Lego water wheel

Today the boy created a water wheel out of Lego pieces. He wanted to test it to see if it was both strong enough to withstand the force of the water and not too stiff to spin without breaking.

Success!
_____________________

Science: Observation

Fishy fishy

The boys completed their first swim class together in January. They had a great time working with their teacher and getting to know the one other child in the class.

The boy passed the level and has moved on to the next! He's enjoying learning to float and glide on his own.

_____________________

Physical Education: Physical activity, skills

Click!

After yet another read-through of one of their favourite insect books, The Beautiful Beetle Book, the boys became particularly interested in click beetles. We discussed their defense mechanism in detail and looked at pictures of the beetles.

The boys then spent the next several minutes acting out the scenario. One of them pretended to be the predator while the other laid down, pretended to be dead, and then jumped up suddenly with a loud "CLICK!" before scrambling away, leaving the startled predator behind. Then they swapped roles and repeated the scenario.

The boy is very interested in the variety of ways animals and insects protect themselves, including camouflage and self-defense, so this was a fun addition to that list!

_____________________

Science: Description
Fine Arts: Drama

Rainbow math

We spent a fun afternoon playing with math, exploring the various ways to make 10. We used a Ways to Make 10 Rainbow worksheet from The Littlest Scholars, and used chocolate chips to add a visual (and yummy!) dimension to the activity.

Little brother sat with us working on counting, one-to-one correspondence, and taste-testing.

Colouring the rainbow.

Done!

Visually representing the numbers with chocolate chips.

Activity complete!

_____________________

Mathematics: Numbers (addition)

Do clouds have shadows?

The question recently came up as to whether or not clouds have shadows. The boy thought that clouds would not have shadows, but his friend's mom told him that they did.

The next time we were outside, we were able to find a small cloud that was casting a shadow on a portion of the mountain, thereby confirming the information he had been given.

We talked some more about what shadows are, as well as whether or not a variety of other things would have shadows. In the end, we concluded that water vapour does indeed have a shadow even though it originally seemed to him that it shouldn't.

Naturally, shadow puppets followed the discussion!

_____________________

Science: Observation, description

Lego Robotics

The boy spent two hours this afternoon at a Lego Robotics class run by Bricks 4 Kidz. He had a great time and looks forward to signing up for another class.

_____________________

Mathematics: Shape and space
Science: Observation and experimentation