First, we plan to learn about the wonderful Greek myths.  For this, we will use the classic D’Aulatires’ Book of Greek Myths as well as Usborne Greek Myths for Young Children.  We will accompany that with  the Dover coloring book on Greek Gods and Goddesses.

As we delve deeper into what life was like in ancient Greece, we will use two books that I really like a lot.  A Visitor’s Guide to the Ancient World by Lesley Sims reads like a Fodors-type tour guide, detailing via text and illustrations, what exactly one could expect to experience if they were traveling in the ancient world:  what to wear, what to eat, where to stay, what the local customs are, etc.

I Wonder Why…Greeks Built Temples and other Questions About Ancient Greece is another great resource, full of picture and descriptions about the whys of ancient Greece:  What did Greeks have for breakfast?  What did girls do all day?  Who discovered that the Earth was round? Why were the Olympics held? and so on.

And we have been loving History Pockets:  Ancient Civilizations for all of the wonderful hands-on projects in provides, so I am excited to get to the ancient Greek projects in this book.

And we will continue to use our main texts, Story of the World and it’s accompanying Activity Book, as well as the Usborne Internet-Linked Encyclopedia of World History.  We’ve also been getting a lot out of DK’s Atlas of World History.  This large book is full of historical maps, which we’ve been tracing with tracing paper, giving us a good understanding of the lay of the land back in ancient times.  There is also a lot of very interesting accompanying information about cultures, wars, and historical facts.

So look for my posts with lots of hands-on activities coming soon on Ancient Greece.  I’ll also be pinning along with my fellow bloggers on the new Collaborative Pinterest pin board, Hands-On History.  If your kiddos like to learn via projects, activities, field trips and more, this pin board is a great way to get ideas for keeping historical learning fun and exciting for your early elementary students.

If you are a blogger who blogs about fun hands-on history projects and you’d like to join our collaborative pin board, let me know. The more the merrier!

Lava!

We made the easiest, fastest, most fun volcano experiment in our kitchen today. It was so easy, we made many volcanoes, again and again.

Now by easy and fast, I am not referring to the volcano experiment we did earlier this week that resulted in broken glass, a brief roaring of flames on the stove burner, and melted wax as well as sand all over my stove. No, no, I am not referring to the experiment that my kids keep relaying to every non-homeschooling stranger we run into.  About how Mommy almost caught the kitchen on fire with the volcano experiment, thus reinforcing any thoughts they may be having about those darn homeschoolers not being qualified to teach.  More on that later.

Anyway, here is all you need:

• Vinegar, 5 tablespoons
• Water, 1/3 cup
• Baking soda, 4 teaspoons
• Dishwashing liquid, 2 teaspoons (more if you want extra foam)
• Red food coloring (optional, if you want to make the lava look more authentic), 3 drops

1. Add the baking soda and dishwashing liquid to the water. Don’t even need to stir.
2.  In a separate container, add the vinegar and red food coloring.
3. Pour the vinegar mixture into the baking soda mixture.  Instant lava.

  Cool, right?  Now here’s the one that wasn’t cool.  I kept seeing this “volcano in a teacup thing” made from a layer of wax, a layer of sand and then water, on Pinterest. Darn it, Pinterest.

Well, it started out all right.

Anyway, supposedly, you heat the glass tea cup or container and it melts the wax, builds pressure, then sends little surges of melted wax through the sand and up to the surface of the water, looking like lava erupting from a volcano.  I searched for more specific instructions on line, such as how much wax?  How much sand and water? I found a single YouTube video with some instructions typed in the comments. That was it.  It should have been my first clue.

Well, despite my efforts to not let the jar get to hot and break—it broke. Melted wax, sand and water gushed everywhere. I think I felt the way villagers must’ve felt when a volcano suddenly erupted without warning. The gas stove burner made a big flame for an instant.

And then things went horribly awry.

The kids saw fire and panicked, even though the fire went away as soon as I turned the burner off. Too late. One kid was already running upstairs to get his most prized posessions, ready to evacuate. Another kid was running around screaming, “Call 911!”  The little one started inquiring about, “When da firemans gonna get here?”

Followed by two days of, “We didn’t like that experiment, Momma!”  And describing it in detail to strangers, as I mentioned above.

So, um, yeah, do the first experiment, ok?  Not the second one. Definitely not the second one.

Here’s where I link up.

Here’s where I pin.

