simple water experiments

It is never too early to learn, and difficult science can be made simple by doing it hands-on.
Water can change into different states: it is liquid and everyone knows, but can become solid and like air....
1.get some water and add some paint on it...just for fun
2. show your child how the water is liquid and wet and how it takes the shape of the container is in
3. pop it in the freezer for a couple of hours
4. show it to your child, let him feel it and let him describe the state of the water
5. let it melt it
6. explain why it melts
7. pop the water in a pot and show your child the steam, let it touch it carefully
8. show the empty pot and explain that the water when is warmed up is trasformed into air!

How fabulous!

THE VERY HUNGRY CATERPILLAR

Almost anyone knows that caterpillars turn into butterfly, many children are aware of this thanks to Carle's "The Very Hungry Caterpillar"...but how many of us has actually seen a caterpillar turning into a butterfly? I haven't!
Now, I had this idea in my mind since I saw a children's book that explained how to make a caterpillars' house and how to care for them to see them turning into butterflies. I thought it would be very interesting if we could do that.
It took a while before we found a caterpillar: we went hunting in parks and fields, but no sign of caterpillars. I read somewhere that caterpillars like parsley, and I thought to give it a go because I was becoming quite eager to find one. If all failed, I was thinking to buy them from Insectlore, which are expensive but come with their house and food plus a cilindrical shape net where to put them when they are crysalids and then keep the butterflies for a few days.
then one morning, by chance I found one on a leaf of a bush in front of the bulding door...then I lifted my eyes and there were other 2 hairy ones...another one was a very tiny green hearless one! I rushed inside, took a plastic box, called my daughter to come and see! We collected them and a good bunch of leaves and took them inside. Then I made a home for them.
A few days leater I found two eating my flowers! Now we have 6 caterpillars!

HOW TO MAKE THE HOUSE

- a big plastic box or a old fish tank
- a small conteiner to put the leaves and some water to keep them fresh
- the leaves from the plant you found the caterpillars on (it is most probably their food plant)
- some soil
- 2-3 sticks
- a muslin or a paper tissue pierced to make air passing through




Do not touch the caterpillars with your bare hands, some can give a rush! Always use the leaf they are on to move them, or touch them with a leaf on their back and they will move forward.
make sure that the container with the water for the leaves isn't too big, cover all the spaces with some cotton wool or tissue paper to avoid any caterpillar falling into the water.
Some caterpillars make a pupa on a branch (that will be your stick) others under ground (that is your soil)
put the soil in the box, then the container with the leaves + caterpillars and then the sticks. Cover it with a muslin or a paper tissue.
Make sure you do not expose the caterpillar to the hot sun. they like the shade.








You will see lots of droppings and some pieces of skins on the leaves or on the soil. that's because every time they grow they also outgrow their skins and need to replace it!
Replace the leaves when the caterpillars have eaten most of them, or they wither.

Have a good time observing them!

WORM FACTORY

This is a fun-science activity for children to understand what worms do and how they help to mantain the soil rich and help the flowers and plant grow.

You need:
- a glass jar
- some sieved soil
- dead leaves
- earth warms
- a dark cloth

1) hunt for some worms with the children (they must be big mature warms!), 4 or 5 should be enough
2) put them in a container with the soil you found them in
3) get your jar
4) fill the jar with one layer of about 3cm of soil, then spray some water and fill the jar with another 3 cm of soil, spray some more water, leave only about 5 cm from the top
5) put your warm in the jar
6) cover them with the leaves
7) cover the jar with the dark cloth and put it in a dark place

After a couple of days go and observe the jar. there should be worm tunnels, you should see some leaves dragged into the soil.





When you have finished the observation relise the worms in the garden...the soil they where housed into will be very nutritious for your flowers!

SINK AND FLOAT

This is a fun scientific experiment about one of water "magic abilities"!
You will need a sink or large container full of water, a few household objects of different materials and sizes (piece of paper, a key, a small plastic toy, a stick, a nut, a ring etc)
Invite your child to drop in the water one object and observe if it sinks or floats and explain why. Next ask your child to guess if the next object will sink or float, drop it in the water and observe.

Next you can try to make a boat using different materials. First of all paper, then by using a plastic plate as base, a wine bottle lid, a shell etc. Observe some of them sink, and other float.


Here is M. trying sink or float with some rubber toys, a small stone and a boat made with a plastic plate and a sailing.

A BIT OF PLANNING

VALUES

Yesterday we finished off M. photo album. I printed some more pictures of other friends and family members to complete the album...still someone missing but we will sort this out next time we fly back home!


As last time she added some stickers and she tried to remember episodes to connect to each person...funny what she remembers!

SCIENCE

Today, during my 30 minutes workout on the stepper (!), I was thinking about a project I could do with M. about animals. Yesterday evening we caught the last part of "Life" on BBC FOUR. She was enjoying it very much and she stayed focus till the end. She was particularly impressed by the scene where an ostrich is put down by three cheetahs, she was especially curious about the ostrich. This morning she brought me her animals book where she had found a picture of an ostrich. She didn't really care about that animal before, but now she was quite keen on showing it to me and tell me all about what happened on TV.

I took the laptop and started searching for some videos on ostrich and I found a couple which she enjoyed watching.

So I thought that it would be nice to make her colour in a print out for each animal she is curious about, and also find something else to colour in about the animal, for example a huge egg for the ostrich and a butterfly for the caterpillar. I searched a bit on the Internet and I found this very helpful site http://www.first-school.ws/ where there are lots of educational resources for toddlers, and many colour in sheets of basically anything.
Tomorrow will be the first day of our animal project, which will be dictated by M.'s interests of the moment. I will anyway start from her previous curiosities which her bees,caterpillars, dinosaurs and now ostriches and chitahas.

