Science Museum - Making Sail Boats

This room is called "Connections". It is filled with stations for exploratory work. We settled in with making sailboats and sailing them for about an hour. What fun. There is a big fan at the end of the water channel. We learned that the strength of the wind and the shape of the sail affects how fast the sailboat would go.

When learning is fun and iniitated by the child much learning occurs. Priceless learning moments . . . . .

Science Museum - Exploratory Room

Tree Slide. Joshua and Christian loved going down this slide on their bellies!

This is super cool. The boys can construct any type of structure they want. This one was already built. Christian modified it slightly, so they could actually go inside it. They wanted it to be a helicopter. Joshua is the pilot and Christian is building the propeller on top.

Joshua is using the microscope looking at different specimen slides.

This is a sensory table filled with sand and buried dinosaurs.

Here is one of the exploratory rooms. Christian is working with a labyrinth puzzle.

Science Museum - More Vertebrates

More fun with Robots

Robotic Experiment

Christian's Robot is a floor washing robot. Water comes out of the pipe at a high amount of pressure which would clean the floor.

Here we are trying to figure out a way to create enough pressure to push the water up. We thought about combining vinegar and baking soda. After I though about this I thought we better wait for my husband to get home. I was thinking this could be a possible I love Lucy episode! :)

For now, he had fun tipping the bottle upside down and watching the water flow out of the pipe.

When Jeff got home they tried the baking soda and vinegar. This reaction did not create enough pressure. If anyone has any ideas, please leave a comment below!

Science Museum

Here we are at the Science Museum. We had so much fun. The boys are still talking about our day. The museum had alot of open ended, creative and exploratory play. This is our kind of place.

This is a room dedicated to vertebrates. How they preserved these animals is amazing!

My Two Robots

The boys constructed robotic shells made out of cardboard. The robotics did all kinds of work. They cleaned, organized and calculated inventory of books, dvd's and vcr tapes!

The Robots

Robot work

Boys working on their robots!

Robot Fun

Everyday, I strive to educate towards the boys interests. The majority of our day is spent nurturing there own interests. I let our day naturally evolve. Sometimes we tackle many different areas of study and sometimes we stick to just one. It all depends on them. At some point, usually late afternoon we have about an hour to do what we call "lessons". Each day we focus on one of the main subject areas and they can choose from activities in there subject area.

Wednesday we had a totally Robotic day!!! All day we played robots. They had a blast. We incorporated math, reading and science into our fun filled day without them even realizing.

The other day, we watched a program called, How things work on TV. We learned how toothpicks are manufactured, how a helicopter is constructed and how plastic toys are constructed. All throughout the show we noticed many robotic machines being used. The boys loved this. I found a box of unused pipes and stuff and recalled a article I found in family magazine about making robots. I mentioned it to the boys and they loved the idea.

January 18 2008