Puppet Science!

After several months of grumpiness and confusion in the science department we finally came to the realization at some point in December that there is still plenty of time ahead to a) end up with a teacher who makes physics fun, exciting and understandable or b) hate physics.  But that there was no reason for us continue on miserably just because some book suggested physics as their eighth grade science step :) We could choose to switch over to the science that Kayla is actually excited about!  Which would be pretty much anything related to animals...so we ordered a book about Mammals and continued watching backyard birds and reading National Geographic articles and watching Nature and Wild! and Oregon Field Guide and even pulled out my old Biology 101 textbook and I now have a much happier scientist on my hands!  (I expected the Biology textbook to go by the wayside quickly, but she is still enthusiastically outlining~full blown Roman Numeral style which she absolutely resisted doing with the history I thought she should try it with earlier in the year~and writing down new vocabulary and reading it. Although she just shakes her head and sighs when I tell her how much she would probably be reading in a night in a college class.)



Sirenians



Cetaceans

Rodentia



Lagomorpha



Insectivora

Last weekend she volunteered to help me man my paper bag puppet table at the community college family fun day and decided to turn it into a science project. So we had a sample puppet to represent every order of mammals: 



Artiodactyla



 



Monotremata









Perissodactyla







Pinnipedia





Chiroptera





Carnivore





Marsupial





Primate



Proboscidea

The Amazing Floating Carrot!!!

This carrot not only sinks, but with the help of ocean science (and a LOT of salt) I can make this ordinary carrot float! How cool is that! We are studying the ocean in order to justify our "field trip" to Hawaii. I got to see exactly how much denser salt water is.  Obviously dense enough to make a carrot float.

 

Rain!!!

We got to make our own water cycle by filling a jar with warm water then putting a bag full of ice above, which made the water evaporate (sorry about the photo) and then rain back down, just like the real water cycle!

Love, Kayla

Gumdrop Science

Thanks to Auntie, we know that the usual model of atoms with electrons spinning around nucleus like the solar system isn't really accurate, so I didn't feel like we had to do that! But I'm pretty sure that it is an educational requirement that any time you study atoms and molecules you are required to make some kind of model using common household items~preferably edible, so we went ahead (without even consulting our science advisor)  and made gum drop models of compounds: 

and salt....