CSH Week 1 Science / Botany

This is a little botany project I found on Pinterest that we finally got around to doing! 

 We pushed trains up it while we sang the song from Week 1

"Plants pick up nutrients and water from the earth, 

                                                  they move up the stem through the Xylem and Phloem, 

                                            Then respiration releases water, through the leaves Stomata."

Despite having a tub full of train tracks,
we didn't have enough "Y" pieces to make a big tree.
I still this it's recognizable as one though!!

CSH Week 4 - Science / Botany

4 Types of Seed Dispersal!

The small selection of seeds we were able to find...

We talked about inventions, like Velcro, that were inspired by plants

Departed from the lesson plans a bit here... I didn't have CD cases, or a place to put them while they sprouted. I remembered seeing a plastic baggy experiment on Pinterest, so we did that instead. It was super easy! I mostly followed directions from here: planting-and-growing-beans-in-our-preschool-window  I will update later with a photo of our results. 

Baggies, Cotton balls, Water & Beans

N4 LOVED doing the experiment!

Actually they all loved it!

Update!! Here are our bean sprouts on the 5th day!!

CSH Week 2 - Science / Botany

Time for our 2nd week's Botany experiment!

Since we visited King Tut on Tues, We did science on Thurs (I had already bought the spinach and needed to use it up quickly!)

The experiment was to see PHOTOSYNTHESIS in ACTION!
First the prep work: punching holes out of organic spinach (note: see my pretty school wall? I will do a post all about it soon!!)

E2 Punching Leaves, L1 waiting for his turn

N4 Punching Leaves

N3 Tapping the bubbles out of the vacuum on our second try.

It was tricky to get them out of the syringe into the water....

2nd time was a success! We got all of the circles to sink when
they were deprived of oxygen, then about half of the circles to 
rise to the top after they made oxygen under the lamp 
through Photosynthesis.

The lab sheets included in the CSH book didn't work out for us,
because I had to do all the writing x 4... So we are going to draw
pictures in our Nature journals instead.
L-R:  L1, (10 yrs) E2 (8 yrs) N3 (6 yrs) N4 (4 yrs) I sketched and he colored

Thing I learned:

I assembled everything while they were playing, and did the experiment while the twins were napping, which made the whole thing smoother than the last science project!

You really need to pay attention to detail with this one. We had to do the whole project twice, because I missed the part about holding your finger over the tip of the syringe, while pulling it down to create a vacuum. The neat part about it was seeing the wonder in their eyes when it DID work the second time!

Day 1 of CSH (sort of)

We have kind of trickled into our first year of Catholic Schoolhouse (We are doing the current cycle, Year 2, which is Ancient History)

We tore into the CDs as soon as they arrived, and have been enjoying the music memory work CDs for the first quarter. Last week, Daddy started reading Adam and His Kin at bedtime. (Early history, written by a Protestant, but an interesting perspective) And this week I started The Golden Goblet, an Egyptian historical fiction.

Because we had a class at the museum to attend on Mon, our official first day for the 15-16 school year was Tues. Aug 11th. I wish I could say it was all roses and sunshine.... but that wouldn't be accurate. I am pretty sure they forgot every thing they learned in Math last year during our 4 week break; and tears were shed over the shortened time to play with Legos and outside....

Getting started; memory work at breakfast is a GREAT idea! I pop on the CD while we eat. We pause to talk about things at will, and when we finish the current week, we skip around to favorite songs on the disc. The Timeline cards are hanging on the Dining room wall, so they are easy to refer too. (N4, the 4 year old was already pointing out the "Creation" card to Grandma VO.)

After breakfast, they had a little break, then on to Math and Science. I decided to combine the Science from Week 1 and Week 3, so that I would only have to stop at the florist for flowers once.

Week 1 Science Project:

I had such high hopes for Science, but was disappointed that our first experiment was less than stellar... Splitting the stems of the carnations didn't work at all :-( so I just put 3 in each color, and they didn't suck up the dye very well that way either.

The celery was much better! It sucked up a LOT of dye, and we were able to easily identify the Xylem. (Turns out those stringy bits of celery are there for a reason!)

L1 was excited to extract an Xylem!

I copied the lab sheets, but I ended up having to do all the writing for them, and a certain 8 yo preferred to profusely decorate his with a garden instead of the experiment. They all wanted their own, but I am considering either pre-writing info on, or just doing one sheet to share.

Experiment 2: (Week 3 in the book)

Because I didn't have a mother's helper this Tuesday (I plan to mostly do Science on the days she is here to distract the twins) I had to stop and take care of them and N4 a few times, and without direct supervision of the Botanists, it turned into a free for all, with flower parts EVERY WHERE! They were happy to examine and dissect, but didn't seem too interested in instruction.... When they were finished, they decided they needed to save their parts, so I gave a quick lesson on how to press flowers between paper, I think they intend to glue into their nature journals and cover with tape to preserve, after they dry a bit.

Just as I was cleaning up, N4 decided he really wanted to do it after all :-) He was actually the most interested in the individual parts, and enjoyed taping them down to the diagram (I printed from the Botany Lapbook) He was so proud of it, that we had to hang it on the wall in his room.

What I learned:

The more I prepare ahead of time, the better!!!

Less is better, next time no doubling experiments.....

The twins are NOT interested in science ;-)