Show & Tell: Adventures Week 24

This week we wrapped up Week 24 of Adventures and found ourselves in Texas!  Home sweet home!

We filled out state sheets for Florida and Texas, the 27th and 28th states.  It wasn't nearly as painful this week since there were only two of them!  :)

We've seen lots of mockingbirds around here lately!

In history, we learned about Samuel Morse and the invention of the telegraph.  I loved seeing his persistence.  He truly devoted his life and fortune to making the telegraph a reality.  Here's the page Hannah made for her U.S. notebook:

She wrote "God Bless You" at the top in Morse code, and the illustration is her interpretation of what the original telegraph looked like with the wire across the top connected to a pencil on each side.

In science this week, we continued to look at senses, focusing on sour things.  We learned that acidic foods tend to naturally taste sour, so sometimes food manufacturers add sugar to cover up the sour taste and make them more appealing.  We learned that one way to determine whether foods contain acid is to put them in red cabbage water.

First, we boiled our red cabbage.

Then we put some of the water into six different jars and added a different food to each jar.  If the food was acidic, the water changed from purple to pink.  If it wasn't acidic, the water stayed purple—or in some cases even turned blue!

Here's the before shot.  We decided to test baking soda, yogurt, lemon juice, ice cream, mustard, and peanut butter.

And here's the after shot.  Based on our results, the lemon juice and mustard were the two most acidic foods, and the baking soda and peanut butter were two most alkaline.  Hannah liked the color of the ice cream jar the best.

We also soaked a penny in a jar of coke overnight to see how the acid in the coke ate away the dirt on the copper.

Here are the before pictures:

And here are the after pictures:



And remember that science experiment from two weeks ago that we never got around to doing?  Well, we came across it again in a different book this week!  I love it when things like that happen.  It makes me feel like we really weren't behind after all.  :)

One of Hannah's friends happened to be at our house that day, so she joined us when it was time for science.  The girls were supposed to measure their lung capacity, and I decided to turn it into a healthy competition to see whose lungs could hold more air.  I told each of them to give me their toughest, fiercest, most competitive face while I took their picture.  This is what I got!  :)

In one corner, weighing in at 60 pounds, with 7 years of life experience, we have the Wild Redhead ... Hannah!

And in the other corner (okay, fine, it's the same corner, but just use your imagination), weighing in at 50 pounds, with 6 years of life experience, we have the China Doll ... Kailian!

Yeah, they look like really fierce competitors, don't they?  ;)

To measure their lung capacity, we filled a 2-liter bottle with water and submerged it, open end down.  They took a straw and put it through the opening of the bottle and gently blew.  Their air pushed the water out, so the amount of air in the bottle at the end of each girl's turn showed us how much air her lungs were holding.  Clear as the Gulf of Mexico? (Remember ... we did Texas this week!)  ;)  Watch the videos.  They'll make it much clearer than I just did!  :)





(Could you tell from the end of that last video that my little Hannah does NOT like to lose?!)  ;)

After the girls measured their lung capacity, I had them count the number of breaths they took in 30 seconds.  Then I had them run as fast as they could for one minute and count again.  Obviously, they took more breaths after they ran.  I then asked them if they knew what caused their breathing to increase.  Now understand, I didn't even know what caused their breathing to increase before I read it in the science book that day, so when I asked them this question, I was fully expecting to impart knowledge on these young children who so desperately need us adults.  But instead, Kailian pretty much immediately looked at me and said, "Well, because when you exercise, your muscles need more oxygen, so your heart beats faster to get more oxygen to them."  Homeschooler!

All in all, this was a great week, even if I did get shown up by a 6-year-old.  There were only two state sheets, which was good for Hannah, and the science experiments all worked just like they were supposed to.  Plus, after doing the lung capacity activity, we have our science presentation all ready to go for co-op tomorrow!  I love it when I feel relaxed and fulfilled at the end of a school week.  What a difference a week makes!  :P