Water Work and Wonderful Library Fun!
Well the last few days I have been working with the girls on a few of the water experiments in the waseca biome study! Yesterday we talked about how water always flows down hill, and today we reviewed the water cycle! Since we did a lot of water cycle work this year, I sort of just did a review. Bunny really understands this, so I didn’t get into it too much more. Both girls enjoyed this work, and I think that the water flowing downhill will really be a great work to leave out! Pup really loves it, I just needed to wait for it to dry before I could let them work with it!
This tray has Model Magic clay in it that I made into a steep hill. I let it dry (mostly) and used it to demonstrate how water flows!
The water cycle was easily done with some ice in the pan that we melted and when it started to boil, we noticed how the water vapor was like the water that evaporated to form clouds. Then we put the bowl over the top. The vapor collected and made “rain”!
Here are some pictures that Bunny drew to show how the water cycle worked!
Another thing that we did today was that we finally made it to the large library! Let me tell you what, the children’s library there is almost like an amazing museum filled with books! Bunny and Pup loved it! I think we may have to stop by there more often!
We ended up with alot of fun and a we ended up with a lot of books! I love that in the children’s library there is not only a fictions sections full of picture books, but also a whole section of non fiction picture books as well! It is just perfect for finding great books to read for school work! I think I need to go with a list of my near future studies! 🙂 It was just a great place! Happy Schooling!
April 20, 2012 @ 2:26 am
LOVE the Waseca work!
So help me out here…does the Waseca work replace elementary culture albums completely, replace certain elementary culture albums completely, replace a portion of certain albums, or supplement traditional albums? I’m trying to figure out its place in the scheme of things and don’t know much about it. It really seems like all kinds of work just spins off of it into almost all subjects.
April 20, 2012 @ 3:09 am
Thanks MBT! We are really enjoying this work. From what I understand about the program, it is a different approach to alot of the elementary cultural albums. There are some math and language things here, but I really dont think that you could replace all of the albums. What I like is that they have ages on each presentation, and many of them are really good for both 3-6 and 6-9. This makes it really great for multi level work! The teacher that created this program found it worked really well to bring the kids into deeper independent study! So far she is right! 🙂 Parrots may not be what they had in mind, but hey….follow the child right? It starts with the elements of a biome, which is what we are doing right now. The elements are sun, air, water, soil, plants, and animals. After going into that, you can start taking off on continent biome studies. There is then a ton of work to start in that direction! I really like that we can do it together! It is my plan into use this for the summer and then jump into the great lessons in the fall. I also hope that all do the work from the waseca study will stay in our classroom and help futher study next year too. That is what I know at the moment! Thanks for popping by!
April 24, 2012 @ 6:37 pm
I love the water flow experiment with the model magic – great idea! I recently did a short lesson on the water cycle during out Spring theme, but forgot to post about it. Since we do not have a stove at my school, I brought in my small crock pot to show how the water cycle works! The crock pot heated the water and a “cloud” formed on the glass lid which began to “rain.” It worked really well!
April 24, 2012 @ 6:55 pm
Wow! Great idea using the crock pot! It seems like that may be the best idea yet. I tried it earlier in the year with water heated in the microwave and then cover it with plastic wrap, but that didnt work super well. This time I did the pot on the stove. It worked well. The crock pot idea would allow you to leave it sit so the kids could come back and look ater if they wanted to. That is a great idea! The water flowing was a fun work, but I need to find a way to seal the clay since it started to get slimey after a few times! Thanks for popping by!
April 25, 2012 @ 2:23 pm
Soooo interesting!! love all those experiments!! I can wait to start with that album!! I LOVE that library!! sooo much fun!!