Big Energy-Little Learners...Can I do it all?

As much as I love science I am bad at remembering to do science projects. Lucky my dragons love science and are always asking questions, so when the opportunity presented itself Little Dragon asked if we could do a science experiment on evaporation. He had been learning about the water cycle in preschool which is what brought this on.  We were outside doing our shape science when he asked if we could do another experiment.   He had it all planned out.  He wanted to fill up a container with dirt add water and watch it evaporate.  For some reason Little Dragon thought you had to have dirt for water to evaporate.  I explained that water needs nothing but heat to evaporate and demonstrated this by showing him the cement drying in the heat of the sun from our earlier experiment.  He seemed to understand and gave me a few examples of water evaporating without dirt.  Such as:  after it rains rivers puddles Although he now understo...

This activity went with our shape unit.  It took me a little while to think of a shape science experiment. I had many ideas but I wanted it to be an experiment, not just an activity in the science category.  I went with a shape container experiment.  Materials A circle container A square container Water  For this experiment the two containers will have to be similar in size.  I asked Little Dragon which container he thought held more water, the square or the circle.  Before we made our hypothesis Little Dragon wanted to fully examine both containers to make his guess. I was impressed with his desire to make an educated guess so I helped him examine the containers.  After checking the size difference, putting the containers inside eachother, and seeing which is taller he was ready to make his choice.  After writing out our hypothesis we took our containers outside with a cup of water.  We poured...

This craft went with our meat eater unit you can see here I was having a difficult time thinking of activities for meat eaters.  I didn't want the sole focus to be on dinosaurs because carnivores and herbivores is a way to categorize many animals today. But everything I was running into was dinosaur related.  Finally I found this craft!  Materials:    paper template of a carnivore and herbivore (I drew a hippo and t-rex head outline) page of teeth scissors glue markers Little Dragon cut out the heads and then the mouth pieces.  Then he cut out the teeth and glued them inside the mouth To finish it he drew eyes on the head and a tongue on the inside of the mouth.  Little Dragon was very excited to see the finished animals and open their mouths to look at their teeth. We wrote what the animal was on the inside This was a fun easy craft that helps identify the difference in ...

This activity goes with our Meat Eater unit which you can see  here This activity was insanely simple to put together and very enjoyable for Little Dragon.  First I had him go in search of all of his animals: dinosaurs, jungle animals, and zoo animals.   He enjoyed the hunt and bringing each find to me and telling me about the animal.  While he searched for his animals I made out two sheets of paper one titled Meat Eaters the other Plant Eaters.  (You can find a printable version at the bottom of this post) First he sorted the animals into the right category Then we went over what made each category different.  Not only by their diet but by other characteristics.  We wrote these down together.  (You can find a printable version at the bottom of this post) We kept these sheets to help us identify other animals he found in his toy box or we saw in movie through out the week. Printables Title Sheets...

This is a pretty popular game for preschoolers.  We have played it a couple times ourselves and I see it in preschool packs often.  I was pleased to see it in the Egyptian pack for use this week.  This game is a game of chance, but is also mathematics because you graph your results. It can also be considered basic science because we are testing the results of the di roll and documenting our results.  To  make this game more interesting then just rolling and graphing we start our game by picking a character we want to "win" or reach 10 first.  Next we give a color to each character, again just to make it a bit more interesting.   Then the rolling starts.  We rolled and marked until on column reached 10 and we had a winner!    Neither of our characters ended up winning the camel pulled through and beat us to the finish line, but we enjoyed playing and graphing. :) 

Apples are a standard representation of the first sin in the bible.  The bible doesn't actually say the fruit was an apple but for some reason that is assumed.   During our reading of Adam and Eve we used apples to demonstrate how sin affects our hearts.  We each took a bite out of the apple to represent sin We let the apple sit for a week and watched the sin rot the apple  We compared the apples This really opens up discussion.  I asked Jerry to lead this discussion and he did an awesome job!  He reviewed what each apple represented then asked which apple The Dragons would like to eat. Which one would their friends eat if they were asked to choose between the two?  Then he asked 'why wouldn't you want the second apple?' He went into a discussion about how sin can negatively affect our lives and our relationships especially with God.   Next he asked how do we fix the rotten apple?  This w...

Creation Day 3 I liked teaching about day three because it really starts to paint the picture of how awesome God is!  The first two days are also amazing, I can't create light or water. Turning on a light switch is how we get light and turning on a faucet we can easily get water, but plants they take work. This activity was for The Dragons to see and understand how our God is a God of order and great creator.  Plants need light, water, and land to grow, we talked about this after our first reading of day 3.  Then we read all  3 days to review how God created what sustains plant life before creating the plants.  He had order to His creation.  Then we shoveled up some dry land into small bags    And pushed some seeds into the dry land Added some water Then taped them to the window where they could get plenty of sun light We will check our bags everyday for plants. It will be some time before we start to see any littl...

Creation Day 2 I have seen many blog posts about this activity and have always thought it was neat !   I was very excited to share the rain experiment with my preschoolers. I went out and bought a clear container and shaving cream and was ready to make rain! Fill the container 3/4 full of water and cover the top with shaving cream.  Mix food coloring with water and let the shaving cream set for a minute.  While you wait you can talk about how the shaving cream represents clouds.  And how clouds hold water until it rains Then use a eye dropper to add drops of food coloring on top of the cloud Keep dropping and soon you will see the color start to fall from the shaving cream.  This was not as dramatic as I have seen before.  I think partially because we used a light colors.  We also didn't wait for the shaving cream to set for a minute.  3 boys are quiet impatient.  The color would streak down for a second th...

With all the animals out from our animal bath we used the foam and the animals for some animal sorting. One of the first things about an animal you learn is where it lives or its habitat.  It is important to know this because it explains what it eats and other characteristics of the animal. I set the foam all around the split tray for easy sorting. Dark green:  Jungle or forest Light green:  meadow, grasslands, farm Tan:  desert Brown: swamp Blue: ocean The only thing I was missing was white, for ice, as was pointed out to me by Doll Dragon when she was looking for the home of the penguin. There were some animals that could live in multiple habitats, for these animals The Dragons placed 1 in each area. Doll Dragon sorted the  animals so fast Little Dragon didn't have much of a chance to sort, but he can get more practice later.  He still learned by observing. :) This was a quick activity that did...

For our money theme a perfect science activity is cleaning coins!   I knew we would be using money a lot for our money theme and handling clean money is a better option then dirty money that has passed through hundreds of fingers.   Cleaning money is simple and most of the supplies are already in your home.  Vinegar salt A quarter cup of vinegar to 1 tablespoon of salt for the solution.   Let the coins soak in the solution for a bit  then take them out of the solution and wipe off the grime with a towel and watch them shine! We did talk about the vinegar breaking down and lifting the dirt for easy wipe off.  The Dragons were so excited to have a pile of their own 'real' shiny money that they didn't pay much attention to the science of it.  When the money was clean it was time to play with it.