Light (part 2)

Here are two optical instruments we made while we were on the topic of "Light".

This is our periscope made by cutting and re-shaping a cereal box. It was painted white so it will camouflage with our white walls. ;-)


I found a place that sold little pieces of mirror quite by accident! God's providence! The periscope turned out to be a wonderful toy for play and my boys are now begging to make another extremely long one so they could spy on each other when they are on different decks of their bunk bed. What a practical application?!

This is our second instrument; a pin-hole camera made from a cream cracker tin. We wrapped blue paper around it and decorated it with gold stars to give it a whimsical look.


This is an example of what we looked at.


And the inverted image on the screen (made of tracing paper).


Here are some pointers if you want to make a pin-hole camera too:

• Use a big tin if possible
  
• Line the interior of the tin with black paper
• Pin-sized hole will produce quite a dim image; a toothpick-sized hole worked better for us. (the bigger the hole, the larger your camera has to be)
  
• Design a way to move your screen in or out so that you can get the image in focus
  
• Image will appear clearer if your eyes are cupped.

Related post : - Light

Light

First we read a 2-page spread from a book I have selected. Next, boys do a notebook page. Whenever possible, we try out an activity that demonstrates what was covered in our reading.


Here are a few picture-worthy activities we did...

We learned that light could come from various sources. Looked at how light was produced in a glowing hot wire. Read about how an incandescent bulb works. Set up a simple circuit to see the bulb light up. (You wouldn't believe it, but this is the only incandescent bulb I have at home!)


We read about the various behaviours of light through and on various material. Played with flashlights mirrors and such. (Oooh... lots of excitement here!) After experimenting with lens, we took a look at the physics behind the eye. Here is an interactive site that explains the workings of the eye and how lens can help correct eye defects. (ignore the registration request by clicking on "maybe later")

We tested to see how light travel in a straight line...



See how the angle of reflection is the same as the angle of incident ray...




We split white light into its rainbow colours using our home-made prism (made by taping 3 pieces of microscope slides together, using a plastacine base and filling it with water).

Observed this same phenomenon right in our aquarium that day and wowed at it. Later, we discovered that we get this treat everyday! (Lot of good information on rainbows here.)


We made our own coloured lights to see how colours mix. This was achieved using coloured cellophane papers (red, blue and green), kitchen towel cardboard cores and 2 torches.

Red + Blue = Magenta...

Blue + Green = Cyan...

Red + Green = Yellow...

The tough part about this experiment was that our torches were of different brightness. The "correct" secondary colours would only show up well when the two coloured lights were of about the same intensity. The colours were more obvious when we shine them on a white surface at a very close range. However, my camera could not capture these. The coloured spots turned out overexposed. :-( I decided to post the pictures that had less obvious secondary colours. These were taken with the lights shone from further away. (I am not a professional photographer!)

I was at first tempted to not try this experiment ourselves (and a few other activities also...). Instead, just settle for watching a video clip of a similar experiment done very professionally (or simply reading about them). Then somehow, somewhere, this quote jumped at me as I was deliberating:

"Accept no substitute for fun!"

It was like a wake-up call! I was resolved to not short-change my little guys. Well, ... it is fun for me too. ;-) I am making this our motto for Science from now on!

Space Rocks at Breakneck Speed

We completed one whole chapter in our Exploring Creations in Astronomy book in record-breaking time! It was the lesson on Space Rocks. All done in one afternoon! Why? Because we wanted to catch the meteor shower - Perseids. (That was the second week of August)

We and another homeschooling family headed to the Lim Chu Kang cemetry (at almost mid-night) to have an unobstructed view of the night sky. The peace of God was with us... so it was not spooky at all ;-) Unfortunately, we were not able to see anything exciting; no shooting stars. We were mentally prepared for that. Well, at least we tried...

Chemistry Week - Laboratory Experience

We attended a series of laboratory sessions at the Singapore Science Centre during their Chemistry Week. Most of the workshops used concepts in Chemistry learnt at the Secondary 3/4 level. Of course, my 8 year-olds don't get it all! But they had fun just "playing" with the apparatus. ;-)

For the sake of future reference, I will go ahead with noting down the specifics of what was done.

Workshop 1 - Sulfur Dioxide and its Role in Preserving Food

What we did :- We tested for the presences of SO2. Hydrogen peroxide was added to food samples (preserved mango, dried sour plum, preserved papaya, raisins, potato chips, fruit juice). This causes SO2 to be oxidised to form sulphates. This sulphate will precipitate out as barium sulphate when barium chloride is added.

My observation :- Boys got the droppers all mixed up and in the process contaminated the solutions!



Workshop 2 - Recycle Paper - Transform Newspaper to New Paper

What we did :- We blended newspaper shreds in a blender with some water. The resultant pulp was gently laid on a mesh that is submerged in a tray of water. The pulp is spread evenly to dry.


Some dried flowers were sprinkled throughout.

We had some leftover pulp, so we made a smaller circular shaped paper.


My observation :- This is the most straight forward of all the workshops. The boys needed to learn that "more doesn't mean better"... I had to remove most of the dried flower they "dumped" onto the paper.



Workshop 3 - Hydrogen Fuel Cell

What we did :- We produced hydrogen gas by reacting magnesium with hydrochloric acid. Hydrogen gas was tested using a glowing splinter.

Too slow in preparing the glowing splint. Ops... fingers too small to stopper over test-tube opening, so most of the hydrogen escaped! ... Managed to get a soft "pop"sound (positive test for hydrogen). Phew!


The set up here was used to electrolyse water.


Green solution of Universal Indicator was added into the water. We observe that the colours at the two graphite electrodes were different. The indicator cahnged to orange (acidic) on the anode (left arm) and violet on the cathode (right arm).

The electrode reactions are as follows:
at the anode:
2H2O(l) → O2(g) + 4H+(aq) + 4e–
at the cathode:
4H2O(l) + 4e– → 2H2(g) + 4OH–(aq)
Overall:
2H2O(l) → O2(g) + 2H2(g)

The aim of showing the children the electrolysis of water is to show the working principles of a hydrogen fuel cell. The electron gradient produced can be be channelled through an electrical circuit.



Workshop 4 - Green Chemistry - Balance with Nature

What we did :- We investigated the greenhouse effect of carbon dioxide. Two identical set up like this was set up.


Carbon dioxide was put in one of the boxes. The thermometer poked into the box allowed temperature in there to be taken over a period of 8 minutes after the lamp above it has been switched on. The temperature gradient was significantly higher in the box with carbon dioxide.


This was another experiment where we investigated on the effects of various solution on shells. You can see that there is a hole in the middle of the shell on the left. That is the result of submerging it in hydrochloric acid. This experiment aims to show the effect of acid rain.



Conclusion : I realized that my boys had a lot to learn about basic laboratory skills! These include measuring, planning and general apparatus handling. I found a simple lab sheet on Laboratory Safety and Measurement that we can work through at home. Alright, more hands-on session at home from now on...

Science :Botany - Ferns

I found it difficult to complete this chapter on ferns without mentioning the concept of the alternation of generations in plants. In the end, I decided to introduce it to my boys. These are some useful sites:

• an definition of terms used in the alternation of generations
  
• a worksheet that could be used with some modification
  
• clear diagram relating to the alternation of generations in ferns.
• a simple review game of the life cycle of ferns.

My objective is to expose them to the concept. I didn't want to overload them with technical terms.

I found a good diagram in one of my old Biology books called Botany: An Introduction to Plant Biology by Mauseth. (Here is another good diagram.) It shows the haploid and diploid parts of the fern in its life cycle. I found the easiest way to get my boys to understand this complex concept was to let them colour the diagram; using yellow colour to indicate the parts that are haploid (with one set of genes) and green colour for the diploid(with two sets of genes) parts. The "ah-ha" moment came as they were colouring.


From there, I could then further make a comparison between the spores of the ferns and the seed of flowering plants. They are not quite analogous. The spore is haploid while the seed is diploid, the result of a fertilization process.


We collected sporangium from our fern to view under our Brock Magiscope (mag:200x). I managed to capture it on my camera just by positioning the camera directly over the eyepiece!


You can see the thin side walls of the sporangium and the very faint outlines of the spores within. The cells surrounding have jointed rings (annulus) that will strighten hygroscopically to break the thin side walls, throwing out the numerous spores within. We left the whole set up as is to continue with our other activities for school. Three hours later, this was what we saw. The sporangium opened!



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Science : Botany - Gymnosperms

We learned about the different types of gymnosperms. Those that bear pollen cones or seed cones are the conifers. Those that bear berry-like cones are like junipers and yews. Then there are special ones that don't really bear cones but still have "naked" seeds, as is the characteristics of all gymnosperm. They are the ginkos and cycads.


One section focused on Softwood versus Hardwood. I proceeded to read a picture book called Woodlore by Cameron Miller and Dominique Falla. I picked this book up years ago in a garage sale. I was naturally attracted to its contents as my home has always been stocked with wood of all types. It starts out like this:

Yew trees grown throughout the ages,
Have the wood the bowyers favors.
Maple and spruce are always kings
For makers of lutes and violins.

This book is written in poetic form telling which types of wood are best for what purposes. Interesting!

The Elementary Apologia Science books have sections called Creation Confirmation. I love these as they are so important in building up our faith. Here's my boys narration for one of such sections in this chapter:

The world-wide Flood happened about 4700 years ago. We know that by counting the generations of people in the Bible. All trees will die in the world-wide flood. Seeds will still survive. All trees alive now must have grown after the Flood. The oldest living tree is 4700 years old. That is a good evidence that the Flood took place at about 4700 years ago.

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Science : Botany - Trees

This post highlights snippets of what we did for the chapter on Trees apart from our usual read aloud and narration of our Botany book.

We wanted to find out more about heartwood and sapwood. We found this site (Wood Magic) with very clear explanation. In fact we completed a notebook page based on our read alouds through these pages.

I made a set of 3-part cards for Twig Anatomy while my boys made theirs on the new vocabulary for this chapter. I just could not find the time to prepare these before hand. I have decided to keep it simple; no fancy coloured borders, no printed words, no lamination. I just coloured the respective parts of the twig and wrote the name of the parts down!



We reviewed our old 3-part cards for flower anatomy because my boys have forgotten that. I needed them to know because this chapter introduced the concept of "imperfect flower". Cannot expect them to know what is an imperfect flower if they don't first know what is a perfect one. Just love these 3-part cards. They are so convenient to pull out for reviews whenever we need it.

I decided to teach my boys the shapes of tree crowns. Different websites use different terminologies so I thought I'd just introduced them all. (They can be seen mainly in these two pictures: 1 and 2)

1. round/spherical
2. oval
3. V-shaped/vase/funnel
4. cone/pyramidal
5. columnar/tube
6. spreading/umbrella
7. weeping
8. irregular

This post is long overdue. I had initially wanted to follow this chapter up with an Adopt a Tree project that would continue for at least a year. However, some circumstantial changes at home has caused me to think we might not be living here for that long. This has caused me to procrastinate for quite some time; and was tempted to abort the plan altogether.

My original plan was to observe an adopted tree (within our neighbourhood) regularly over at least a year to see if we can observe any growth change or patterns. I noticed that some trees flower only at certain times of the year and some even shed their leaves almost completely. I am not sure these cycles follow a strict time period, so I thought it would be nice to investigate.

I later decided to allow my boys to make their observations anyway. This would serve to review many of the concepts covered in previous chapters. The following observations were made of their adopted tree. These will also be the guidelines for any of our future tree study:
1. tree - shape, height, branching patterns, height of lowest branch,
2. trunk - girth, bark texture
3. leaf - shape, size, margins, venation
4. flower - colour, growth pattern, petal arrangement, predict pollinator
5. fruit - colour, type, predict dispersal mode


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Learning the Constellations (Part 2)

After the excitement of spotting the Southern Cross, I decided it would be nice to be more familiar with all the other constellations. It has always been my dream that we can know the skies like some "wise men of the east". And hey! There just happen to be three of us! Hahaha...

I have been thinking of how we can systematically learn the constellations. Here is my plan.

I have chosen to use Stars: A New Way to See Them by Rey as our text and reference constellation chart. The lines he drew makes up a picture that better depicts the object that the constellations were named after (Rey tells you in English what those constellation names are.). This makes more sense than many other versions I have come across. You can have a feel of connecting the constellations using Rey's scheme here (These are not as detailed as those found in the book).

Another good point about Rey's charts is that they show the magnitude of the stars. This helps a lot in identifying a constellation. The relative brightness of the stars can help with differentiating say the Southern Cross from the False Cross.

There are 17 detailed constellation charts in the book. I figured that if we can familiarize ourselves with one to three charts a month (that is about the range that is visible in Singapore, right overhead, in a month) we will be able to cover most of them in a year or so.

I thought of a 3- stepped method:


Step 1 - Copy

Using the idea of copywork, I have asked my boys to copy the constellation I have chosen (based on what is visible during this time of the year) on our whiteboard. Brighter stars were represented with magnets.


This is my boy's version of the Centaur and Southern Cross.


Step 2 - Identify

I made quiz cards by punching holes on black paper to see if my boys (and I) could spot the constellation they have just learnt. These are replicates of chart 11 (Virgin, The Scales, Crow), 12 (Serpent Holder, Scorpion) and 17 (Southern Cross, Centaur, Wolf) from Rey's Star. Each chart is about 15 cm wide.



They look like real stars when held up against the light! I wanted these quiz cards to be circular so that one would have to figure out where north is. This is to me a very necessary life skill! See if you can spot the Southern Cross and the Centaur on any of these.

How did I make these?
I made a photocopy of the constellation chart from the book, place the copy on top of a piece of black paper and push pins on where the stars are supposed to be (making sure that the pins go through the copy as well as the black paper). I use pins for faint stars, a bicycle spoke (satay stick would do too) for brighter stars and a whole series of hole punchers with varying diameters for the very bright stars.

If this sounds too complicated, here is another idea that I have been toying with. It uses film canisters. (canister constellation template found here)

Step 3 - Star gaze

Obviously, the best way to acquaint oneself with the night sky is to gaze at it more often. We have started with the constellation we have learnt. It is interesting to see how the two-dimensional sky charts translates out into the vast night sky. We are not good at the real thing at all but I am hoping that we will improve with practice. :-b

The light pollution and the often overcast skies have been our main problems. Living in the heart of a densely populated estate also means we don't have one single location where we get an unobstructed view of the whole night sky. We have a relatively good view of the southern sky from our balcony, a not so satisfactory view of the northern sky from the staircase on the top floor of a neighbouring block of flats (corridor lights are really hampering our efforts) and a reasonable view of the sky right overhead from in the middle of the field in front of our block.

We go star gazing with our star charts (Rey's and one from Astroviewer that shows where the planets are too!), red flashlight (so we can look at your star chart without spoiling our vision for the stars) and a mat (to prevent neck aches!). I would love to have a green laser pointer (more information here) except that I found out that one costs a whopping S$400!!!


Here are some other tidbits I have found:

1. I recently bought a book published by the Singapore Science Centre called A Sky Book for the Tropics by Heong Kam Khow and Kamaria bte Abdul Ghani. It has the monthly star maps for the evening and predawn sky in Singapore.
   
2. This interactive site can be useful. It allows you to "see less stars", meaning that they reveal only the brighter stars. This gives a more realistic picture of what you are likely to see in a light-polluted sky like Singapore's. Constellation lines and names can also be switched on and off according to your preference.
3. My boys enjoyed another interactive site that gives an introduction to Orion and the Big Dipper. You read, look at the picture, click "next", follow instructions to spot constellation and so on.
4. Notebooking pages on the 27 constellations.
   
5. Cute song about the constellations.
6. Ebook/etext The Stars and Their Stories by A. M. M. Griffith.
   

Caterpillars

Last Friday, we were at a park and found a flowering plant that was infested with caterpillars. My boys were exhilarated!

We had many close encounters with caterpillars previously. We have so far managed to morph just one caterpillar but missed observing the crucial processes. Since then, we have been on a lookout for caterpillars. On most occasions, the one miserable caterpillar that we managed to find will die on us because we do not have the correct leaves to feed them.

This time, my boys made sure they harvested plenty of the leaves (and even flowers!) from the plant that they found the caterpillars on. They wanted to be sure we were successful this time so they harvested about 5 caterpillars!

