind of liked doing math.

Back to the article, the analogy with which Lockhart begins. Can you imagine teaching music this way? Not allowing children to sing or play music, an activity that comes to most of us as naturally as breathing or speaking, without learning the theory and notations first?

Or painting? (Another analogy used by Lockhart.) Having to learn color theory and perspective before you pick up a paintbrush?

Science? Memorizing the scientific method and the periodic table before you can look through a microscope or mix baking soda and vinegar?

Yet we rarely explore mathematics playfully with our children as an art, as an experience, as a way to play with the ways the world works. Mathematics is a part of our daily lives: Cooking, drawing, jumping, building. Children naturally count things, measure things, create meaningful patterns in their play. And we don't take advantage of it because we don't know to recognize and point out the mathematics in our daily world, because the way we were taught didn't give us a grounding in playful mathematics and exploring math ideas. (The way I was taught, at least...and though I can't speak for the general "we," I suspect that many of you had similar educational experiences.)

Lockhart points out that mathematics is a discipline, as much of an art as music or painting, and in our culture we've reduced the teaching of math to math facts and how-to without addressing the theory, the why, the art behind the drills and the formulas. He writes:

"There is no question that if the world had to be divided into the 'poetic dreamers' and the 'rational thinkers' most people would place mathematicians into the latter category.
Nevertheless, the fact is that there is nothing as dreamy and poetic, nothing as radical, subversive, and psychedelic, as mathematics. It is every bit as mind blowing as cosmology or physics (mathematicians conceived of black holes long before astronomers found any), and allows more freedom of expression then poetry, art, or music (which depend heavily on the properties of the physical universe)." (p. 3)

And later ("Exactly!" I said as I scribbled notes on the paper, drew a big red star in the margin, repeat as I re-read it today):

"By concentrating on what, and leaving out why, mathematics is reduced to an empty shell. The art is not in the "truth" but in the explanation, the argument. It is the argument itself which gives the truth its context, and determines what is really being said and meant. Mathematics is the art of explanation. If you deny students the opportunity to engage in this activity--to pose their own problems, make their own conjectures and discoveries, to be wrong, to be creatively frustrated, to have an inspiration, to cobble together their own explanations and proofs-- you deny them mathematics itself." (p. 5)

Lockhart is passionate about mathematics, and he's passionate about teaching mathematics. He's not just sounding an alarm, a call for change. He's not blaming teachers or students or parents. He's asking us all to look at mathematics differently, to see its beauty and complexity, and to find ways to help our children experience math without killing their natural passion for learning. He writes about how to teach mathematics as an art...and how not to. How to engage students. How to help them make sense of it all for themselves and how to inspire a meaningful relationship with mathematics. How to create a sense of discovery.

And that's what teaching is all about. No matter what the subject.
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Books to Inspire Playful Mathematics

Buy them for your children. Check them out from the library. Leave them laying around without saying a word. Read them yourselves. Pick a day or two to do math puzzles instead of workbooks. Play the games. Tell the jokes. Work out the riddles.

It's fun. I promise.

Math for Smarty Pants (Brown Paper School Book) by Marilyn Burns.

I Hate Mathematics! (Brown Paper School Books) by Linda Allison, Marilyn Burns, and David Weitzman.

The Number Devil: A Mathematical Adventure by Hans Magnus Enzensberger, Rotraut Susanne Berner, and Michael Henry Heim.

Family Math for Young Children: Comparing (Equals Series) by Grace Coates, Jean Kerr Stenmark, and Brian Gothberg

Family Math (Equals Series) by Jean Kerr Stanmark, Virginia Thompson, and Ruth Cossey

Family Math : The Middle School Years, Algebraic Reasoning and Number Sense by Karen Mayfield-Ingram and Virginia Thompson.

Math By All Means series (Various authors).

