Apologia Biology Fun

Taking notes at the creek where we collected samples.

B is taking Biology this year, we are using Apologia's Biology (2nd Edition).  She was going to be taking this class in our weekly homeschool CoOp but it's not meeting this year so we are working through the program together at home.  A week or so ago she had to collect creek water in various jars.  She then had to give them different food sources (egg yolk, rice, hay and soil) and let them sit for ~ 5 days.  Afterwards, she made slides to look at what organisms were in each of her jars.

B using a ladle to gather creek water.

B's samples after sitting along with our prepared slides.

B making slides.

B looking at slides and drawing them in her science journal.

After looking at all of her homemade creek water slides, B looked at various prepared slides as well.

 

Here you can see our Paramecium slide on lowest power.

 

Here you see the same slide on the next power.

 

And the next power - I love all the detail and various stain colors on this slide.

I think B is enjoying this program so far and I am really enjoying experiencing it with her.

Science Fun with Skittles {Rainbow Experiment}

The "littles" and I had a lot of fun the other day with Skittles.  We did a very simple rainbow experiment using only Skittles and water.  Simply place the Skittles in a circle pattern on a plate, alternating colors as you wish.  Pour water all around the outside of the Skittles and watch the magic happen and rainbow form.  The whole experiment takes only a few minutes and the kids loved it!  Hope you try it yourself.

Here is our plate of Skittles!

You can see our rainbow just starting to form after we added our water.

I love the way the colors bleed into the center.

Above you can see G pointing to the colors.

This is one of my favorite pictures.

It's almost done...

It does look a bit messy at the end.  I prefer the pictures when the rainbow is halfway formed.  But it is nice that it does complete itself in the middle.

Making Raisins From Grapes

F with his grapes on September 6th.

F came home with green grapes on September 6th from one of his CoOp classes in hopes of turning them into raisins.  We had some red grapes in our fridge so we decided to use both and see what happened.  We jump started them for a few hours in our windowsill outside in hopes that they would turn faster.  We brought them inside after a few hours so bugs and birds would not eat them.

 Here are our green grapes.

And here are our red grapes.

Here are our grapes on September 10th.

And here they are on September 12th.

Some time went by and here are the grapes on September 25th.

 They are definitely raisins now, October 2nd.

F with his finished raisins!

So, in little less than a month we turned 12 grapes into raisins.  The green grapes definitely made for better raisins in our case.  I think the red grapes finished sooner.  This is a fun little experiment if you want to give it a go.  F really enjoyed it.