Something that she definitely fancies is playing with her tea set and water. She is drink so much of her "tea" that I have to change her nappy so much often and sometimes I have to change her trousers and top too....
To give it an additional educational edge, today I introduced a real tea bag to her water, and then we observed how the water changes colour. This made me think that it would be a good idea to show her how water changes colour when we add some food colouring to it, I may even try to put a sugar cube in the water and show her how this also take up the colour.


COLOURS

I have also thought that I must re-enforce her colours knowledge a bit more. For now all the colours are named "blue"!

This afternoon I set out an activity in which she should have painted some pasta of the colours we have experimented before, so that, once dry, she could play with her pots and pans and her colourful pasta, this will help her see the colours during her playtime and hopefully learn the names. In reality she didn't find the business of paint the pasta something that she fancied. She just painted 2 or 3 shapes and left the table. I then finished the job to ensure the good outcome of my experiment. Will keep updating on the progress.

5 SENSES

I also elaborated something that it was in my mind for a long time but that I didn't have the time to think it through. I would like to make a kind of "5 senses laboratory", something I remember from my montessori nursery days. For the time being I will work on the sense of touch and smell. I thought to find something smooth, rough, spiny and soft and try to encase it or frame it. Then I need herbs and spices to work with for the sense of smell; probably put them in separated boxes and make holes in their lids. All of this will then be put in a big storage container that she can access whenever she likes.

I will to start the laboratory next week.

the seasons

On Thursday we had a very busy and tiring day. On your way back home we stopped in the next door park for some energy realising activity for M., since all morning she was restrained on the buggy. She started picking up small branches from the floor and throwing them in the air as if to copy the natural process of branches following in Autumn.


I got an idea from this, and I picked up some branches and leaves myself to take home. We also found a feather and took it home with us.


At home we drew a tree on a paper and then glued the branches, leaves and feather on it.





Next time we will go to the park we will pick up some other leaves and then stick them on the feet of the tree (Autumn) and then stick on them some cotton wool pretending is snow (winter). Later in the year as spring and then summer will arrive, we will change our tree according to what we will find in and around the tree.

one step in the right direction

Today was a really grey and rainy day...it is the third day in a row that me and M are not going outside for some fresh air. It is also saturday and both of us felt like relaxing.

In the morning M. had lots of fun bathing her plastic dolly, while mummy was giving her a bath.
The we watched some Cbeebies and I explained the cartoons in my mother tongue
I use my mother tongue when I speak to her, I am really keen on her learning our mother language, but of course she is picking up lots of English words too from TV and children centres sections. We also jumped and danced to the Cbeebies songs which she enjoys very much.


After lunch we read some of the books in M's home library. She knows all of them by heart and sometimes she even "reads" them by herself. I started reading to her since she was two months
old, I don't know if it because of this early start or because I also enjoy reading so I injected this passion in her, but M. loves books more than TV: she can keep focus on the cartoons for 5 minutes, but she can read with me for 30-40 minutes and more.


M. had 3 hours nap (really unsual mind you), and I had time to exercise on my new mini stepper machine and cook dinner.

In the afternoon we did some activities.


WORDS


We looked at the flash cards. With this activity I show her a picture and I say out loud the word, slowly and divided into phonic sounds (su-n, ho-me) and she will try to repeat the world.
Aworld must be repeated lots and lots of times
before a child can say it, so this activity must be done a number of times before you can see (or better, hear) the results.

What I use are the "Usborne look and say First Words" which are 30 chunky, actractive flash cards. Under and at the back of each picture there is the written world, so that you can use them also when the child is learning to write and read.

Everytime M. try to say the world I give her lots of praises, clap hands, smile, so that she is encouraged to learn the sound of the world.



After this we learnt the names of the colours RED, YELLOW, GREEN, BLUE.







To do this I made her paint a white paper for each of the colours and kept on repeating the sound red, when she was paint the paper in red, yellow and so on. When they are dry these can also be used as flash cards for the child to say the name of the colour.



After this we had a bit of free drawing with all the colours.



NUMBERS:


M. sorted out a wooden peg puzzle that has numbers on it from 1 to 10. She took off all the pieces and I asked her to find the number 1 showing her how it looks like in the puzzle, when she found the piece and put it in the right place, I asked her to find the number 2 and so on.



SCIENCE:


This was not meant as an activity but M. started it by chance and I explained her what was happening.




M. wanted a mandarin to peel, she loves peeling this fruit. I draw a face on it as I always do to make it more fun.


when she finished she started squeezing the juice and making a mess everywhere. I was almost about to tell her off when I stopped and thought that this was a very good idea actually.



I explained to her that the mandarin was made of water, that's why this liquid was coming out, and that it was juice, like the one she loves drinking (and that she actually only sees coming out from a box). She was really excited and she asked for another mandarin to squeeze.





There you go, as I said every experience is learning for little kids: we, as parents, can't waste an apportunity like this one just because it makes a bit of mess and makes our home a little dirty.



















ART and CRAFT and FAMILY VALUE


We played with playdough. I made a small family made out of playdough: a little girl, mummy, daddy and a cat. While I was doing this she was trying to make shapes and tearing the dough to pieces (this help manual dexterity). each time Imade a piece for the body of our figurines I tell
her the name of the body-part (head, leg, arm, hair, tail etc).

We put all the figurines next to each other and we put their hands together: they all love each other like it should be in a family.




















































For dinner we all had chicken cous cous. I posted the recepit.
Good night