June dates (and topics!)

I have about a dozen too many ideas floating around and choosing just TWO has been hard! Every has offered great suggestions with plants/seeds being the most popular (butterflies and flowers were up there too). While I love seeds and growing things - you should see my garden! - we really can't grown anything in a hour! Nonetheless, I am going to figure out something soon that we can do in an hour on growing.

So without further ado - here are the topics for June....

(drum roll please)

June 1 - Gliders and Kites

June 15 - The Chemistry of Cooking

Sign up at the Millbury Public Library 508 865-1181. And if you sign up - come!

Bubbles!

Bubbles are a really fun way to introduce science to preschoolers. They all have experience with bubbles of some kind - either the kind you blow thru a straw or a bubble blower. So how do we turn something so common into WOW science?

Easy - come on and I'll show you.

Can you capture a bubble? I captured some bubbles with my friends this week. We learned a lot along the way. We captured bubbles with a LITTLE bit of water, paint and a squirt of soap. Mix this up - this is key. Most of my friends had gobs of paint on the bottom of their container that didn't get mix it. Then blow bubbles with a straw. The bubbles will be the color of the paint.Carefully place paper on top of the bubbles and you've captured bubbles!But let's not stop there! Can you make a square bubble? Grab a pipe cleaner and make it into a bubble wand with a square opening. Now try it in your favorite bubble solution. Does the bubble come out square?
** Science Content** Bubbles are only round - it is the least energetic shape and molecules are basically lazy. One of my favorite websites about bubbles is here.

But wait, there's more! One of my favorite ways to play with bubbles is to compare and contrast bubble solutions. Compare homemade bubbles to commercial bubbles (or any other kinds of bubbles you like) - which makes the most bubbles or the longest-lasting bubbles or the best-smelling bubbles?? There are lots of great questions kids can ask.

And just because I like to challenge you: What color do bubbles turn just before they pop?

Tadpole Setup

I scooped up tadpoles and water a few weeks ago and here are some pictures. The tadpole here looks HUGE but it is just the water magnifying it. This is my tank - and my fancy stand! I like it a bit off the ground mostly because it causes the kids to look in it more often. I need to scoop a few more tadpoles into the tank - we can only find three.

I love the screened lid on the tank. That has kept some of the needles and leaves out of the tank but it still lets in plenty of rain and air. We are going to put a rock in the tank soon. My kids area convinced that one year, our tadpoles will turn into frogs unexpectedly and need to hop out. We've always put them back into the pond while they've had tails to give them time to readjust to the pond.

Simple Machines in New Hampshire

My kids and I just went to the SEE Science center in Manchester, NH and they had a really fun exhibit on Simple Machines. The hands-on exhibit was really well thought out and interactive. Here is the lever where you had to move the white lever to balance the heavy object on the right. Not as easy as it sounded - it took us more tries that we expected to balance it properly. Then we played with the pulleys. They had two pulleys that you sit in and pull yourself up. One pulley was a 1/5 ratio and the other a 1/7. This means that they reduced the amount of pull required by different amounts.

I was surprised they didn't use all six simple machines, but they were also tight on space. This museum is in an old mill. The also house the largest permanent LEGO exhibit - a replica of the mills in Manchester during the 1870s with approximately 3 million LEGOs.

April in National Frog Month

April is the perfect time to learn about frogs! Frogs are amphibians and undergo metamorphosis - or change - from egg to frog. Right now the easiest way to find frogs is to catch them as tadpoles.

Keeping tadpoles is pretty easy. I use a clear container so I can see them easily - I am just that kind of girl - I don't want to miss anything! I scoop water from the pond so that it includes some of the mucky stuff at the bottom and a few tadpoles. I put this in my tank - that I got from a generous freecycler (www.freecycle.com) and keep it in the shade. The muck has plenty of algae - the green slime that the tadpoles eat. Yum!

Over the next few months they will turn in to polliwogs - getting front legs followed by back legs and finally absorbing their tail and turning in to real frogs. I always get them back to their home pond before their tail is totally absorbed so they learn the smell of home. This will help them next year when they are frogs ready to lay eggs.

This is a rite of spring in our house. My 6 year old got her first turn to actually walk in to the pond and scoop this year. We call this tiny pond Three Tire Pond - and sadly that should be changed to Five Tire Pond with new trash showing up this year. We will go in this fall and pull them out and send them to the recyclers.

Ribbit!

Marker Fairy

The Marker Fairy left some lovely washable markers for MF at the library!

THANK YOU!!

Now, if there are any other goodie fairies out there, here's a short wish list:

Paper towel tubes
Real Cork
Clear egg cartons


Thank you!!

Simple Machines

There are six classic simple machines:

1. Lever
2. Inclined Plane
3. Screw
4. Pulley
5. Wheel and Axel
6. Wedge

Now when most of us think about machines we think more about a car than a ramp, but at the heart of both machines is laziness! Machines are things that make work easier - it is easier to carry a load up an inclined plane than it is to lift it straight up.

It was with some trepidation that I chose this topic for our most recent workshop at the library. Generally teaching about simple machines involves history, math and moving large loads - none appropriate for preschoolers!

I settled on two simple machines that the kids would be a bit familiar with: inclined plane and wheel/axle. The inclined planes we used were fabric bolts (thanks to Denise who owns Close to Home Sewing Store in Worcester!) and we used them to roll balls down to play with some ideas. We found many ways to help the balls roll farther. While this is not the actual way that an inclined plane helps make work easier, it was a great way to compare and contrast different inclines.

We used non-standard measures to figure out how far the ball rolled. Below one of my participants is using her shoe to measure distance. This was a lot of fun! One kid used herself as her measure!

Wheels and axles were fun to play with. We first tried rolling plastic eggs and found them wiggly. Then we tried toy cars and that worked really well - they rolled straight down and went really far.

If you liked these ideas, here are some ways to jump in and try some physics with your preschoolers.

Playgrounds are a great place to explore physics. A seesaw is an example of a classic lever. If you can find one that moves freely, can you balance a parent on one side and kids on the other? What happens if you move closer to the center?

Slides offer a great opportunity to play with inclined planes. You can move things up the slide with a jump rope. You can also measure the slides' height and length to compare slides. Can you determine what height and length are the most fun?

Books
Michael Dahl has written a number of books on each one of the simple machines. Check them out!

The pictures today are courtesy of Kristen Graffeo. Check out her blog!