Our Week: More Chemistry Experiments, Prussia, and New Jersey

After a very busy weekend, where Colin had 7 hockey games and we had a birthday party for Caleigh, we had a hard time getting started on Monday. Once we got going, things went pretty well though.
We celebrated Chinese New Year on Monday by reading some books, doing crafts, and making dragon cupcakes.

Science

We are still learning about the groups of elements on the periodic table. We read about the nonmetals, noble gases, and transition metals.

We studied metalloids last week, but I had trouble finding the blue gel glue we needed so we finally got to make slime with that and Borax this week.

 

To go along with the nonmetals, we learned that yeast will let off carbon dioxide when mixed with sugar and water. The carbon dioxide made the balloon on the bottle blow up.

 

We also soaked dirty pennies in Pepsi to see what would happen.

 

To learn about iron, a transition metal, we used iron fortified cereal and a magnet.

 

Art

So excited that we actually did art! It seems to get pushed aside when we get busy. We did a lesson in Artistic Pursuits on portraits. The kids made portraits using watercolor crayons.



Top left: Molly's                     Top right: Colin's
Bottom: both are Caleigh's

 

History/Geography

This week in history, we learned about Prussia, which became Germany. We specifically learned about Frederick, the first king of Prussia. The kids colored the flag of Prussia and Colin took the chapter test.

We also read two chapters from A History of US.

Our state was New Jersey. We read some books to go along with it and Colin made blueberry muffins since we read that NJ is a large producer of blueberries. We also read a couple books about the Hindenburg, which caught fire as it was landing in NJ. We read about it a little in our chemistry lesson on hydrogen a couple weeks ago. The kids did a coloring page of the state flag, bird, and flower. They also filled in their state sheet for their binders.