Here’s where I hang out with my friends.

Candle stuck into a piece of bread. Sorry, we were out of cake.

We’ve been talking about states of matter around here, me and my 5 year old.  To help her begin to understand the difference between a liquid and a solid, we did a few fun experiments.

First we used wax. It was fun to watch Mommy light a birthday candle and watch the wax drip.  Of course, she’s seen this before, but this time we talked about how the wax was changing before our very eyes from a solid to a liquid.

Then we took a piece of crayon and Mommy held it near the flame while The Queen Bee observed what was happening:  ”The crayon is melting, too.”

Next we played with ice melting.

 Finally, chocolate candy, held tightly in a little hand.  I asked her what she thought would happen. She knew it would melt. I said, “Do you mean to tell me that you can change the state of matter right here, right now?”  Big smiles. Yes! Unfortunately, I didn’t get a shot of really messy, gooey, melted candy because she was eating it as soon as it softened, but I think she got the idea.

We melted some more candle wax, this time with a big candle, then poured the liquid  wax onto a plate. “What will happen to this liquid wax now?”, I asked her.  She wasn’t sure.  ”Lets check on it in a few minutes.”, I suggested.  When we did, I asked her again what happened.

“It changed into a solid!”,  she exclaimed.

“So, let me get this straight.  We had a solid candle and we changed it into liquid wax, and then we changed it back into a solid again?!”

“Yes!”, she exclaimed.

I also used this as an opportunity to talk about fire safety and to explain that only grown ups use lighters and matches.  Which you should totally do, too, if you attempt this experiment with young children. As opposed to, say,  having your attorney send me a letter because “the crazy lady on a blog told me that letting my kids melt stuff is educational.” Yes, definitely discuss safety with the kiddos. That’s very important.

Tomorrow we have one more thing to add to our wax melting fun, to go along with Valentine’s Day. I’ll post some pictures of that on my facebook page.

Linking up with these awesome blogs.

How do satellites stay in orbit?

How do they communicate information?

Here are some ways we explored satellites recently.

Satellite Experiments

Satellites in Orbit.  To demonstrate how a satellite stays in orbit, rather than zinging off into outer space or dropping to Earth, we used a marble and a round mirror. You could also use a plate or pot lid, anything that’s round and with a lip or edge to it. I explained that the marble represents the satellite and the mirror is Earth. The kids had fun spinning the marble around and keeping it in orbit. It took a few tries not to spin it too fast (causing the marble to fly off the mirror) or too slow (causing it to stop or go off course).
We talked about how moons are satellites, too, and they are held in orbit the same way as artificial satellites, by gravity. We did a similar experiment when we learned about the moon a few weeks ago.
Then we put the marble in a jar, placed the lid on top and tried different ways of spinning the marble around the edges of the jar. We tried different motions: spinning it left to right with the jar upright, spinning it towards our bodies and away from our bodies with jar on its side. This experiment was inspired by Janice VanCleave’s 200 Gooey, Slippery, Slimy, Weird and Fun Experiments.  It demonstrates how the concepts of gravity and centripetal force, or force toward the center, work together to keep the satellite in orbit. I talked about this with my 7 year old but my 5 and 3 year olds simply had fun spinning the marble around and learning the new word, “satellite”.  Both my 5 and 7 year olds were curious to learn that our t.v. programs and our cellular phone calls involved satellites.

Satellites Communicate.  To demonstrate how satellites communicate using their mirrored panels to bounce radio waves, we used used a flashlight and our trusty mirror again.  We put the mirror just outside of one room and bounced the light of the flashlight off of the mirror into the other room.  I had the kids take turns. One used the flashlight, the others went into the other room and sat where they could not see the flashlight holder. They could, however, see the light as it bounced onto the floor, the wall and various objects in the room.  This experiment also came from Janice VanCleave’s book.

Make a Lego Satellite  Next I tasked Firefly, my 7 year old, with building a Satellite out of Legos after we looked at pictures of them in our Usborne Book of Astronomy and Space.  He returned from Lego Building Headquarters (also known as his bedroom) with his creation.

Helpful links:

• A great graphic on how satellite t.v. works.
• Visible Earth, a NASA image gallery of satellite images.
• NASA kids club, Wow! What a View, views of Earth from space. Love this interactive site for younger kids. Lots more great things at this site.

 Here are the sites where I link up my posts. Stop by and visit them for many more learning ideas.

