Joy School: Unit 6: Experiments

This lesson had a lot of activities to it. The main point of the lesson is to ask questions and be amazed with the different experiments.


First we made jello. Today was early release for Chloe so she decided to join us. They mixed the lemon jello powder with the boiling water.
Early I froze 1c. of water with blue food coloring, so they were able to mix blue ice with yellow jello. They thought green jello was pretty cool.

Then we read "When the Wind Stops" by Charlotte Zolotow.

Following that we played 20 questions so the kids could figure out what was in my box. This was too hard for them, even with Chloe there. The objects I had was a marshmallow and a purple mitten. They did ask good questions but it was still hard to get them to near it down to figure out the object.

Now we started the experiments which had interesting results.

First I had 1c. of sugar in the jar and added 1T of baking soda (it was only supposed to be 1 tsp but when I went to double check it my eyes went to the experiment below it which had 1T). Then I added 1c of vinegar which kept bubbling over. The kids were amazed by this. However, the cool thing about this experiment was supposed to be the reaction when 6 mothballs were added. The mothballs were supposed to dance, which if they did, we shouldn't see it through the bubbles. I'm not sure how I could have done with better except changing the baking soda amount.
The next experiment was adding food coloring to water and see it slowly mix together.

Then, in a different cup, we mixed water and sugar to discover what happened with the sugar.

Another one we did was about mixing colors together. Hailey punctured a hole in the Styrofoam egg carton, so purple started to leak everywhere. The mess come up but our hands were dyed for a couple of days. I guess around Easter, I'll see if there are any plastic egg cartons.

Then they got to do discoveries with magnets.

And with what floats.

There were a few experiments that I didn't do but still it was a full lesson (especially with the spills and needing to clean up.) At the end of this lesson, normally Joy School would be doing the Valentine's Day party.

Now, I try to look ahead and be prepare for the whole week at a time. So, I looked at the next lesson and it was all about going to the library for a field trip. The library activity is to get the kids interested in the books and to learn how to find answers to their questions. However, we go to story time twice a week (on Tuesday for Book Babies and on Thursdays for 3-5 year olds). Also, Robert sleeps during Joy School so we can't leave the house.

To adjust for that and still do the lesson, we did the question mark craft today and will go to the library tomorrow for Book Babies and Hailey can pick out a book she wants then.

So, here are there necklaces that pieced together to remind them that questions are good.