Math Wizardry for Kids by Margaret Kenda, Phyllis S. Williams, and Tim Robinson

Janice VanCleave's Geometry for Every Kid: Easy Activities that Make Learning Geometry Fun by Janice VanCleave

Janice VanCleave's Math for Every Kid: Easy Activities that Make Learning Math Fun by Janice VanCleave
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More Fun Math (and links and book recommendations) at Poohsticks here: Math

Go figure! The Fascinating World of Mathematics: "Links to math games, activity ideas, puzzles, articles, learning and teaching aids, freebies, math in daily life, 'unschooling math,' overcoming math anxiety, and much more..."

Copywork: A Cheerful Mom

Is a picture still worth a thousand words if it's a picture of words?

This is first grade gent's copywork. Last month we had one of those days. Weeks? Enough, anyway, that I did a Google search for quotes on cheerfulness and good attitudes for this gent to copy into his composition notebook. Today's quote: "A cheerful friend is like a sunny day, which sheds its brightness on all around." (John Lubbock)

This fine middle gent is clever and mischievous, a bit of an imp. Halfway through copying the quote, he put down his pencil, erased the word "friend," and wrote "mom" in its place. Gave me that cheesy little grin and a kiss. After I took this picture and he'd finished copying, he drew hearts all over the board.

I've noticed that the opposite holds true as well, at least in our home. A grumpy mom is like a stormcloud. Why is it, I wonder, that anyone else in the family can have a bad day and the others just keep on going, but when I have a bad day, when I'm feeling grouchy, glum, grumpy it infects the entire family? Mom sets the tone for the whole day.

My fine young gent has inspired me to remember that I've never regretted kindness and that gentle words and a smile help set young feet on the right path. I'm going to print this picture and put it on my fridge to remind myself that I want to shed brightness on our days.

Stardust

We're made of stardust, and stardust is atoms.

Great Pyramids

Our middle gent turned 7 last week.

Sniff. Seven??? Already??? Can't your sweet momma have one more year of delightful six? Excuse me for a moment while I collect myself. Alas, and hooray!, it seems I get a year of delightful seven instead, which is just as marvelous.

He asked for chocolate cupcakes, and we all decorated. The frosting was really that bright blue. Yowza!
For his birthday, he got the new Playmobil Sphinx with a Mummy. And, way cool, some Tomb Raiders with Camels! Let's side track for yet another moment. (Bear with me.) We've been studying Egypt. Our Egypt study has stretched several months past our timeline because the fine young gents have been so fascinated by the ancient Egyptians, middle gent in particular. We've even priced airline tickets to Egypt, mostly to explain why we're not going. He's not even deterred by the fact that it's blazing hot in Egypt. He wants to sail on the Nile River, visit the Sphinx, and go inside a pyramid. "Someday, Mom," he promised earnestly, "I'll go to Egypt with you." I certainly hope so, my darling.

To my point. Playmobil sells a Pyramidtoo. It's pretty awesome. It's also pretty expensive, and they were out of stock at the store for which we had a 50% off certificate. So, no pyramid. A fact my fine young gent noted. "Hmmm. We need a pyramid."

Note the "Teachable Moments" label at the bottom of this post. My poor gents.

"You're right, honey," I said. "Let's build a pyramid!"

We started with paper:
We printed several pyramid templates. The gents and I spent a happy half hour cutting and folding paper pyramids from different kinds of templates. I didn't do a lot of teaching or talking. (I know, right? Me! I didn't talk a lot. Maybe I should go lie down.) I just let the different templates, which ended in the same pyramids, work for themselves.

My fine young gent noted that the little paper pyramids weren't quite big enough. So I pulled moving boxes out of the attic. Then the real work began.

"How am I going to make a template for you?" I asked the gents. They blithely asked me to print one. Then they said, "Oh. Yeah," when I reminded them of the limitation imposed by the size of our paper. They were a little stumped, so I measured the templates with them...each side of the base was the same length because the base is a square. Let's measure the edges of the triangles that make up the sides....OH!