Follow Creekside Learning on Facebook.

My Pinterest Astronomy Board.

Satellite image courtesy of Microsoft clip-art.

So here’s mine…

Which actually happened last summer. Sort of.

Love this photo of Firefly.

Linking up with

First, we printed out  big paper mittens and animals from Jan Brett’s website.  We colored the front and back of the mittens, then hole punched around the edges and sewed them together with yarn. We used blue painters tape to hold things in place while we sewed (the end of the thread to the mitten, the two mittens together). The tape can then be easily removed without harming the paper project.

Then we colored the animals and put them inside the mitten while Mom read the story again.

We had a great time doing a mitten science experiment, from Mrs. Smith at Classroom Magic. Thank you for such a terrific idea, Mrs. Smith!

We measured the temperature of the room. It was 62 degrees F.  We didn’t have a digital thermometer so we used a cooking thermometer.

Next we measured the temperature of a mitten after two minutes. Still 62 degrees F.

Finally, we measured the temperature of a hand inside a mitten after two minutes. That was 70 degrees F. Probably would’ve been higher if we were not using a cooking thermometer or if we waited longer. At any rate, we had the information we needed to figure out what made the temperature go higher only when a hand was in the mitten.

Using the worksheet provided in Mrs. Smith’s link, above, the kids hypothesized that the mitten would make things warmer. They were surprised to find out that it is our body heat that keeps us warm and the cloth of the mitten simply traps the warmth.

Here are some more resources for learning from The Mitten:
The Mitten printables from Homeschool Share
Read an e-book of The Mitten on line
Activities and printables on Jan Brett’s website

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Here’s where I hang out, link up, and get more great ideas.

One method that the ancient Assyrians used in battle during this time period (668-627 BCE), was the Siege Tower.  This large tower on wheels had a battering ram sticking out of the front to knock down walls that surrounded cities and villages.  Then the Assyrians would move earth by the bucketfuls to build a ramp next to the wall and drive the siege tower into the city, shooting arrows and taking over.

Firefly, my 7 year old, was tasked with building a siege tower out of Legos (whenever we can, we build lego creations for history, science, whatever, since he loves doing this but this is actually also in the  The Story of the World Activity Book).

There actually is a no-longer-produced Lego kit of a Siege tower. We used a picture of that as our model.  Firefly decided to modify his to include stairs and soldiers.

Well, once we had that, we just had to take it out for a drive military invasion.  So Firefly used his wooden block set to make a city with a wall.

I brought in some sand from a bag we had in the garage and a cup to scoop it with and Firefly made a ramp, just as the Assyrians did, to drive the siege tower into the city.

He added a lion, as Ashurbanipal was known for hunting lions as well as for having a personality like one.

He acted out the battle and played with this for quite some time.

Next, we  learned a bit more about Ashurbanipal, like how he made the first library. He ordered his scribes to write down all of the important things that happened during his reign.  He also sent people out into his empire to collect clay tablets from the countries and empires he had taken over.  He added these to a collection of clay tablets, inscribed with stories that had been told for generations.  Many rooms in his castle were dedicated to this, the first library.  It is the reason we now know many important things about that period of time.

Cutting clay to make a tablet to inscribe. We've found many uses for this big, inexpensive block of clay from the craft store.

Firefly sculpted this tablet out of clay, using water to smooth the surface. Mom acted as his scribe and he dictated something important that had happened in the history of his life that week: He found a new hideout in the woods.

So King Ashurbanipal was the first librarian.  Would you want to incur overdue fines with this guy?  Yeah, me neither.

We made another version of a “clay tablet” (really a giant piece of butcher paper) of what Firefly would want the world to know about his greatness one hundred years after he dies.  Again, I acted as his scribe and jotted down what he said. We used several prompts (in italics). This is an activity from The Story of the World Activity Book.

The Great Inventor-Emperor Firefly

My favorite thing is playing with animals.  I like to play with my dog.

The best thing I ever did was invent the Stay Alive Forever Machine, the Money Making Machine and the Wish Machine.  I also made my own planets.

My family was great because they gave me my own Jeep to drive. I gave my siblings each their own planet.

The best thing about me was I made a lot of things for the world.

I just love the inventions, don’t you? Couldn’t we all use a Stay Alive Forever/Money Making/Wish machine?  And giving each of his siblings their own planet? Sounds generous but I assure you this is really designed to move them far, far away so he can take over total control of the t.v. as well as be assured that they could never ever mess up his lego creations ever again.

