The Twister Experiment

I am currently on vacation mode, so I am not keeping up with my planned schedule.  It’s the midterm break for Mavi and I don’t want to put too much “home” school activities for him as well. So we’re taking each day slowly, whip any activity I can think of if I feel it or if Mavi asks for it.  But other than that, we spend our time outdoors, doing a Harry Potter marathon and catch up on my workout as well.

As I mentioned, we’re doing random activities as of the moment.  And that’s what we did last week.  We have a few empty water bottles and we made use of it by making a shape of a tornado!

 

Objective:  This is to demonstrate the shape of a tornado.

Materials: 

• 2 two-litres of water bottle empty
• water
• duct tape

Procedure:

Fill one bottle with half full water.  Place the second bottle upside down on top of the half filled bottled water.  Secure them with a duct tape.  Turn the bottle upside down so that the bottle with water is on top (make sure to  stand the bottle on the table.  Hold the lower bottle with one hand and using the other hand, quickly move the upper  bottle in a circular motion counter-clockwise.  Stand the bottles upright with the empty bottle remaining on top.

The picture below is quite blurry, but I just want to you see the wonder on my son’s face. Precious!

Results:  The water in the upper bottle swirls in the counterclockwise direction and this forms a shape that looks like a funnel as the water pours into the other bottle.  This funnel shaped formation is the same shape as the vortex formed by a tornado.

Vocabulary:

• A vortex a spinning flow of fluid.
• A tornado is a violently rotating funnel of air that touches the ground.

Mavi enjoyed this activity!  We kept the water bottles for days and he keeps on doing those “shaky” things to make the tornado. 

For best result, it is recommended to use a washer in between the bottle’s mouth piece.

Linking to:

Montessori Monday
TGIF Linky Party
Teach Beside Me
Preschool Corner
Teaching Mama
I Can Teach My Child
Home + School = Afterschool!
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The Natural Homeschool

Pumpkins!

No, we’re not carving pumpkins this Halloween. First, I don’t have the tools and second, we have no space for them.  So instead we painted pumpkins and stick them on the crystal window of my son as decors!

Teeny Weeny Tot School

 

We’re celebrating a few milestones! 

First Vito can now sit upright in his chair. I used this opportunity to make him look at books and practice turning pages to master pincer grasp :) 

And we started to wean on his own! He insisted actually. I was feeding him and wanted to take spoon from me which I did. I gave him the opportunity to feed himself and he actually did! Well he didn’t get to finish his lunch but it’s so AMAZING to see him trying to scoop the food from the his bow and put it in his mouth! He was doing it OVER and OVER until he got tired until Mommy has to do it for him :)

Sensory and weaning at the same time using a jelly!

This soft sensory blocks is not a favourite at the moment. But I do love their colours and their different textures.  For now he just keeps on mouthing them and using them as teethers  (yes these are teethers as well). 

He loves to touch it using his pointer fingers though.

More pincer grasp practice using the chunky puzzles.

 

Oh and definitely loves my homemade shakers :)

 

I’m not into sensory bins as I don’t have the space to store them but we do have lots of boxes of animal figures (Mavi’s), and whenever I need him to get busy… I just give him these boxes to explore.  He loves to take the animal figures from the box and put them just on the side.

For language, we did animal farms last week. 

Linking to:

Tot School
Montessori Monday
TGIF Linky Party
Teach Beside Me
Preschool Corner
Teaching Mama
I Can Teach My Child
Share It Saturday
The Natural Homeschool

Human Body Unit: The Skeletal System

The second and last part of our Human Body Study includes the Skeletal System and a brief introduction to the Permanent Teeth Development.

The Human Bones (Skeletal System)

Previous works on Skeletal System can be found here and here.

This year, I added some depth into our study.  We started our work using our Skeletal System Nomenclature and Definition Cards.  This is an independent work for him.

Next, I have this small miniature of the human skeleton which I bought from a Euro Store and I started cutting it into pieces.  Here I showed Mavi the bone model and compared it to our image.  We talked about the functions of each bone in the human skeleton and we also tried to compare the arm and the leg bones.  I pointed out to Mavi that the bones in the legs are longer than the arms.

We played around with the bones.  Making different formations.  Mavi thought that this was funny LOL.

Forensic Anthropologist (A Play Pretend)

I buried the bits and pieces of the skeleton I previously dismantled in a bowl of oatmeal.  Here I asked Mavi to dig, brush and put the pieces of bones back together. “Oh, just like the dinosaurs Mommy!” he exclaimed.

 

And much to my surprise, this was an easy task for him.  He was able to complete the work in no time. Though he wasn’t challenged, he really liked digging the bones and scrubbing the oatmeal off.

The Bone Experiment

We conducted an experiment on a chicken bone. This is to demonstrate the effect of acids on bones.

What you need:  Vinegar, chicken bone and a jar

After cleaning the cooked chicken bone, we placed it in a jar filled with vinegar.  After 24hrs, we remove the bone from the jar and examined its texture and flexibility.  Mavi observed that, the bone’s flexibility increased daily (for 5 days) until it felt like a rubber.

This is because of the loss of calcium in the bones after exposing it to vinegar which is an acid and reacts chemically with the bone.  As a result, Mavi and I discussed the importance of calcium in our body specifically in our bones.  How it gives the bones strength and firmness.  We also talked about the foods that are rich in calcium, which we need to eat in a daily basis for maintaining healthy bones.

Books

Our book from the library the Eyewitness Skeleton (Bookdepository) was also a great help.  It shows the contrast of human bones and animals bones, the structure and formation.

And that concludes our Human Body study for this year.  Hope that this post will help you with your own skeleton and human body unit activities.

Get the Skeleton Montessori Cards here: