Salt

We want to know
-how salt is made
-how salt has vinegar inside it, I think salt does, maybe it has sauce inside it, but it's just white just like water
-how it grows, I know it's a seed and it gets bigger and bigger, maybe it's a tomato plant and they painted it. I want to know what plant it comes from
-it could be a cord, and chopped off and they could paint it
-or it could be an eye that they painted, it might be a teeny teeny tiny eye, but I'm not sure because we don't like to eat eyes because they're yucky, but you can eat fishes' eyes even though they're yucky.

What we did
-I put salt in one bowl and sugar in the other, they tasted both
-Description: they look the same, one is sugar and the other salt, sometimes they do look the same and sometimes they don't look the same, both were white, they were hard little pieces, salt tasted yucky, but when you taste it with food it tastes yummy.
-We use salt for cookies and food, for playdough, for drawing letters, for glitter
-We dissolved salt in water. We talked about the water being clear and the salt white. As it dissolved the salt became clear like the water. Then we poured it on a jellyroll pan and put it in the oven for 30 minutes or so. The water evaporated and the salt was left and was white again.
-Read in a book about sweat being salty. Ezra practiced site words: a & the, while we read. I would pause when I came to one of those and he would read them.
-We had a taste test. I had the kids smell each item and guess what it was. They wrote what they thought it smelt like it. Then they tasted it and wrote what they thought it was. I then showed them and we talked about what it was and what it tasted like. After we wrote down sweet, salty, hot, spicy, creamy, and bitter and wrote foods that we could think of in each category.

Salt glitter



Salt glitter
1/4 c salt
1/2 t vinegar
2-3 drops food coloring
mix all and spread on a baking sheet, bake at 300 for 20 minutes or until dry
we wrote with glue sticks on paper and covered the glue in the salt glitter.

Sang "Fish and Chips and Vinegar" we sang it in a round
Lyrics
1)Fish and chips and vinegar, vinegar, vinegar
Fish and chips and vinegar, pepper, pepper, pepper, salt
2)Don't throw your trash in my backyard, my backyard, my backyard
my backyard's full

Salt Letters



We poured some salt in a pan and practiced writing letters in it.

Writer's Workshop



We were at the store and counted how many different boxes of salt they had. We talked briefly about the differences and uses. Ezra drew pictures of the salt and people choosing which box of salt they wanted to buy.

We learned
-salt is a rock and the only rock we eat
-there are over 14000 uses for salt
-salt is all over and evidence that the earth was once under water
-Ezra - salt comes from the sea, they dig it off the ground and the tractor has to carry it because it's so heavy, then they put it into bags, they put the salt water in a pond, and the hotness makes the water evaporate and salt is left, and this dirt and the mud
-http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7JKQZCxj-eg

Mount Everest

We want to know
-how many elephants tall is it
-how big is it
-if there is waterfall on it
-if someone lives there
-if you slided down and it's really icy, if you would fly in the air

We learned
-it is 29029 feet
-2103 elephants tall
-29029 chickens tall
-1915914 ants tall
-967 houses tall

What we did

Watched video clips from Discovery Channel's Everest series on Netflix watch instantly

Measured - drew a tall mountain on butcher paper and taped it to the wall. We gathered toys and measured how many toys it took to reach the top of the mountain. Here's the results:
16 blocks
2 1/2 shields
1 1/2 puppy costumes
3 light sabers.
Then we looked at our data. This part was confusing because I asked the kids which item was the biggest. They looked for the biggest number on the list which was the blocks. I explained that the biggest item took the least number to get to the top of the mountain. I don't know if it sank it, but at least it got them thinking.

Built



We sorted all of the blocks into different categories. Noah and I counted them. Ezra drew a picture of each block category on the white board, then the number of blocks in each one.
Ezra drew a picture of Mount Everest, then we drew which blocks we wanted to use. The big ones on the bottom, the smaller ones on the top. Then we built the mountain. Afterwards a dinosaur climbed to the top and knocked it over.

We learned

Ezra
It takes forever to climb. When somebody hikes up it they sometimes die. Your hand can turn black and you could lose your fingertops. I don't want to hike up Mount Everest. We don't even have the harnesses and ropes and stuff.
Noah
I would take a ladder to climb up it. I want to climb the ladder.
Livi
It's really really cold up there and a lot of people die. It's 2100 elephants high. It's the tallest mountain in the world. Some people tried to climb it.

Plate Tectonics



Ezra
There's two plates and they squeeze each other and it turns into mountains. Volcanoes are from the earth, they get really hot and when it gets bubbly it explodes. The lava turns into big rocks when it cools.

With playdough Ezra made two plates and had them collide and form a mountain.