Fortunately, loving math-brain was available to work with our eldest gent:
They did it the math way, with multiplying and such. I helped middle gent. I didn't want to think that hard, so we did it the measuring and observing way, recreating the template by deciding how long our sides should be then copying the model. Fortunately again, loving husband had to go to work, so eldest gent and I created the largest pyramid together the measuring and observing way, which meant that he got to see how both equally valid methods ended with the same results. He cut it and folded it almost all by himself.

Ancient Egypt has taken up most of our living room floor.
Now we just need a white-walled palace from which the Pharoah and his soldier can dangle the captured tomb raiders.
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Pyramid Templates:
The template the boys chose, as our boxes were rectangular. You have to check out this whole site: Paper Models of Polyhedra Could it possibly get any more math-awesome?

Pyramid template at Do To Learn Kids

And from our beloved Enchanted Learning: Make a Pyramid

Cave Painting

History and art rolled into one big messy fabulous project. We're studying ancient history, so what better way to start off the year's art studies? Cave painting has several advantages as an elementary-age art project: It's big. The materials are easy to find and to use. Cave paintings are very simple when it comes to subject and color. The pictures are not intimidating for children to imitate. You can fingerpaint or paint with sticks, draw with charcoals and pastels, or get even more creative and try to mix paints using dirt, leaves and spices.



You need:
Printed pictures of cave paintings from around the world and/or books with photos and brief explanations of cave paintings
Brown paper bags for practice paintings, or for your project if you choose not to do a large wall painting, crumpled then flattened
A large sheet or two of brown paper, crumpled and flattened
Charcoal sticks for drawing
Pastels for drawing (reds, browns, oranges and yellows)
Paints (Black, brown, red, yellow, orange)
A drop cloth
Rags for clean-up


Session one:
We studied cave painting as an art form. Look at cave paintings from aroud the world. Notice what makes them the same. What differences do you see? Why might people have painted these paintings? What did they paint? What do you think they used? Then do a warm-up drawing. Cut open a brown paper grocery bag. Crumple then flatten the bag. Draw your cave painting on the bag using charcoal and pastels. This step allows the children to experiment with the materials to find out what works and what doesn't, and to experiment with themes and lines and colors. Naturally, the fine young gents drew many weapons. Arrows, spears and blood were popular.


Session Two:
If you've got the time, the materials and the space, create a wall-sized cave painting. Use large paper, the kind teachers put on their bulletin boards. Crumple it then flatten it to simulate the curves and rough texture of rock. Attach the paper to the wall, put down a drop cloth if you're using paint, and let the children paint and draw their cave paintings using paints, pastels and charcoal, even dirt, sticks and leaves. Allow plenty of time for exploration of the materials and of the subject matter.

A flash from the past, a segment of our first cave painting, painted by our eldest lovely lady when she was in seventh grade:
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Internet lesson plans:

Cave paintings: Animals in Art

Art History: Create Cave Paintings

Cave Art: Discovering Prehistoric Humans through Pictures

First Day of School

First day of school: Journals in backpacks, pack a lunch, ditch the books and get outside for an Explore, an expotition.

It was a beautiful day for a trip to the river. Sunny and warm. Bit of a breeze. Dragonflies and minnows and a scolding Steller's jay.

The pear orchard is on the way to the river. We picked pears. Perfect.













Third-grade gent was so excited to break out his new paints that he skipped lunch to paint in the dry creek. There's something absolutely delightful and satisfying about that kind of enthusiasm.









Down the trail they go! It's been a while since we had a full-blown nature outing.





The fine young gents were thrilled to be hiking in a favorite place, eager to follow their feet.

First-grade gent. Look at that smile! He loves collecting things. Mount Pisgah is mostly oak savannah, with many varieties of oak trees. He collected acorns.










The fine young gents found a new place along the river with many rocks. They spent nearly an hour re-engineering a rock dam built by a previous visitor. Bonus: One of the fine young gents chose bridge-building for a fall study, so we all got a hands-on head start on the Bridges unit.

After a grand time splashing in the river, we all settled down with nature journals.



