Sunday, October 12, 2008

Our Lesson on Solids, Liquids and Gases

As daughter has been out of sorts for a few days, we didn't school on Thursday.  Son and I are spending two leisurely weeks on Solids, Liquids and Gases, Thread A-2 of the excellent Building Foundations of Scientific Understanding by Dr. Bernard Nebel.  Fridays are my days of Science, Geography and Spanish.

First we did the game of sorting each item into three different boxes: solids, liquid or gases. Son was good at this game, and was able to identify many items correctly. For air/gas, I had son fill up a balloon with air and was sure to point out that the air that he blew out was inside the balloon. We talked about the actual words: solid, liquid and gas and the general qualities of each. We also poured some water into a container and put it into the freezer. An hour later and it turned into ice -- solid. 

Gas was a bit more difficult to understand, as anticipated, because you usually can't see it. I showed him how I sprayed some perfume (a liquid) and the liquid dispersed into the air and we were able to smell it in the air. This meant that some of the liquid turned into air particles that mixed into the air around us. 

We also talked about how our bodies are made up of solids, liquids and gases.  He was able to think for himself which parts were each: bones are solid, blood was liquid and for gas he came up with farts -- haha :)  I was proud of him.

During the week we read the Let's-Read-and-Find-Out-Science's Solids, Liquids and Gases. The Let's Read and Find Out Science is an excellent series of books with simple, but interesting explanations on the world around us.  I highly recommend this too.

We'll be doing an experiment this week further exploring the concept.

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