We Made a Volcano


Playdough
4 3/4 c (23.5) oz flour
2 c (16 oz) water
1 c salt
Knead all ingredients in a mixer
divide and add food coloring if desired

Lava Mixture
mix
1/2 c water
4 T baking soda
1 t dish soap or detergent
couple drops of red food coloring (optional)

pour in vinegar until it bubbles and overflows (1/4-1/2 c)

Electricity

We want to know:
-if you cut a cord, will you get electrocuted
-if you can see electricty, not including lightning
-if electricity can get out of the battery and sneak downstairs and go into the cords
-if there is any kind of wood that uses electricity
-can electricity go through plants, does it keep plants alive?

How electricity works:
Livi
It starts with coal or wind or water. They grind up the coal. It goes through tubes and they put in a fire somewhere. It gets so hot it goes up tubes and goes into a spinner and spins fast, it gets transformed into electricity and it goes to our house. There are lots of cords in our house and it goes into our basement and works our whole house.

Ezra
Coal is first, next they grind it up. They burn up the coal and it turns into little specks of dust. Then it goes through a tube that is like a slide. After it's done it goes into cord and into our houses.

Survey
Great Room: 6 outlets, 0 appliances
Kitchen: 11 outlets, 6 appliances
Laundry Room: 1 outlets, 2 appliances
Rana's Bathroom: 1 outlets, 0 appliances
Loft: 6 outlets, 8 appliances
Hall: 1 outlet, 0 appliances
Boy's room: 4 outlets, 1 appliance
Livi's room: 4 outlets, 1 appliance
Duck bathroom: 1 outlet, 0 appliance
Master Bedroom: 5 outlets, 4 appliances
Master Bathroom: 2 outlets, 0 appliances
Office: 3 outlets, 3 appliances

Ezra
The kitchen had the most outlets. It does so we can use it a lot, you're supposed to use lots of things, so we can have food. Four rooms had 1 outlet they were, laundry room, Rana's bathroom, hall, and the duck bathroom. They had few because we don't plug much in the bathroom because it's a yucky place to call and do stuff. (I promise my bathrooms are clean, we have a 5 year old germ-a-phobe).

Outlets are important so we can use electricty for our cd player and stuff like that. It's important so we can use stuff.

Livi
Without electricity we would have to put our food in the wind to keep it cold. If we didn't have electricity for lights we'd have to use candles. If we didn't have a stove we'd have to put it in the sun for like ten days. We could use the fire to cook our food.

We went downstairs to see the circuit breaker box and followed the cords until we couldn't see them anymore.

Outlets
6, 11, 1, 1, 6, 1, 4, 1, 1, 5, 2, 3
41 outlets total, average of 3.5 outlets per room

Car Battery
Conveniently my car battery died this week. The kids got to see hot to jump start a car. We talked about the path and closed circuit.

Lions

What we want to know:
-how they eat the meat and not the skin
-if they eat every kind of animal
-if they eat dead animals
-lion hunt
-zoo

What we learned:
-they sleep for a really long time (19-21 hours)
-they eat quickly and a lot, then don't eat for a long time
-females do most of the hunting
-males eat first, then the females, then the cubs
-to attack they run, then they sneak, they freeze if they are spotted,they run then jump on their prey
-lion's sliced the meat from the skin with their sharp canine teeth, they dig it out

What we did:
-We made a playdough pride. Livi made three females. Ezra made 1 male. I made 8 cubs. Noah made the lion food. At night the females went out to hunt. The snuck up on their prey like lions do, then attacked. They brought the food to the male to eat first. Then the females ate, then the cubs. When the male cubs turned 2-4 years they left the pride to join a new one.
-We wrote the word lions and scrambled it to make new words. We came up with seven: on, no, son, sin, is, Sam, so. I hope we're not missing anything.
-We told the story of the mouse and lion. The kids acted it out with Ezra the lion, Livi the mouse, and Noah the hunter. We talked about the message of the story that big or small we can all help each other.
-We told the story of Daniel and the Lion's Den and talked about how Heavenly Father calmed the lions to protect Daniel.

Magic

We want to know:
-who invented magic tricks
-the first one to do magic tricks
-if babies can do magic tricks
-why everyone thinks they are magic
-can we do magic with big and little things?

We want to:
-learn magic tricks
-do a magic show
-watch a magic show video

Tricks we did:
link to our magic show:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KeLyJGeadIc
-plate, coin, glass, and cloth
-egg trick
-breaking nose
-paper star
-vanishing feet
-balloon trick
kid magic tricks:
http://www.activitytv.com/605-balancing-egg

We watched:
David Copperfield on you tube

We learned:
Magic is just a trick. We use it to trick people and for fun. Babies can't do magic tricks, but we can do tricks to them like peek-a-boo. Magic started a really, really, really, really, really, long time ago.