These five hungry caterpillars ate up ALL the plant material we collected in less than a day! I wasn't too optimistic that these will survive. They were tiny and so would need a lot more food to fatten up before they are ready to weave their cocoons. It wasn't practical for us to go back to the park everyday to harvest fresh leaves for our caterpillars, so I did the most convenient thing; I plucked some leaves from one of my plants in my balcony. These were leaves that have yellowed and were those I would remove anyway so I didn't mind. To our delight, the caterpillars devoured these leaves!

We are left with three caterpillars. Two have escaped. We noticed that the smaller ones were able to squeeze through the tiny holes on the plastic aquarium we put them in. In fact, on the first few days, we found escaped caterpillars crawling on the floor. We have since transferred them to another more secure container.

A week has passed and the caterpillars are still alive, eating and growing. We are waiting and keeping a close watch ...

Learning the Constellations

We made it to the Singapore Science Centre Star gazing night on the night of Good Friday (10 April). The brief talk on constellations highlighted those that were visible this month and the next. Orion is in the middle of our field of view about 9ish at night. Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky(belonging to the constellation Big Dog) can also be seen. We were told of the rising of the Southern Cross later at about 10ish and subsequently shown on a simulator how it would look like (more like a kite than a cross).

We had to queue to see Saturn on the big telescope. The ring appeared just to be a line across the planet because this year, Earth and Saturn happened to be on the same plane. We were told that next year, a more distinct ring can be seen because we would be viewing Saturn somewhat "from above". I must admit, Saturn was disappointingly small.

The moon through the smaller free-standing telescopes that were set up looked more impressive in comparison. We were amazed at how fast the moon was moving across the sky; so fast that it kept going out of view on the telescope. Through the telescope, I could actually see the moon creeping!

The overcast sky that night did not allow us to see much more. Even Orion was hidden.

Volunteers at the centre were armed with a green laser pointer to show where the stars were. I made a mental note to try out my red laser pointer I have at home. (I later found out that red ones don't show up well in the sky - read more here) I have seen nature guides use this dandy tool to point at far off points of interest when I go for guided walks and have always wanted to bring it along with me when we go for our nature walks. (But there just seem to be so many things to bring I always forget.:-1

A few nights later as I was enjoying our aquarium in the balcony, I looked up at the sky and saw the distinct kite shape of the Southern Cross! I wasn't sure I identified it correctly so I pulled out our book Stars: A New Way to See Them by Rey (my favourite book on the constellations) to check. True enough, it really was the Southern Cross! I verified by checking the other stars around that constellation. Two other bright stars Alpha Centauri and Beta Centauri , belonging to the constellation Centaur, could be seen a little south-east of the Cross. That led me to find more of the stars belonging to Centaur.

I could not contain my excitement any longer. So off I went to dig my boys up from their beds to show them my "discovery"!

Science - BFSU : D1 Gravity

Building Foundation of Scientific Understanding has lessons in four separate pathways; these will normally be put in different branches of Sciences. The lessons are roughly arranged into these threads -
A:Nature of Matter
B:Life Science
C:Physical
D:Earth and Space Science.

But because these different branches are in fact very much interrelated, Dr Nebel, the author suggests covering across all branches instead of focusing on just one. Each lesson has its prerequisite lessons so that takes care of continuity and progression.

As such, you will notice that my BFSU posts may seem a little unrelated because of how I will be moving from one branch to another. The link is rather apparent when I read the content of each lesson. This approach appears to be the exact opposite of that taken by Jeanie Fulbright of Apologia. I see advantages in both these approaches. As it is now, I am enjoying the variety that these two curriculum is giving us!

We are now in the Earth Science branch (D).

D1- Part 1 - Gravity

We have previously read books on gravity so this is not a new topic for my boys. The additional information for them is how gravity acts on all matter and always acts downwards but yet when two objects put together, one has to consider relative density. The example given is how helium floats up in air, or how oil floats on water. The children were also asked why birds or airplanes can fly up. They are made aware that a greater force in the upward direction must be generated to overcome the gravitational force that is downward. This will relate to the lessons on forces later.

This simple "talking-it-out" and demonstration (to see how a droplet of oil falls down in air but floats in water) lesson culminated with the making of a minibook of the concepts that were discussed.


