Spring Break with Lisa

Because this week is Spring Break, but Lisa still planned to come for tutoring, she came up with lots of projects to keep the boys busy during the time she was here.

They made stained glass window cookies.Sugar cookies with rock/hard candy broken into bits and sprinkled on.





They made a "battery" stacking different coins in a certain order with lemon juice soaked paper towel between them. when you held them between your fingers you could feel the reaction, it heated up and was tingly.

They made homemade ice cream and talked about why you need salt and ice to make it work.

And this one scares me a little.
They swabbed my house and put them in petri dishes. We will see what grows!
Watch for an update on that!

Eco Column

This week Lisa made an Eco Column with the boys for science lesson.
They used three two-liter bottles to create it.

In the bottom there was gravel and water plates, distilled water and two fish. The fish were named: Darth Fishy (it was black (yes past tense)) and Luke Fishy who is gold.

The joy of putting in the fish.

In the top portion is an inverted two-liter bottle. It has gravel and then dirt - which they planted seeds in, and three crickets. The extra moisture form the cricket portion can drip down and give the fish more clean water.

The fish can eat the plants, create fertilizer for the plants. The plants give off oxygen and take in carbon monoxide. Cool. Kind of the same in the top, crickets eat the plants that grow from the seeds that were planted, create fertilizer. It really is cool how it all works.

But one of the fish has already died.

The kids love it though and they love to tell people all about it.

Lisa Science

Last week with Lisa the boys learned chromatography.
(the separation of mixtures - in our case colors)



This one was M&M's soaked in a little water to remove the color, then they put the color water droplets on coffee filters, let them get damp and watched the colors run up the filter and separate. (Think green, the blue and yellow separated)

They also used markers, chalk and rubbing alcohol. I didn't get a good "after" picture, but these really turned out well, you could really see the separation of the colors.



I can't remember what they used here to color, but you can see how the colors separate.
(Noble thinks it was food coloring)