Adventures in Science

Chers Amis,

Thursday afternoons chez nous are all about science; slimy, sticky, smelly, hands-on science. We have always enjoyed science at our house, from astronomy to botany, nature study to anatomy, but I have often tried to avoid the messy, sloppy science that involves many small parts and materials. OK, the clean up. No more! We have teamed up with a good friend and her daughter for Adventures in Science! a weekly science experiment co-op. If you want to conquer the unknown or intimidating - especially in homeschooling - select a great partner or small group of compatriots and let the fun begin.

We are loosely working through Level 1A Atoms and Molecules and Level 2 science curriculum from Mater Amabilis ,a wonderful on-line Catholic Charlotte Mason curriculum. Our focus for the last 4 weeks has been on atoms and molecules using experiments from Adventures With Atoms and Molecules: Chemistry Experiments for Young People supplemented with some great online visuals. We also wanted to have the girls keep a proper lab report journal and have been very pleased with My Science Journal. It is a pre-printed science notebook that has space to write the date, title, hypothesis, materials, steps, data gathered, conclusion, as well as a page on how the information could be used, what they liked and disliked, who should do it and new vocabulary terms. The girls also have a separate "My Observations" sheet to illustrate what they see.

Today we discussed protons, neutrons, electrons, valance/shell level, atomic number, and atomic mass. Then they all "adopted" an element and arranged gumdrops in the proper shells and then ate them of course! For next week they will fill out a worksheet/make a notebook page on their element and make a physical model of it structure. Then we will do two experiments on how charges affect molecules with balloons, cooking oil, dripping water and all sorts of mess. It should be great science.

-- Marjorie

PS - Here are a just few websites we enjoyed:
http://www.sciencespot.net/Pages/classchem.html
http://www.kapili.com/index.html
http://www.webelements.com/webelements/scholar/