Okay, okay, I'm sooo late on posting to the blog. Time really does fly when you're having fun. We are steadily rolling here towards the summer, but have been very busy in the meantime. I will be catching the blog up to speed these next few days, and thought I'd start with our Bubble Week! We did this late-Feb. It was the first week of really great weather here in Texas, and while the rest of the U.S. was still bundled up, I thought we needed to take advantage and get outside! So, we studied the science of bubbles.
We started out learning about the shape of bubbles by making our own bubble wands in circle, square, and triangle shapes. Next, the boys recorded the shape of the bubbles with the wands. They were both a little surprised that only round bubbles were blown.The next day, we made our own bubble solution and decided to find out which was better: homemade bubble solution vs. 3 different store bought brands. We set up the experiment by blowing one wand of bubbles and rating the size and approx. amount (it's really hard to count bubbles, by the way) and recording it in our science journal. After that, we blew another round and timed how many seconds it took for the bubbles to pop. The boys noted that the homemade solution made the largest bubbles, but Super Miracle Bubbles lasted MUCH longer and produced a lot more bubbles. I didn't get any pics because I was too busy trying to help count all those darn bubbles!
Our third day of bubble-mania was spent looking at the "skin" of the bubble. We reviewed surface tension and learned why the bubble always made a sphere when blown. We also noticed the colors of the bubbles, and once we learned their patterns, had a fun time predicting when they would 'POP'!
We had a bubble party to celebrate our last bubbly day of our study. We took our bubble machine, wands, our 4 types of solution, and everything else bubble outside to the park and had fun popping away.
Andrew loved the bubble straw!
I learned that it is REALLY hard to photograph bubbles on a windy day! Really, there were A LOT! :) Lucas was trying to pop them all from the slide as they flew past him.
We also read a lot about bubbles from many non-fiction books checked out from our beloved library (how would I homeschool without it!), and also found several fiction books about bubbles that worked great for read-alouds and during their daily reading time. Their favorite--SpongeBob, of course! We found a video about the Sponge, too, that featured the tale of the "Oldest Living Bubble" that made them laugh. We also had some touchable bubbles in a science kit that we mixed up, and learned that the same chemical binder used in paint was used to make the bubble touchable. Cool!
Thanks for joining us! We had a lot fun during our bubble week, and it's really fun looking back and posting about it a few months later! The boys are "ooohhhing" and "ahhhing" as I type this and wanting to pull out the bubbles again, so I think they had a good time learning as well! :)