Writing, handwriting, spelling, science, nature and art all rolled into one. And we're out-of-doors. Perfect.

I'm going to print this picture and post it on the refrigerator. This is why we homeschool.

Life is good.

Top Ten Reason Homeschoolers Are Doing a Right Thing

Everyone is entitled to his or her opinion. Ten Reasons Why Homeschooling Parents Are Doing the Wrong Thing: http://teacherrevised.org/2009/05/30/the-case-against-homeschooling/

Not Tuesday, but I've got a Ten. Here are my top ten reasons why homeschooling parents are doing a right thing:

10. So “You were totally home schooled” may be an insult among college freshman in the dorm.
Let's balance it with:
"Homeschooling seems to be working great. Your children are so comfortable speaking with adults." (Our pediatrician.)
"I love having homeschooled kids in the library. They're so well-behaved." (Our librarian.)
"I wish I was homeschooled." (Many children my children meet and play with on the playground, at gymnastics, in the neighborhood.)
And my personal favorite, since college is, after all, about getting an education and not just a taller version of middle school: "I love having homeschooled students in my classroom. They ask thoughtful questions and are more interested in learning the material instead of slapping something together for a grade." (A college professor living on my old block.)

9. "Students–from little ones to teens–deserve a learning-focused place to study. In modern society, we call them schools."
Hahahahahaha! Hoohoohoohoohoohoohoohoohoo! Heeheeheeheeheeheeheehee! This is supposed to be an argument against, I think, doing schoolwork at the dining room table (and by extension at home in general). Although I'm pretty sure public school families eat their Fruit Loops and meatloaf at home at their tables too, right smack where many kids do homework.

What kind of argument is this? The table on which the learning takes place has no bearing whatsoever on the quality of learning. I could quibble back about buzzing fluorescent lights, the kid flicking his pencil, whispered conversations, texting in class, staring out the window wishing to be outside and on and on, but the reality is that most children will learn where they are taught. Having a learning-focused structure and routine in a homeschool or a public school is far more important than the table or the place.

8. Is homeschooling selfish?
I enjoy my childrens' company and know that their time with us is short, so I want to savor every moment. Is that selfish? We love learning and exploring together. Is that selfish? Though I am committed to my community and expect my children to model kindness and compassion and good behavior, I don't feel a responsibility to send my children to school to be role models for others. As a matter of fact, I think that would be a struggle for them, and I also believe there are many other areas in which they can reach out to others far more effectively. Is that selfish? I know that I can offer a quality rigorous individualized education that allows them time to explore their passions and develop their talents and gives them time to play and be children. Is that selfish? We happily and willingly pay our tax dollars to support our local and state schools, and we choose not to send our children to already crowded public schools because we've thoughtfully and carefully chosen a different lifestyle, one that suits us. Is that selfish?

Maybe. Maybe not.

I believe in sending out into the world creative, joyful, well-adjusted, educated young adults with a sense of honor and of responsibility to their communities. That's my goal, and it's an important one, not just for me and my family, but for the community and the world at large.

Not selfish.

7. God has given us our children to raise up and doesn't have anything official to say one way or the other about homeschooling. That's a conversation between Him and those asking. Period.

(Quite frankly, #7 was a cheap shot. Score a point for that tolerance kids are supposed to be learning in schools. Or not.)

6. Homeschooling parents/teachers are confident and want to teach our children to learn. Since we're educated and wealthy (see linked post, argument 8) we can teach many subjects, and for those we can't, we often can afford to pay for tutoring, private classes, college classes or internships. Even when we can't, we're creative and smart enough to find resources in our communities for subjects we are not comfortable teaching. We learn with our children, which offers them the realization that the world is not divided so easily into "experts" and "non-experts" or "imparters of learning and wisdom" and "receivers of learning and wisdom."

Notice I didn't list my degrees or qualifications. I've got them, but it's more important that I am willing, like any good teacher, to continue to educate myself in the subjects I'm teaching and how to teach them.

