science experiment FAIL

I'm a sucker.  I saw this idea on Pinterst and then watched a few videos on Youtube and I fell for it.  

You're supposed to mix these three ingredients, shake, and then it's supposed to glow.  

This is a hoax.  It doesn't work.  After some further research I confirmed that it was a hoax.  Except we didn't know it. 

And we treated it super scientifically. 

We had high hopes. 

And then nothing.  We tried it 5 times to make sure it wasn't us or our measurements.  It's just simply a hoax.   

If you mix mountain dew, baking soda, and hydrogen peroxide and shake.... it will not glow.  WILL NOT GLOW.   Look at what Bee wrote for results... NO.

  But a glow stick in the dark will.  Thankfully I had a few on hand.  I'm a hoarder like that. 

can I post this on my door so you know why the dishes aren't done?

 Yeah seriously, I need to hang this sign on my front door as a disclaimer.  Ignore the crumbs on the floors, dishes, and laundry (the three things I can't seem to ever keep up with) we are playing legos over here!   And building fairy houses.  And being scientist.   And whatever else strikes our fancy. 

Mother, O' Mother, come shake out your cloth,

Empty the dustpan, poison the moth.

Hang out the washing, make up the bed,

Sew on a button and butter the bread.

 Where is the mother whose house is so shocking?

She's up in the nursery, blissfully rocking.

Oh, I've grown as shiftless as Little Boy Blue, 

Lullaby, rockaby, lullaby loo.

Dishes are waiting and bills are past due,

Pat-a-cake, darling, and peek - peekaboo.

The shopping's not done and there's nothing for stew,

And out in the yard there's a hullabaloo.

But I'm playing Kanga and this is my Roo.

Look! Aren't his eyes the most wonderful hue?

Lullaby, rockaby, lullaby loo.

 The cleaning and scrubbing can wait till tomorrow,

But children grow up, as I've learned to my sorrow.

So quiet down cobwebs; Dust go to sleep!

I'm rocking my baby and babies don't keep.

 ~ Ruth Hulbert Hamilton

X x xylophone (and xray)

Today's plans were pretty simple. I wanted to get outside! The weather has been crazy nice! Plus, the wooden xylophone could only hang outside.

Xx xylophone day:

I showed the kids these x-ray cards which I found through Pinterst.  The blog they are from though has made themselves private recently, so that doesn't help.   Too bad, because they are really nice.  I did google image 'xray pictures' and there are a lot of nice options there too.

Then we talked about what a xylophone was and I showed them these two pictures (also from a google image).  I played the kids a little of these two songs, Rhythm Song by Virtuoso Music for Solo Marimba and Triplets by Masters of the Xylophone, both featuring the xylophones.  The songs are different and show the diversity of the xylophone.  The kids enjoyed listening and they pretended to play along.  

Then we did some addition work.

I had lots of paper cut in strips for the kids to solve the addition problems with.  I slowly told the kids how many strips to lay down on their black strip of paper, and then how many to add to it.  The kids counted them all up and wrote their answers on the plastic plate dry erase boards we have been using.   Letting the kids record their answers on the plates has reduced their yelling out of the answers.  I love it.

The craft was an X xylophone.  Here's Lou's.

I had another activity ready that we didn't get to.  I had several number sets with missing numbers.  

I had thought we'd write the numbers on the plates. 

Then we just went outside.  It was the first time we had gotten to go outside in some time.  The kids were thrilled. 

I found a nice place to hang the xylophone and the kids played with the wooden spoons.

We have a nice basic playground, but the tire mulch is my nemesis.  It's so dirty.  It ruins shoes and light colored pants.  It dirties knees, faces and hands and is pretty gross.  The best is when the kids hands are dirty with tire dirt and then wipe sweat off their face and leave black streaks.  Blach!

angry birds

I saw an angry bird set on Homemade Beauties by Heidi.  She made it with tin cans and a ball all with faces painted on them.  Lou and I got worked with what we had on hand.  

We made the bird on a blue ball and use the cans as the structure. 

We painted some old golf balls to be the pigs. 

Then, we added Lou's homemade block set to add a little more to the 'structures.'

We've set up shop with it in the basement against the door.  Lou sets up and I throw.  I set up and he throws.  We change the set up each time. 

 We've been having a bunch of fun with it.  

Here's something unrelated.  Hubby installed a light in the basement for me above my sewing area.  It was so dark in the evenings.  I could hardly see.  He got in my closet to run the wires through the ceiling (he's handy like that) and he found a hidden shelf in the very top of the closet.  I've been using that closet for over a year now and had never noticed it.  Look at the 'treasure' he found.  Someone's stash... chewing tobacco and a spit cup.  Lovely!

We've lived in this house a little over a year and the people before us were here 12 years.  Next time we see them, I've got to ask if it was theirs.  There were no expiration dates on the items to check.  I just wonder how long they've been there. 

Could there be more treasure in this house?

Ww worm day- preschool style

When the kids arrived on W w worm day they found worms on a window for some above and below viewing.  I propped the window up on two teacher chairs and stayed close to hold it steady.  the kids crawled under to watch the wiggly worms and watched from above to see their funny friend (and worms) through the window. 

Lou pulled up a chair before class to get a good view.

