Science Sunday--Learning about seeds

Spring is having a hard time arriving in our neck of the woods, so I thought I would try and speed things up a bit by doing a plant and seeds unit with my kindergarteners.

I used the book Oh Say Can You Seed? as out main guide for this unit. It is the perfect mix of information, using a rhyming text for my 4 and 5 year olds. The first activity we did was to soak bean seeds in water overnight. The next day we examined our seeds. The kids were very excited to be able to find all the parts of the seed...... including the cute little bean embryo.
We then lined a jar with papertowels. Then we gently put several bean seeds between the glass jar and the papertowel.

We were careful to keep the papertowel wet, and then we waited to see what would happen.

While we waited I found this great Garden Preschool Pack at HomeschoolCreations.

Make sure to head over to HomeschoolCreations and check out all free printables available.

We also discovered the hidden "star" in an apple. We also found a lot of seeds!

After 4 days, our bean seeds began to sprout!

At 17 days, we had these marvelous bean plants.

Luke is examining the original seed on his bean plant.

Happy science, everyone!!

Cross suncatchers

As we enter Passiontide I thought it was a perfect time to make cross suncatchers for our front windows.

I cut two crosses out of black construction paper for both Kim and Luke.

Then I used clear contact paper and stuck one of the black crosses onto the contact paper, sticky side up. To speed up the process today, I cut alot of tissue paper shapes for the kids to use. If we had more time, Kim and Luke would have cut the tissue paper themselves.

The kids then filled in the whole cross area with tissue scraps. Glue the second cross over the the tissue paper and cross. This makes it look nice from both sides. Hang in a window and enjoy.

It was a perfect craft for this rainy Wednesday as we come closer to the Passion of Jesus.

We found the pot of gold

under the rainbow.

I saw this in a very old craft book I had laying around the house, so I have no link. It is more of a "do it yourself" from the picture craft.

First I cut a "pot of gold" out of cardstock and Kim and Luke painted it a dark gray.

After it the paint was dry, they added sticker jewels and shiny shamrocks to the pot o' gold.

While the little kids painted, Gracie and Mark colored little Leprechauns to adorn the pots o'gold.

This was the first day on this craft.
Today we made our rainbows.
I simply cut a paperplate in half and made a rainbow.
The kids used markers to color thier rainbows.
I love the image of little hard working hands.
I cut "clouds" out of card stock and Luke and Kim made them perfectly fluffy by gluing cotton balls onto them.

We glued the clouds to the edges of the rainbow.

After all the glue dried, I used yarn to attach the rainbow to the pot o'gold.

A very cute addition to our Saint Patrick's Day decorations!

Weekly Wrap-up

We started our week out with some fun science

with fire. After science experiment day, we sort of fell into the February doldrums.
Boring workbook pages were filled in, and spelling words were learned, but other than that, we stayed inside and watched it snow....and snow....and snow.......we are really tired of the snow! ( so you know I am not just being a whiner---I am entitled to whine....we have received over 151 inches of snow so far this season.)

We have discovered a new favorite tv show---A Minute to Win It. It is a fun, family show that challenges the contestants to perform certain tasks in under a minute. All the challenges use household products.

We have been practicing the cup stacking game.

Luke just loves this.

I also bought 20 ping pong balls (which are now bouncing all over the house) to perform some of the many "ping pong ball" challenges.

It is great family fun and leads to many hours of good, old-fashioned fun.

A new educational stage has been reached this week.

Kimmy can read. She cruised through the first set of Bob Books
and the first Faith and Freedom reader.
Luke is also progressing nicely with the Bob Books.

My two babies are growing up!!

For art appreciation we are learning about Grandma Moses . I love folk art and the kids are enjoying learning about this amazing woman and her art.

A new learning tool has entered the house this week, and we are all having a ball with it.

My wonderful husband brought me home an IPad with week.

Above, Kimmy is playing FirstWords:Deluxe.
She slides the letters into place below the picture on the screen and then she wanted to write them in her notebook. (She filled up two pages with words)

Other favorite educational apps have been Bob Books and Little Explorers ABC Music.

I am finding more apps I like for school everyday.....I believe I may be in trouble! LOL

Science Sunday--Is yeast alive??

Our science question of the day was: Is yeast alive?

We started by looking at a teaspoon of dry yeast in our hands. It was very dry and tiny and Luke thought it looked like grains of sand.

It didn't look alive.

We put our yeast onto black construction paper and mixed in 1 teaspoon of sugar. It really didn't do much, although some of the kids thought they could see it chewing on the sugar.....that didn't appear to be true when we looked with a magnifying glass.

Our yeast still didn't appear to be alive.

Something that is alive eats and breathes and grows....our yeast wasn't doing that.

We then put a teaspoon of yeast, a teaspoon sugar and 1/4 cup of lukewarm water into a ziploc bag. Seal the bag and place in a sunny spot.
Something begins to happen. The yeast begins to grow---a sign of life. It gives off CO2 gas (it is burping)....that is breathing. It is also what make bread fluffy.
In another ziploc bag we placed just yeast and warm water....it gave off a little CO2 but then stopped. We learned that yeast needs to eat. Our yeast was eating the sugar we had added to the bag.
The kids were very impressed by the changes they were seeing.....our yeast was alive.
Kimmy decided to keep her bag of active yeast as a pet. She carried it around for quite a while.
Yeast, growing under the magnifying glass.

We opened a bag. What did the smell remind us of?? All the kids agreed, our yeast smelled like bread. We learned that bread needs yeast to become fluffy and delicious.

So that is exactly what we did...we made fresh homemade bread!

The little air pockets in the bread were made from the living yeast.

A perfect science experiment for a cold, snowy day!