Chores at any age

 

End of the School Year Fireworks

With the pandemic, our normal yearly state test that would have been in June, took place in November. Since we have to wait a few weeks to get results, which came at the end of December, we decided to hang onto a firework we picked up before New Years. This one was perfectly named "School's Out" and it was a perfect ending to a stressful and struggled year for us all. So, with the close of another homeschool year, we shot this sucker off with delight!

End of Year Classroom Redo/Organizing

Another year comes to an end in the classroom. It's always the time I use to go through things, get rid of old work, worksheets, clean the walls, and folders out, and rearrange for the new year. Here is a glimpse of what we're doing right now in the RVRS Homeschool Classroom.

Happy New Year! Here's to the end of tenth grade and onto eleventh grade!

Chemistry in the classroom (Cyanotype-Mel Science)

This month's chemistry experiments are "Painting with light" and Cyanotype. We used light and citric acid to create pictures and to write with.

This chemistry set came with the following:

1. Ammonium carbonate x2
2. Ammonium iron (III) sulfate x2
3. Citric acid x2
4. Potassium hexacyanoferrate(III) x2
5. Film negative
6. LED for blueprint x2
7. Absorbent x6
8. Battery holder
9. Crocodile clip wire x2
10. Double-ended spoon x4
11. Experiment card x2
12. Instructions
13. Paper sheet x7
14. Pin opener
15. Plexiglass
16. Protective gloves
17. Transparent bag with valve x2

Instructions

Painting with light: Learn to draw using a diode

Cyanotype: Create an image using light

Marble Paper

We took paints and milk and created marble milk paper in the classroom this week. It was a lot of fun to see the designs that created with each sheet we ran through the milk/paint mixture. It's a simple process of one cup of milk and water colors, food coloring, or paint applied to the milk surface and a plain sheet of paper laid on top. We think the process would have been more uniform with acrylic paints/oil-based paints, but it was still a fun activity with what we used. We allowed the paper to dry in the sunshine.

Easter Egg Experiment

We used our leftover Easter eggs to create an egg experiment to see if they could survive a drop from the second floor. We were able to wrap them any anything we wanted, or use cushioning of any kind to keep the eggs from breaking. We wrote down our predictions and then after the experiment we got to see if our predictions and conclusions were the same. We numbered the eggs and each person got a certain number of eggs to try and see how well they held up with their chosen materials during the drops. It was a fun experiment and our Easter eggs went to a good cause-Science!

A lot of them were wrapped in duct tape, tissue paper, electrical tape, twine, cardboard, and some newspaper.

And, then some were given parachutes, or even dropped inside a milk gallon filled with water. It was all about keeping the egg from breaking when it hit the ground. Things were getting tricky and competitive. 

A lot of the eggs landed pretty hard on the ground below, but we were surprised at home some of them fell compared to our hypotheses that they would fall in a different way. The parachute egg didn't fall the way we had planned and the parachute never opened, so that egg hit pretty hard on the ground. We just hoped the material it was wrapped in protected it.

The enclosed water egg hit the hardest, but hopes were high that the egg inside was protected by the water that surrounded it.

As we started opening the eggs and seeing which material and egg survived its poor downfall, we were surprised at the ones that hit hard on the ground not bring damaged. 

But, some poor eggs didn't survive their plummet. 

A few of the eggs were wrapped in plastic jello cups and all of those eggs seemed to have survived the drop. We determined that the plastic cup took the main impact with the ground and therefore protecting the eggs inside.

Remember the water enclosed egg, well it survived the drop, as well. The water actually did help keep it safe. Our hypotheses with some matched up, but with others we were surprised and definitely learned that water can be used as an absorbent.