First, we talked about the letter Ww and the sound it makes.  We sang the phonics song.  We added W pictures to our W page in our class alphabet book. 

Then to practice our letter, I put the friends in small groups of three and sent them with one of the stretchy bands and had them see if they could work together to make a W. 

Only one group figured it out.  They demonstrated for the others when we came back to the rug.  This picture is obviously a work in progress group. 

To get the worm part of our day started, we read An Earthworms Life  by John Himmelman.  It has nice drawings and good worms facts. I added in a few more worm facts from other books I had looked at.

I used this posted I drew to help point out the facts from the book as well as to review the facts after we read.  There are even worm castings (poop) which was pretty funny to the boys. 

Here are a few other books I had on hand, but didn't get to.  Sometimes the day just gets away from us.  That usually means we have been having a good day.   

I showed the kiddos these pictures, which I just found through a google image search.  We talked about whether the pictures were fake or real.  They are both real pictures of giant earthworms from Australia.  Aren't they crazy!

Next, each friend was given a worm on a paper plate and an observation page and sent somewhere in the room to observe their worm.  Before passing these material out, we discussed what it meant to observe, using our senses, and how we were being like scientist.  We also talked about proper handling of the worm.  God made worms too, so we should be gentle with them; the kids all agreed and no one lost their worm, although one did crawl off the plate and try to make a break for it.

The worm observation pages were later collected into a class book.

When we came back to the rug, supplies were collected by our lovely parent helper and we shared some observations we made about our worms.  I asked the kids to complete the sentence, "My worm..."   Some talked about how the worm looked, others about how it felt, some about what it did, and one commented about how it smelled. 

Later, I wrote their sentence on the bottom of their observation page. 

They made some good observations.

Then, I asked if any of them had tasted the worms.  They seemed grossed out, of course they had not.  So I tricked them!  I acted like I was trying to make sure I had the right worms and was worried about how long they had been in a closed container.  I explained that I had some worms that I had rinsed the dirt off of (who would eat dirt!).  I showed them the bowl of worms and then I picked one up and wiggled it.  Then I ate it.  They were pretty grossed out!  I used this recipe for the worms.  I offered others a chance to taste and a few started to figure it out.

I had two worms for each friend in a small individual bowl, but my leader child for the day had also brought jello worms so we just ate out of their container.  There were a few friends who had the worm in their mouths before they figured it out. 

At some point, we let them crawl through a tunnel like a worm. 

The craft for the day was painting with worms.  They were rubber fishing worms in brown paint.

Some friends were really into this and painted most of the 35ish minutes we were in our enrichment room. 

Here is my Lou's art.

I snuck this activity in at the very end of the day.  I gave them each a few short gummy worms and told them a letter I wanted them to make.  When they had made a few letters, I gave them a regular long gummy worm to nibble on.  The kids are really good at working with some food/candy item without eating it, knowing they will get a clean treat to eat later.

We sang this song in the hallway while we waited for all of the friends to get through the bathroom.  I'd printed it out a few years ago and had it in a folder.  I don't know where it came from.  

Each line gets repeated, echo style"

The silliest worm

I ever saw

was stuck inside my soda straw.

He said to me

don't take a sip

for if you do,

you're sure to flip.

I took a sip,

and he went down

down through my pipes. 

He was my friend

but he is gone.

Now he lives inside my tummy.

The kids were troopers this day and we just kept getting through things and they were eager to keep working.  I love those days.  I was worried we wouldn't get to these worms.  With all the cutting I did, that would have been disappointing. 

I passed out the worms and sang the worm song below.  I got this idea from a similar song I saw in a Mailbox magazine.  It might not have been about worms, I don't remember. 

To the tune of "Where is Thumpkin"

Where is Victor worm?  Where is Victor worm?

(child with V worm brings it up)  Here he is.  Here he is.

What do you say Victor?  What do you say Victor?

(Kids:)  /v/  /v/  /v/,   /v/  /v/  /v/.

Then we repeated with other names I assigned to each worm.  I used the yellow cards to show the letter I was looking for.  I wanted everyone to be successful with identifying their letter.   I wrote the name on the back for me. 

We took a bunch of the worms home and Lou and Bee made them up some compost habitats.  Next year, I might have the kids in class each make one and take a worm home. 

Here was snack.  Aren't these crazy?  Whale cupcakes!  

They are icing covered Twinkies coming out of cupcakes. 

Here are a few other worm activities that my super co-teacher did the day prior.  She passed out a long (brown/pinkish) dyed sock to each child.  They put it on their arm and pretended they were worms.  

They she sang this song and walked around the circle pretending to be a bird.  The kids wiggled their arms.  She snatched up a worm at the end of each song.  The kids loved it.  She's so good at doing fun things like this. 

They also did some worm weaving, which the kids liked as well.  The soil is just laminated brown construction paper that has slits cut in it.  The worms must be about 10-11 inches long.  There were bunches of worms available.  Some kids wove 6 or more. 

They also pretended some rope pieces were worms.  They wiggled them on the floor and in the air, etc.  Then they made some worm rope letters on the floor.  I guess this picture must be rotated, I thought it was supposed to be a 'b'. 

The kids are starting to think that since we are getting to the end of the alphabet, we must be getting to the end of the year.  Lou agrees.  He is counting down already.