Science is SWEET

I haven't forgotten to upload Hope's birthday picutres or our Halloween fun.  But, 1. We are not quite finished celebrating Hope and 2. I think Halloween should come after Hope's day since that is the way it falls.  Turns out, I am a bit neurotic!  Okay...on to this post.  More school fun.  Do you have as much Halloween candy as we do?  We trick or treated on 3 different weekends and I overestimated the amount of candy we would need for our trick or treaters so our candy cup runneth over...way over.  Luckily I found on the internet this cool candy experiment lesson.  It is a start to finding somewhere to put this candy other than on my rear!

Which candy bars will float and which will not.  I did not go into density with my barely 4 year old.  I mentioned it but it did not stick.  The real lesson for Hope is building on our working knowledge of the basic concept of a science experiment: Hypothesis, Test the Hypothesis, and Observation/Analysis.  She guessed which would float and which would sink.  Then we tested it. And obviously, we observed it.

Here we are learning about how things disolve in water.  Some things don't, however... like the M's on M&M and the S on Skittles.  If you do not shake the water (hard for a 4 year old) they will float to the top in tact.

Look to the top rightish of this glass.  See the M?

Now for acid/base.  We have done the baking soda/vinegar volcano.  This is the same idea but with sour candy.  We tested Nerds candy and Pixi Stix.  I thought for sure the Pixi Stix would be more acidic.  We tested the red flavor and pink Nerds.   You add a spoonful of baking soda to the candy that has been disolved in 1/4c of water.  My camera was not fast enough on the draw but the one that Hope is stiring was the Nerds which fizzed really good.  The Pixi Stix did not do as well.  My hypothesis was incorrect as I had thought the Pixi Stix would be far more acidic.

Okay, differet day, different medium.  Same basic lesson.  Test a Hypothesis.  This is with a "Liquid Race." (again, I have no original ideas of my own.  These are all found in various internet places.)  We used tempra paint, Elmers glue and watercolor paint and had a race to see which would move the fastest.  Plenty of lessons to be learned in viscosity, etc but we will save those for elementary school.  In preschool it is just making a guess, testing it, and seeing if we were correct.  Wouldn't you think that water color would be the fastest?  I'm glad this was not a lesson on viscosity because it was the slowest!  Good ol' Elmers won that race!

I have fun with our letter book.  We do a different project for every letter.  Here K is for Kiss.

Lipstick and chewing gum.  What a big girl.

Now, on to leaf graphing.  We have had a beautiful fall!  I have found many excuses to be outside and enjoying the color.  We had a picnic lunch (actually there turned out to be no picnic area where we went to get leaves so it was in the van, but on the floor!) and then went on a walk to collect leaves of any shape but only the colors green, yellow, and red. 

Then we arranged them in a row and by color.  Next, I (actually made this sheet myself) had hope put one sticker of corresponding color in the appropriate row.  We made our first bar graph.  She really did well at it for her first try.  The idea of things representing something else is not an easy concept to grasp (or to explain!).