We’ve continued to have a wonderful time exploring the universe this month. We finished up our studies on the Sun by watching two episodes of Nova about Stonehenge and the Sun. I found these on amazon and since we have a prime membership they are free…at the moment. My little scholars even watched the Sun episode twice they enjoyed it so much! Our last Sun lab was to do an experiment to understand why the sky is blue. My kids were having a hard time understanding the concept about light waves and this experiment was very helpful and they were able to visualize the concept.

We took a glass of water and placed about a teaspoon of powdered milk inside and stirred it up. We then turned off the lights and shined a flashlight from the top (like at noon) and from the sides (like at evening or morning). They were then able to see how the color is affected by the number of particles in the atmosphere. I tried to take some pictures but it was beyond the capabilities of my little point-and-shoot. We then checked out a book on the eye and further explored light waves and vision to help them understand a bit more. I found the sky experiment on Pinterest. I also started a Pinterest page for science experiments here and I will add to the list as we go through the chapters. Apologia also has a great Pinterest board for elementary science.

We then moved on to study Mercury. We had a blast dropping rocks into a pie plate of flour to create meteors. For my oldest I made a separate bowl and then painted the  flour with spray paint icing (from Wilson’s) so we could see how the impact affected the surface and take measurements. I would recommend taking this experiment outside…I had flour everywhere. We had so much fun that I forgot to take pictures.

Our second Mercury project involved making little Mercury’s with clay. I was happy to see that the kids remembered that one side of the planet had less craters than the other. Even Littlest made his own Mercury. We made them from self-drying clay and added craters with pencils and legos.  Afterwards everyone did their writeups in their notebooks. Linking up with Homeschool Science Share and Tell for February.

sky reflected in water