Science Camp 2011: Part III (of III)

This is the end of the Science Camp summaries that Sabra, her sister Suzi, and I all put on for our kids (thus the butt shot).  You can see what else we were up to:  Part I and Part II.  I know there are a ton of pictures, but it was really such a fun-packed time and the kids LOVED it!  I especially love getting my kids psyched up for fun to come, and with this event I was every bit as excited as they were about it! 

After body science, we moved along to Sabra’s portion where she talked about Native Americans and petroglyphs before our hike to Lions Mouth Cave.  She made a scavenger list of items to find on our way up, so it was fun to watch the kids stop and cross things off their list and also take note of things that they could add to their flora and fauna books from the first day.

You can see C was pretty excited once we found it.

So cool.

Sabra did a great job talking about all sorts of history of people and how they kept records and how they drew these petroglyphs.  I love this sort of stuff.  (Sabe’s so beautiful.  And has such a cute little pregnant belly).

The kids each got some papers with symbols on them to put in their notebook, and were given the chance to make up their own story using the symbols.

They also walked around to see if they could find any symbols that were on their papers.  And they could, which made them super excited!

The kids were each given play dough to make something that represented them.  C chose a peregrine falcon.

B made a red kangaroo and so did D.

They got to stand up in front of everyone and share why they made what they made.

The next science subject was mine and we talked bugs.  I found some really fun and some really disgusting facts about bugs that we read together.  Then at home I had already caught some ants from my yard and made an ant farm, and handed out a paper they could paste in their notebooks with directions on how to make their own ant farm.  My kids loved having that ant farm for a couple weeks (we let them go after Science Camp—and I can say, the ants were much more interesting to look at with sand than the dirt they match—I tried both).  I also learned a ton of interesting things about ants and we discussed those and the typical parts of bugs, etc.

Then it was off to catch crawdads after going over exoskeletons.

Thankfully we were able to catch crawdads for those of the kids who wanted them.  They were pretty small, but to them it was a crawdad and a small one was better than nothing!

Although the oldest one stayed behind and caught this baby.  Don’t worry, we didn’t eat them and shortly set them free again.

Sabra talked about bats and sonar.  We tried some bat diving with sand-filled socks. The kids were quite determined to get bats diving to their socks.  We saw a bunch far away, but only one came closer to us once.  But throwing socks up in the air as high as possible at night when you’re typically sleeping was a blast to these kiddos.

But the picture makes that sock look like a bat, doesn’t it? 

I really had so much fun putting in the work on the lessons and the planning.  I told my sister that Science was never my strong point, but this made me appreciate it so much more.  I do love nature science, however, so I’m sure that helped.  But really, our world is so amazing and it was really fun to get the kids excited about learning! 

Thanks for the kind comments regarding it all!  It always helps when you have good friends or family to plan stuff like this with who are just as excited about it.  Thanks to Sabra for suggesting it and having awesome kids and nieces/nephews who let us tag along!

Science Camp 2011: Part II (of III)

Part I can be found HERE.  (summary of Science Camp with Sabra and her sis).

After dinner on Tuesday we made ice cream with tin cans.  The science of ice cream can be found HERE.  I used a recipe like THIS one.  And a few different methods to make ice cream without a maker can be found HERE.

After ice cream, it was on to Suzi talking about astronomy.  The kids started out making their own individual Earth out of play dough, but they had the inner core, mantel, crust, and outer core.  They loved it!

Next the kids got to “take a trip to Mars.”  They chose from pictures what they would take if they were going to Mars, and after they wrote down we discussed why some were good choices and why some weren’t, so they could learn more about space that way.

Moving along to the next brand new day, we started with Body Science.  Suzi talked about our taste buds first. 

The kids dried off their mouths and tried a pretzel with no saliva, rinsed out their mouth with water, then tried it with their mouth moist and noted the difference in taste.