5. I can understand why some school teachers might feel threatened by homeschooling, even though my personal decision is to teach my children at home is absolutely no reflection of my beliefs about public schools or public school teachers. As a matter of fact, most public school teachers are heroes in my book, and I support my neighborhood schools. But one person's like or dislike of a particular education style is neither here nor there, and to expect to make a rational case against anything by saying, "I don't like it" is a stretch. I don't like chocolate cake, but that doesn't mean it's bad.

4. "Homeschooling could breed intolerance, and maybe even racism. Unless the student is being homeschooled at the MTV Real World house, there’s probably only one race/sexuality/background in the room. How can a young person learn to appreciate other cultures if he or she doesn’t live among them?"
Hmm. It could. Because hey, I may have mentioned that families are the primary unit for socialization. But then again, I could write a similar statement about public school. When we homeschool, the world is our classroom. Our children learn and interact with people of all ages, beliefs, abilities, and socio-economic backgrounds and get to explore their unique talents rather than being stuck in age-segregated classroom with children of roughly the same socio-economic status (because they're all from the same neighborhood) learning exactly what everyone else is learning. We study other cultures in-depth instead of skimming, skipping, focusing primarily on Western and American culture and history, and making a Chinese dragon every Chinese New Year and calling it a study of the rich and complex culture and history of China.

And "homeschooling" is not synonymous with "schooling at home." You can find homeschoolers out in the community, visiting the elderly, working with master gardeners in community gardens, volunteering in the animal shelters, serving meals at the food banks, teaching young children, helping their neighbors, out in the woods. That's an awful lot of exposure to the many subcultures we can find in our own communities.

3. Oh boy.
A) Socializing children by throwing them into a room year after year filled mostly with children of the same ages....not natural socialization. Large-scale public age-segregated education is a fairly recent historical development, folks.

Ask a teacher who's been teaching for 20+ years about how behavior has changed in their classrooms over the years. (Go ahead, and before you criticize, I have asked. I've had this conversation with many experienced teachers.) They'll usually point to two things: Video games and television, and families. The family is and should be the primary unit of socialization. Even the most homeschool-hating teacher has to agree with that. Kids with parents who expect and insist on appropriate social behaviors usually display appropriate social behaviors, no matter what their school choice. Add in the bonus of getting out into our communities and homeschoolers follow something much closer to the time-tested model of healthy human socialization than age-segregated group education. Not a criticism of public schools or group education. I'm just pointing it out.

And b) Only an hour a day? Including neighborhood play time? Obviously the writer of this post hasn't looked at my calendar, or the calendar of the homeschool families I know. As far as socialization, at the park you might be able to pick out the homeschooled children because they're friendly to everyone, not just the kids their age. They're confident with adults. But other than that, guess what? They're kind and rotten and sweet and selfish and funny and angry and creative and quiet and wild. They're kids just like all the other kids.

2. Homeschooling parents are risk-takers. We're not necessarily folks who will choose the path that everyone else is taking. Guess what? That's good for us, for our children, for our communities and for our society. None of us, parents or teachers, want cookie-cutter kids, a society of automatons. When families choose to homeschool, we're "gambling" that we're creating a life-long love of learning, that our children will be leaders, that they'll grow up to be people who think for themselves and take risks. Every path has risks, and the fact that a thoughtful decision was made for a child to go to public school or private school or to homeschool is far more important than choosing blindly because other people are doing it or because it's just the way we do things, no matter which path you choose.

1. "And finally… have you met someone homeschooled? Not to hate, but they do tend to be pretty geeky."
So glad there's no hate there. Who was concerned about tolerance and acceptance?

The homeschooled children I know, from preschool age up to post-high school graduates, have all been exactly who they are. Some confident, some creative, some intelligent, some funny, some mannerly, some charming, and yes, even some "geeky." Just like kids in public school. Just like kids all over the world. Kids are kids, people are people.

