Two Busies and Two Funnies

Before

Well, we've had a crazy few days.  Last weekend we got hit with the edge of that giant storm.  We didn't get snow, but we got an alarming amount of wind- about 24 hours of howling 50 mph, with gusts up to 80 mph!

Leena and Oob were watching out our window when they saw our dear neighbor's tree come down!

After

On the plus side, it fell where it probably did the least damage (not on any houses, and missing her main car), on the down side, it took power lines down across the road, and it did hit her convertible.

After the winds had died down, we went over to help clean up.
Many hands, as my neighbor observed, make light work, and many hands are our specialty!

They came to fix the power lines the same day, but many others, including my parents, were not so lucky.  They live 200 miles north and were out of power for 5 days!  It's a bigger problem when no power means no water in the tap (well with an electric pump) and lots of water in the basement (no sump pump), and when you are also getting snow.  Fortunately they have coal, so they didn't freeze.

They are getting over a foot of fresh snow today...  Prayers are appreciated!


On another note, Leena and I have finalized our plans for the Easter flowers and decorations!

I thought we were really early this year, but then I realized that tomorrow is day 20, so we're already half way through Lent!

So, not early, but at least not late!

We found these great crosses at Hobby Lobby, but you'll have to wait for Easter to see what we are doing with them.

We also found this sign!

Also this week, I was waking up the Zoomlians when I stepped on saw this cute little duck puppet which I had completely forgotten about.

How sweet!  I decided I'd wake them up with it.

Who are you calling cute!

I hadn't realize it wasn't a cute cuddly duck puppet.

It was an angry bad tempered duck puppet.

The kids will probably recover.

Eventually.

Maybe I should have them set their own alarms.

Weather Science Round 3

Our last class on weather was about wild weather: hurricanes and tornadoes. So fun to study - especially since Maryland rarely sees either!

I started with 3 containers. One was completely filled with rice, representing the molecules in a solid - when you shook it, not much happened. One was half full of coarse sugar - when you shook it, it flowed around the container like a liquid. The last was empty except for a few metal marbles. When you shook that (plastic) container, the marbles went all over and crashed into each other.

The idea was that heat adds energy and makes the molecules move faster, causing them to bounce off each other and expand.

We went on to fill a plastic water bottle with steam from the kettle. The bottle expanded and then we capped it and put it in the freezer. The bottle shriveled up as the gasses cooled and shrank - very satisfying for the kids to watch, especially when we opened it up and heard the "hiss" of more air entering the bottle.

While I was at it, I mentioned the thing that expands when you cool it far enough: water! We filled a glass jar, capped it tightly and put it (in a ziplock bag) in the freezer. We will see what happened on Friday!

The idea that ice floats is so fascinating to me. I really see it as evidence of God's care for the world. If you think about it, life on Earth could not exist if water didn't expand when it froze. If ice sank, you could not have life in the oceans and all the deep currents that keep our weather going would stop. If the ice was at the bottom, since cold tends to fall, it could never melt, the seas would just fill up with ice.

Anyway, we talked about the difference between tornadoes (small but the most intense storm on Earth) and hurricanes (vast, fueled by energy in the water).

We talked about the hot air rising and cold air falling at the same time. What happens when a bunch of people want to go up the stairs at the same time a bunch of people want to go down the stairs? (chaos, mostly, in my experience!) What happens when you let water go down the drain in the bathtub? God has a better answer! The water spins going down and that opens a tunnel in the center for the air to come up. That's what happens in tornadoes and hurricanes as well, although I'm not sure it would work for people and stairs.

So, of course, we had to make the tornado in a bottle! We actually have a connector for this experiment, but I couldn't find it, so we used duct tape (and a mop for the spills..). You fill a soda bottle half full of water (we added color and glitter for fun), stick another bottle on top and tape them together with duct tape.

I have to admit, having four Zoomlian lab assistants is great! There are only six or so kids (Oob comes and goes) in the class, as well as a mom or two hanging out, and with that much help you can do just about anything, even with kids as young as Oob. Thank you, Zoomlians!!

Next week we are skipping, but we will pick up again the following week with volcanoes and plate tectonics!

Weather Science Round 2

This was fun! After a quick review, we started talking about the water cycle.

I like to start with a globe and the question: Where does all that water come from?
Rain? Streams and rivers? Yes, but where does that water come from? The water cycle!