Next they were blindfolded one at a time.  Their partner plugged their nose and stuck a jelly belly in their mouth.  They chewed for a second and noticed they couldn’t tell what it tasted like too much, until their nose was unplugged.  We all tried that, and it’s kind of crazy how the flavor rushes into your mouth once your nose is unplugged!

And then B tried out her body science by peeing her pants shortly after this picture ;). 

Then they made fingerprints on paper and talked about those for a bit! 

Final summary of our camp tomorrow!  Would you believe if I told you I’m not even using a third of the pictures I took!  It’s hard to narrow it down!

Science Camp 2011, Part I (of III)

My good friend Sabra (Sew a Straight Line) brought up the idea of a Science Camp a few months before summer.  We got really excited talking about it!  Our kids are great friends and we knew it would work out good.  Especially since her sister was interested in coming as well, and she’s an Elementary School teacher.

We had a planning meeting beforehand, and determined what subjects we wanted to cover, who would teach what, and planned meals.  Here is the schedule we decided on and Sabra typed up for us:

You can see that we were sure to schedule in plenty of free time for the kids to play. And really, most of the camp was just structured play!

We also each made our own kids’ messenger bags (posted yesterday) all very similar with the same things inside so that they would be pretty equal and no problems would occur over that ;). 

*I’ve borrowed some pictures from Sabra.*

We left Monday…

and drove down to Pinto, Utah, which is close to Cedar City.  Sabra’s family owns some property there and a building that had flushing toilets and showers and a kitchen, which was great! 

After roasting hot dogs and marshmallows for dinner,

we quickly got ready for bed since it was late (long story short:  Susie got a flat tire and was stranded for a while before getting there) and moved on to our first science activity. Sabra was awesome and made a design for our t-shirts and talked about the chemical reaction from the bleach and the fabric.  We used a stencil she made (you can see how she did it on her blog HERE).  

The second day we started with the area overview.  I couldn’t find out much about the area that would last even close to an hour, so we talked about the different types of rocks.  I made a poster discussing metamorphic, igneous, and sedimentary rocks.  I had checked out a lot of books from the library for pictures to show and also gathered some different types of rocks they could handle.  One great source I found on the rock cycle can be found here.

We also worked on flora and fauna books (plants and animals).  I should have had the kids go outside to look at their surroundings, but I just had them base it on what they had already observed.  I had also printed off thumbnails of many animals and plants listed as being in the area for them to look at.

C was pretty sure every bird he saw was a bald eagle.

And D was scared he’d find a rattlesnake since those staying in the area had killed two recently. 

And B drew vicious monsters ;). 

Next Suzi talked about weather.  And she is definitely a teacher. She did a wonderful job and my lessons paled drastically in comparison!  Check out the many experiments she had for the kids to try!

She had them all make their own “weather in a bag” so they could see some of the process.

Outside talking about clouds.

Making their own thermometer.

Observing condensation.

B meticulously taking notes.

Talking about air changes and temperature.

And finally, for the last weather experiment, making our own storm.  I’m sure you could Google all of these experiments.  The kids loved them!

It was a little hard having B there—she had a blast but also was needy.  She turns three in September, but I think four and up would be ideal.  I was glad she was there just so I wouldn’t have to miss her all week, though.  (she’s listening to music)

After lunch, I was up again talking about the sun.  I learned SO many fun and interesting facts about the sun, and I had the kids do a fill in the blank poster full of fun facts to quiz them on their knowledge.  I again used books from the library for my main sources, though of course the internet would have everything you ever wanted to know online. 

After we learned more about the sun, we went outside to use our magnifying glass to burn paper and explained why this works.  We didn’t have a lot of success with the paper even though I did at home with the same paper, but it worked fabulously with the dried leaves/weeds or wood we tried.

Next the kids gathered objects to use sun sensitive photo paper and create their own sun photography.

I love how they turned out!  The stencils were really neat.

But I preferred the ones where the kids found their own items. 

We skipped the space hour since we had gotten more and more behind and the kids needed a break.

Stay tuned for Part II tomorrow!  Thanks for reading!