It's time to put to rest the idea that homeschooled children are socially inept. Or, for that matter, that they are all paragons of good behavior and virtue. We're just like everyone else. Some kids are socially gifted, most are socially fine, and some struggle with social skills. (Which, incidentally may be why some are pulled out of school for homeschooling in the first place, because the teasing or the feeling of not fitting in became intolerable.) But the idea that sitting in a classroom for several hours a day=appropriate socialization, or that homeschoolers never get out around other children, or heck, even that all public-schooled students are mouthy cursing pregnant brats...it's just. not. that. simple. When we start making those kinds of generalizations we distill the richness and variety of human experience into something so much less.

Gah, I hate those Pollyanna people who chirp things like, "We should all learn to celebrate our differences," but (shhh, don't tell!) I may be turning into one of them. Goodness, this forty(ish) thing and all of that "with age comes wisdom" stuff sucks. (Not that I'm necessarily wise, just...nicer? More tolerant? Definitely older, anyway. Heh.) Let's take a little time to learn and respect. It's all right to disagree, but maybe before we start taking potshots (ahem, "God hates homeschooling"??) at someone we don't understand, we should try having a conversation. A real conversation, the kind where we ask one another questions and try to see why others do what they do. We might actually learn something. And that's what it's all about.

Color Study

We're winding up our color studies. It's been a fascinating and motivating subject for the fine young gents. Which isn't surprising when you think about it. Color is immediate and relevant. It's something we experience every moment. A color study combines, overlaps and intersects art and science, and the experiments are simple, fun and accessible. And memorable. The fine young gents often talk about color in terms of science and art, remarking at the red light waves that must be bouncing off a shirt, for example. On the way home from a visit to Grandpa's, kindergarten gent stared out at the brown hills and remarked, "Mom, I can't see any tertiary colors out there."

At the beginning of spring break, we spent some school time doing color experiments. We're moving on to an astronomy study this spring, but we didn't want to miss some of the fun activities we'd seen online and in our experiment books, so we spent a fair amount of time playing with color.

Catch a Rainbow from Kidzone Science:

You need:
A shallow bowl
Milk
Food color--red, blue and yellow
Dish soap
Printable recording sheet (optional)

Drop food color at the edges of the bowl as shown above. Add 2-3 drops of dish soap to the middle of the bowl. Sit back and watch the colors swirl and combine.
Then complete the record sheet:


Is Black Black?
(Pictured in notebook above.)

You need:
Black markers, 2-3 different brands
A coffee filter
Water and an eyedropper
A tray or dish

Cut the coffee filter into strips. Choose one brand of black marker, and color a big black dot at the edge of a coffee filter strip. Do the same with the other black markers until you have a dotted strip for each brand of marker. Set the strips in your tray or dish and drip water on the black dots until they are saturated. Make sure your strips are not touching so that the colors don't bleed onto one another. Wait for the colors to wick up the filter. What colors do you see? Are the colors used by each brand different? The same?

Color Filters

You need:
Colored cellophane, different colors
Paper
Markers
Flashlight (optional)

Using your markers, draw a rainbow (or other colorful picture) on your paper. Place different colors of cellophane over your picture. What happens to the colors? Now take your cellophane and place it over different colored objects in the room. What happens to those colors?

For more cellophane fun, take the colored cellophane and a flashlight into the closet or other dark place. Shine the flashlight through the cellophane. (Moms: This kept my fine young gents entertained for an hour.)

Make a Rainbow

You need: A prism and bright light

Find a prism and experiment with making rainbows in the sunlight.



Color Mixing

You need:
4-6 glasses or bowls
Water
Food color--red, yellow, blue
Eyedroppers, spoons, measuring cups
Tray and towels or rags

Place the glasses and bowls on a tray. Fill three glasses or bowls with water. Add several drops of red, yellow or blue food color to the glasses so that you've got one glass of each color. Set out the the colored water and extra glasses or bowls for mixing. Use the spoons, measuring cups and eyedroppers to mix colors! Make sure to have a rag handy to clean up spills!

A Day in the Life: Field Trip Friday