covid19 – MathSciWhy https://mathsciwhy.com a teacher exploring math, science, and life's big questions Thu, 21 May 2020 02:00:27 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=5.4.13 Theme Week – Gravity and Spacetime https://mathsciwhy.com/index.php/theme-week-gravity-and-spacetime/ https://mathsciwhy.com/index.php/theme-week-gravity-and-spacetime/#comments Thu, 07 May 2020 15:00:06 +0000 http://mathsciwhy.com/?p=158 ]]> There was a lot to unpack when looking at space and the kinder kid was intrigued by gravity, so that became the theme for the following week.

The info below is split up into the following categories:

  • Activities to do as a family (experiments, outdoor activities, etc.)
  • Independent activities that the kids can do during quiet time
  • Books & Videos

Week 3: Gravity and Spacetime

Family Activities

Tensegrity Structure

There’s no mystery where our children got their love for LEGO. Their dad built a cool tensegrity structure out of LEGO to kick off our learning about gravity. Very cool. Not cool? The only photo we have is on a super dusty surface where it was built in hiding.

Gravity Water Cup Drop

Next we did the Gravity Water Cup From from the Science Guys. We did it over the bath tub and the kids loved it.

Gravity Visualized

While the content of this one was way over the kids’ heads, it was fun and they liked taking part. We built this visualization of gravity based on this video, using a hula hoop, ikea drinking glasses, some stretchy fabric, and clothes pegs.

A black piece of fabric is stretched over a hula hoop and held on by clothes pegs. It sits atop a ring of ikea glasses on top of a table.

Given our rather crude setup, the visualizations worked pretty well and gave way to cool discussions around gravitational slingshots.

A golden delicious apple sits in the middle of a black piece of fabric stretched across a hula hoop. A hand is seen holding a small metal bocce ball a few inches away from the apple.

Pendulum Gravity Experiment

Using the free app Phyphox, we created a pendulum with a phone inside a toilet paper roll under our kitchen table and determined the acceleration due to gravity. A little sophisticated for the littles, but they love recording numbers, making hypotheses, and seeing what happens. The video explanation for the experiment can be found here.

Quiet Activities

I am becoming less picky about these with time. I don’t love the worksheets but the kids like having something to work on at the start of quiet time.

Space Matching

A collection of space mazes

Solar System Word Search

Space Colouring Pages

A collection of fun space-related worksheets

Space subtraction

Books & Videos

We rewatched Bill Nye’s Gravity Episode (S1E6) – the kids love this one

Pete the Cat: Out of This World by James Dean (read aloud because we can’t go to the library)

The Magic School Bus Gains Weight (S4E8) – available on Netflix

Inspiration found from The Cosmic Perspective (Third Edition)

Next week: Prehistoric Creatures!

]]> https://mathsciwhy.com/index.php/theme-week-gravity-and-spacetime/feed/ 1 Theme Week – Space https://mathsciwhy.com/index.php/theme-week-space/ Mon, 27 Apr 2020 20:00:35 +0000 http://mathsciwhy.com/?p=129 ]]> We’re into week two of our themes as we navigate life at home. Last week we looked at the microscopic world.  This week, we went with a space theme, which gave tons of options for play, crafts, and experiments. They loved it so much they requested a gravity theme for next week.

The info below is split up into the following categories:

  • Activities to do as a family (experiments, outdoor activities, etc.)
  • Independent activities that the kids can do during quiet time
  • Books & Videos

Week 2: Space

Family Activities

Labelling Planets

The kids had been given a set of solar system wall stickers a couple of years ago. They’ve been up on our wall in the basement. Our first task for Space week was for the kids to write out labels (in metallic sharpies, of course!) for each of the planets and paste them on the wall.

A young boy is sticking a black label for Mars up on a wall. Planet wall stickers and labels can be seen for Mercury, Venus and Earth
Labelling the planets

 

Smashing Space Rocks

This activity came from Pre-K Pages and was a hit (ha!). Make a flour/water mixture, coat some cotton balls, and bake them at low heat. We put them outside and the kids went to town smashing them with hammers, wearing proper safety goggles of course. A child's hand holds out a crafted moon rock in their open palm

A child's hand wearing a striped red and navy gloves holds a blue and grey plastic hammer. A fabricated moon rock is seen next to it, in motion, after being smashed

 

Paper Mâché Asteroids

Full disclosure: we started this paper mâché project to make Easter eggs. The kids hadn’t been too interested in painting them, so they sat for a week as newspaper covered blobs. When we started space week, we realized that the bumpy creations would be perfect for asteroids. The kids were much more eager to paint and precision was not a priority. Once they were finished, we hung them from the ceiling between Mars & Jupiter on and added an Asteroid Belt label on the strings.

A young girl is picking up a string from the ground, attached to a paper mâché asteroid. She holds another string with another asteroid in her other hand
Prepping our paper mâché asteroids to hang in the solar system

 

Chalk Solar System

Using the Exploratorium Calculator, I calculated out a scaled down orbital radius for each planet. I chose a sun diameter of 1.2m, which allowed us to fit the whole solar system on our short street. We measured one adult foot print to be about 1m and then counted our steps to determine the distance between each planet. Starting at Neptune, we drew a tiny chalk dot, wrote a big label, and then carried on towards the sun. The kids took note that we had much fewer steps between planets as we began to approach the sun.

A young girl and a young boy look at the ground as the boy writes Venus in chalk. The girl's shadow is seen above Venus
Venus

Once it was complete, we let some neighbours know about the drawings and invited them to walk the solar system, too.