Anyway, we had fun with our travels to ancient Assyria.  After a brief stop in Babylon (Chapter 17), we are moving on to ancient Crete next week.

Fabulous sites that I link up with.

Pin It]]> http://creeksidelearning.com/2012/01/28/ancient-assyrian-activities/feed/ 7 http://creeksidelearning.com/2012/01/26/creekside-astronomy-the-spiral-galaxy-experiment/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=creekside-astronomy-the-spiral-galaxy-experiment http://creeksidelearning.com/2012/01/26/creekside-astronomy-the-spiral-galaxy-experiment/#comments Thu, 26 Jan 2012 19:36:24 +0000 Julie @ Creekside Learning http://creeksidelearning.com/?p=3149 Continue reading →]]>

Our Spiral Galaxy Experiment: Stirring hole-punched paper, in a jar of water makes the paper move in a spiral, just like all of the planets and stars in a spiral galaxy, such as The Milky Way or Andromeda.

This experiment is from Janice VanCleave’s 200 Gooey, Slippery, Slimy, Weird and Fun Experiments. We used this in conjunction with The Usborne Book of Astronomy and Space, With Internet Links.

And learning to use the hole puncher and picking up tiny pieces of paper makes great fine motor practice for little ones.

Where da party at?  Click here for fabulous linky parties where I hang out and get some more great ideas for learning with your kiddos.

I have a very clear memory of having it read to me as a child.  I remember how magical the book seemed.  The giant mountains of snow and Peter, so small in comparison, discovering the wonderfulness of playing in new snow.  And now I wonder what books will stand out for my kids when they are older.

My 5 year old, The Queen Bee, and I  spent a few days learning with this book to prepare for our trip to see the play at a wonderful local theatre, Adventure Theatre, at historic Glen Echo Park in Glen Echo, Maryland.  And what a production it was.  If you are anywhere near the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area, I highly recommend this production.  I have never seen anything at Adventure Theatre that wasn’t terrific, but this was exceptional.

After the show: Alan Wiggins, who played Peter, and Calvin McCullough, who played the roles of Harold and Arnold in Adventure Theatre's production of The Snowy Day.

Click here for a great video of a reading of The Snowy Day.  This can also be found on Adventure Theatre’s website.

In the days before the play, we did a snowman math activity with dot-a-dot markers, inspired by Rachel at I Heart Crafty Things.

The learning task for my daughter was to sound out the number words on the pink cards that she did not know.  She then made a fun snowman for each number and decorated it. Then she tried to teach her 3 year old brother number recognition but he was more interested in doing this with the dot-a-dot markers:

“Well, good for him!”, I thought, pleased beyond measure that he is not eating them, drawing all over his body with them or using them to color one of his siblings or our pets. Moving on…

One of our favorite activities was finding this great to-along book:  Thomas’ Snowsuit by Robert Munsch. Thomas refused to put on his snowsuit and struggles ensue. His teacher winds up wearing the snowsuit.  You really must go and listen to the author read this and many more of his other books on his website. He is hilarious. My 7 year old has stayed up late into the night listening to these on the lap top in his bed. He can now recite many of the stories from memory. They are all truly silly and fun and Munsch is a wonderfully animated storyteller, which comes through, even in these audio recordings.

More Snowy Day Activities

Sparkly snow play dough, inspired by Ten Kids and a Dog.  This was very easy to make.  You add glitter to the basic dough recipe. I made the kids’ each a little jar for their Christmas stockings and they’ve played with it many times since.

Shaving cream snow and dollhouse figures to act out the story. We manipulated the dolls feet in the shaving cream to make tracks like Peter did in the book. I also gave each child a popsicle stick to make a track in the snow, like Peter.  Can’t you see Peter underneath all of this shaving cream snow?  No. Well, he’s in there. Shaving cream is messy and fun and both my 5 and 3 year olds and a visiting friend had a great time with this.

Melting Ice and Freezing Letters and Numbers Activity  We had a great time learning about how ice melts, as well as playing with plastic letters and numbers frozen in a block of ice to make words and math equations.  You can read more about those activities here or click on one of the photos below.

You can find more Snowy Day activities, including printables and crafts, on my Pinterest board, More Literature Learning.

Next up in our Learning with Literature series, The Mitten, by Jan Brett.

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