Egg-xperiment 🙂

Yesterday we had a blast experimenting with eggs. We took two glasses, one glass had plain water from the sink, in the other glass we added LOTS of salt to the water. First, we put the egg in the plain water and the egg sunk right away, then we took the other egg and placed it in the salt water. This egg floated because the water became more dense when we added salt to it. I had the girls take their science notebooks and draw their hypothesis before we did the experiment, then they drew what actually happened afterwards.

Then we took turns placing the egg in the middle of our hand and squeezing with all our might. We weren’t able to crack the egg as long as it was in the middle of our palm. I explained, by completely surrounding the egg with your hand, the pressure you apply by squeezing is distributed evenly all over the egg. However, eggs do not stand up well to uneven forces which is why they crack easily on the side of a bowl. This also explains how a hen can sit on an egg and not break it, but a tiny little chick can break through the eggshell – the weight of the hen is evenly distributed over the egg, while the pecking of the chick is an uneven force directed at just one spot on the egg.

For our last experiment with our white little egg, we took a glass of vinegar and placed the egg inside. Again I had the girls draw two pictures, one with what they thought would happen to the egg and one for what actually happened.  We left the egg in the vinegar for a day and a half. The girls were surprised this morning to see that the vinegar had made the egg soft like a water balloon! I explained that the egg-shell is porous, this lets the growing embryo get oxygen, it will also let things through like pollutants and even the vinegar, which is an acid. By soaking the egg overnight in vinegar it became soft and pliable.

The girls gave these science experiments Five Stars!

What kid doesn’t love playing in the bath tub? Tonight I took turns with each of my daughters, one at a time, having fun with shaving cream in the tub, while learning.

For my second grader, I wrote out multiplication facts and she wrote the answers. My kindergartener has been having a tough time writing certain letters and numbers and has been getting very frustrated because she could not write them exactly like she wanted. With the shaving cream it was a different story, no tears or grumpy attitudes. She could erase and try again over and over, while feeling the soft foam squishing through her fingers. For my tiny tot, she traced shapes in the white fluff. They all had fun and didn’t even realize they were learning, but just enjoyed playing with shaving cream. At the end it was free play, to make whatever art piece they wanted.

Thinking outside the box will enhance your children’s hunger for learning, so don’t worry about pencils and paper, bring out the SHAVING CREAM!

Living in the middle of the Sunshine State (Florida), we don’t get the pleasure of enjoying every season, especially the beginning of Fall. Which could be referred to as Autumn.  Autumn is defined by when the foliage changes color as an indication of the end of summer. We have very few leaves that change color and when they do it’s winter time. So, for our craft today we decided to paint “Autumn Leaves”.

Step One: Pick different kinds of leaves

Step Two: Glue your leaves on card stock paper

Step Three: Paint your leaves

Step Four: Place your sticks around your picture to give a Frame look

Now we too can enjoy the changing of leaves 🙂

Today was our first field trip of the school year. Because I am a seasonal cast member at Walt Disney World I get myself and my family into Disney for free a couple of times a year.  So, we surprised the kids this morning by taking them to Animal Kingdom. Since, this was a planned field trip, I brought notebooks and pencils for the girls to write down animals and plants that they saw today.

We were limited on our time because of our 6 month old prince and the Florida heat. But I wanted the girls to get out of the classroom for a day and explore the wild. We went down the Pangani Forest Exploration Trail. There we met a nice Disney cast member named Elise, who explained to the girls the similarities in the Okapi and their cousin the Giraffe.  She shared about their facial bone structure and how their tongues are 18 inches long! Further down the trail Victoria was able to ask questions about the Naked Mole Rats and the African Bullfrog. It was great learning about all the different animals. The girls were also able to practice their handwriting and spelling by writing down each of the animals’ names we saw on the trail. Our plan is to research each of these animals more in detail on Thursday of this week.

The world is our classroom and the best part is we are learning as a family!