A chalk drawing of a sun with the label "sun". The sun is filled with yellow, orange, and red swirls.
The Sun

 

Crater Creation

We had been talking about asteroids, meteors, meteorites, and meteoroids. We set up a fun and simple activity to explore how craters are created. We filled a silicone bread pan with flour and then covered it with a thin layer of hot chocolate. We headed outside and the kids dropped marbles into the pan to make craters.

A silicone bread pan filled with flour
Flour layer done
A silicone bread pan filled with flour. A package of Carnation hot chocolate sits on the corner
Ready for the hot chocolate
A silicone bread pan filled with flour, covered with a thin dusting of hot chocolate.
Hot chocolate layer finished
A strainer taps cocoa into a silicone bread pan filled with flour,
Sprinkling on the hot chocolate layer

I thought this activity might only last 30 seconds, but the kids loved it and asked for more and more marbles.

 

LEGO

We were fortunate to have been given a box of vintage LEGO from a neighbour. After researching some of the pieces, we were able to put together a bunch of proper LEGO space sets, as well as some creative space-inspired research stations and robots.
A collection of vintage space lego sets sitting on four grey lego boards, atop a dining table

Space play dough

I made play dough and added glitter. Tada! Space play dough. Sometimes it’s the simple things.

A lumpy turquoise blob of turquoise glitter play dough sits on a wooden board.
Glittery space play dough. We ran out of salt and it is a bit lumpy, but so are planets.

Quiet Activities

For visual discrimination

Space math (I took away the one and added 11 & 12 so they could use two dice and put a token in for the sum. Kinder kid also put together a lego piece for each one that showed that many dots which was a fun exercise)
Kinder kid kept asking for math worksheets for quit time, so we used a few:

Books + Videos

We’ve enjoyed these books & videos when discussing the unseen:

The Darkest Dark by Chris Hadfield

Star Wars: Phonics by Quinlan B Lee

These videos were all online or borrowed from our local library:

Go Noodle – Hop Hop Astronaut

Bill Nye the Science Guy – S1E6 Gravity, S1E19 Outer Space, and S5E2 Space Exploration

Discover the Universe

Space Racers (available on Netflix)

Next week…Gravity (and spacetime) week!

]]> Theme Week – The Microscopic World https://mathsciwhy.com/index.php/theme-week-the-microscopic-world/ Mon, 20 Apr 2020 20:00:21 +0000 http://mathsciwhy.com/?p=105 ]]> With our new reality of being home 24/7, we’ve been trying to find ways to keep our core values as a family while also investing time in teaching high schoolers online, running a podcast, and the host of other random things we do as a family. In order to find some modicum of structure, while still allowing for self-guided learning, we decided to come up with a theme for each week. The theme is neither comprehensive nor limiting, but rather it gives us something to launch off of for activities. I’ve decided to share what ideas we came up with (some we executed, some we didn’t), in case it helps as a launching pad for others with young ones at home.  Please note that this stuff might make up only 15-30 minutes in the day, but it’s enough to give us some sense of normalcy and it spurs a lot of curious questions and creative play.

I will break up each week into categories so that you can skip ahead to what’s of interest:

  • Activities to do as a family (experiments, outdoor activities, etc.)
  • Independent activities that the kids can do during quiet time
  • Books & Videos

Week 1: The Microscopic World

Family Activities

Our first week’s theme was born from pulling out a children’s microscope I had purchased at a consignment sale last year. While it is still a bit tricky for our youngsters, they managed to work it through.

Microscope

This isn’t the exact microscope we have, but it’s the same company. Ours only goes up to x900. Our first experiment was to look at the slides that came with the microscope. They looked at an onion skin, dragonfly wing, and the tip of a honey bee’s wing. Once they had looked at all three, we drew a circle using a roll of masking tape and the kids drew what they saw from the honey bee’s wing.

A young boy looks through a microscope
Microscope in action
A young girl sits, with head turned away. A sheet of paper with a child's microscope drawing of a bee wing sits in front of her, with the words Bee Wing Buzz written across the paper.
Microscope drawings

Another day, we went for a walk and gathered some things to look at under the microscope. Between this kit and other things we had at home, we made use of vials, tweezers, and magnifying glasses to investigate found items.

Other ideas we didn’t get to:

Creating a mini microscope using a clear plastic cup (we’ll be doing this as soon as I can find some cups)

Using a garden hose to demonstrate the length of our intestines

Quiet Activities

The 5-year-old requested a small task he could do each day during quiet time. My aim is to just use content other people have already created & shared and to not stress out too much about most of them cartoon-ifying all things science. Here’s what we used this week:

These germ worksheets from Simple Everyday Mom were great. They could do each of them without guidance.

The 3-year-old was getting frustrated when writing out “bee wing” because she was having trouble with some of the letters.  I used this Dotted Font to write out a batch of words that she could trace to practice. She helped to create the list of words: bee wing, virus, microscope, cell, atom, microbe, magnification.

We also printed out this avoid the germies maze from education.com.

Books + Videos

We’ve enjoyed these books & videos when discussing the unseen. All have been borrowed from our local library:

Do not lick this book by Idan Ben-Barak

Tiny Creatures by Nicola Davies

Video – Mysteries of the Unseen World by National Geographic (we skipped through the part about the microbes living on our bodies only because of the age & temperament of our kids. They have enough to process with Covid19 right now.)

While we didn’t watch it, The Magic School Bus: For Lunch is available on some streaming sites and would be a good option.

 

Next week…Space!
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