We experienced evaporation and evaporative cooling. This was interesting. As you may know, phase changes require energy. A super easy way to see this is to moisten one forearm with a damp paper towel and then blow on both arms. As the water evaporates from the wet arm, it uses the heat from your body to make the conversion from a liquid to a gas: presto! Evaporative cooling! This is why sweating cools you off (unless it's summer near Washington DC with 97% humidity).

We went on to look at the different kinds of clouds. Then we went into the kitchen to make our own. I used a quart mason jar for this and a saucer that I had put into the freezer. Here is what we did:

1. I filled the jar 1/3 full with very hot water (just off the boil).

2. I added a few drops of rubbing alcohol and a drop of blue food coloring.

3. I put the frozen saucer over the mouth of the jar and added some ice to the top to keep the saucer cool.

A cloud (fog) quickly formed inside the jar. One of the interesting things you can point out is that the water is blue and the cloud is not. This shows that it's just the water evaporating - the main reason the sea is salt!

Next we made some rain. I used two large pots for this. The lower pot was boiling on the stove and the upper pot contained ice water. I just held the cold pot over the warm pot and got an unexpectedly large cloud (!) but also quite a bit of water condensing off the cold pot and raining back into the lower pot. Look! It's our own water cycle! Our energy is being produced by the stove instead of the sun.

This class is giving me food for thought about teaching. One thing I find is: I really like to teach. Another: I like to teach small, short, hands on classes where I can get total engagement from the kids. Still more: I end up teaching on two levels during these classes. The younger kids are absorbing the basics, but we have a steady stream of questions and commentary from the older Zoomlians. And then: I like to have a basic plan for the class, but be ready to go in other directions as questions come up. Lastly: I owe a lot to the Emperor for teaching me so much about teaching!

Weather Science Round 1

I have a dear friend who teaches my kids Spanish. We were talking portfolio review stuff and she happened to mention that she finds it tough to make time for messy science experiments.

We are all about messy science experiments!

I also realized that a lot of the fun messy science stuff for younger kids had fallen by the wayside as my older kids did fun messy (dangerous) science experiments while the little ones were otherwise occupied (you know, watching Bob the Builder).

The obvious solution was to do a little science class for her kids and my younger kids with the older ones working as lab assistants. We had the first class on Tuesday.

I decided to start with weather since we are having a lot of weather. Nothing like teaching current science events: Hey! It's cold out! Why is that?

We started with an explanation of the seasons (this requires a dark room): Klenda held the Sun (a lamp with a bare incandescent bulb (don't use a florescent bulb for this). Zorg held the Earth (globe) at the appropriate tilt and orbited (walked around) the Sun while all the Zoomlians sang, "The sun is a mass of incandescent gas..."
Intermission:


Now that it's stuck in your head too, back to class: I had put a dot of clay to show our location, so it was easy to see - Hey! We aren't getting much sun! Look! Australia has all our sun! The North Pole was completely dark and the South Pole was completely bright.

We went on to show that "not much sun" was only part of the reason we are so cold right now. I had the kids hold their hand flat (palm facing the "sun") about 6" away from the bulb. That felt pretty warm right away. Then I had them hold their hands at the same distance, but at an angle. The near part felt warm, the part angled away felt almost no heat at all. With our part of the Earth angled away, the little sun we are getting is much weaker than our summer sun.

What else makes us cold in the winter? Wind! And what makes wind? A very clever guess was "The rotation of the Earth." That's partly true, but not the main reason. The big answer is: the sun! Yes, we're all about that "gigantic nuclear furnace" here!

It's true: most wind is caused by the sun heating the atmosphere. Warm air rises and expands, cooler air sinks and shrinks. To show warm air rising, we took some warm bubble juice outside (I had gotten a party pack of little bubble bottles and set them over the oven to warm). We used our warm air to blow bubbles and... voila! They rose. A bit, anyway.

It was nice to have it 43 degrees, after so many frigid days, but it made this experiment less dramatic. Leena came up with a good twist that saved the day. She made some bubbles by blowing (mild upward flotation) and then some by swinging her arm. The bubbles made with ambient air dropped like rocks! See! Warm air rises!

And that was the end: 30 minutes that Klenda complained felt like 15, never a bad way to end a class. Tune in next week when we will make clouds and rain...indoors!

Next Subject to Teach

Ark building.

Fortunately, we've already gathered a lot of animals.

Unfortunately, half of them are fish.








Either way, I'm glad (sort of) that the Zoomlians never seem to get tired of getting wet and muddy!