I like minibooks as compared to a worksheet or a blank A4 size paper for notebooking. A simple long-reach stapler and a few sheets of A5 size paper got the book ready to be filled in. The small size makes it less daunting for the children. Each page takes about 2 to 3 sentences or a small labeled diagram to fill. It gives my boys a tremendous sense of accomplishment and all with little effort. I get a record of what we do with little resistance as well. Retention of information is also high. A win-win situation.

Sometime ago we read a library book called Forces Make Things Move by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley. This happen to be a correlated book listed in BSFU. We liked it so much that we made minibooks on the topics. These are our orphaned minibooks (doesn't quite belong in any of our current lapbooks). The concepts in these were relevant for this topic on gravity so we used our minibooks to do a review.


The top minibook says " What is Gravity?". It was written in pencil so it doesn't quite show up in the picture.

D1- Part 2 - Vertical and Horizontal

This section appeared rather trivial to me at first sight but when I started reading and conducting the lesson, I was rather surprised by how the children were made to see vertical as relating to gravitational pull. And how this fundamental concept is a building block in understanding forces acting on objects that are not vertical, leading on to the importance of ascertaining true vertical.

Horizontal was explained as being level. After a series of thinking questions, the children were led to the conclusion that still water is a measure of exact horizontal.

We built a crude version of a surveyors gadget and a plumb line. I got the idea from 300 Science and History Projects by Oxlade, Halstead and Reid.


We made another minibook.

The assigned reading after this lesson was How to Build a House by Gail Gibbons. And just for fun, I also read 我来盖房子, a book in our Chinese Science Picture Book Series that I've got.

D1 - Part 3 - Gravity and the Orbits of Heavenly Bodies and Satellites

We talked about the forces that act on Earth that keeps it in orbit around the sun. There are two forces at play; namely gravitational pull of Earth on the sun (and vice versa) and the forward motion of Earth.


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Science - BFSU : A4 Particulate Nature of Matter

We continued with learning more about the properties of matter. We had previously learned that
1. Matter takes up space.
2. Matter has mass.
This time, we learned the particulate nature of matter.

Part 1 of the lesson involves showing that all matter are made of particles. Specific examples and experiments were given to show the children that matter whether solid, liquid or gas are actually made up of particles. We broke several types of material down to smaller bits and talked about the most fundamental particle that is still the same material. I thought the concept was very clearly demonstrated with all the examples given. I love the systematic methodology and thinking questions in BFSU.

Part 2 of the lesson aims to show the effect of temperature on particles. Discussion also led to the understanding of how particles are packed in the different states of matter.

In the above picture, the children get to see that particles move faster at a higher temperature. The glass jar on the extreme left had cold water, the one in the centre had lukewarm water and the extreme right one had hot water. It was obvious that when we release a small amount of food colouring at the bottom of the jar, the food colouring in hot water dispersed a lot faster.

One of the activities involves us pretending to be particles. Moving about whether holding hands with arms locked (as in solids) or loosely held (as in liquids) , or bouncing in straight lines off each other or off whatever that is in our way (as in gases). We had fun! So much so that the boys continued that game as we made our way to the supermarket; walking in straight lines and bouncing off walls. LOL!!!

A chance to "test" their understanding came when we were talking about the difference between melting sugar and burning sugar. I am glad to announce that they passed the test. :-)


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Science : Botany - Stem

We finally found the time to do Science in the third week of January.

The boys learned about woody versus herbaceous stems, xylem, phloem, cambium, auxin, phototropism etc. Since there were quite a number of new terms being introduced, I asked them to make their own 3-part vocabulary cards for these new terms. These cards were then stored in an envelope (the black envelope in the picture below) that is attached to the rest of their lapbook pages for this chapter. D and B were always very eager to match these cards whenever we started our Science session for this chapter. (For some strange reasons, I could not get the picture in the right orientation!)


We also learned about phototropism and the role of auxin from our Botany book. Here is our lapbook page on phototropism:


The sun in this page can be moved while the retractable straw "stem" follows it because it is stapled on the transparency sheet below. They all rotate on eyelets. I had purchased a set of eyelet setters from a scrapbooking supply store but had no idea how to use them. I learned how to set the eyelets by watching this videoclip. I used the eyelets to hole two pieces of paper together. It acts as the axis in which I can rotate the papers. We were VERY satisfied with this page we created!!! My hope is of course that the boys can remember the role of auxin in phototropism.

I must admit that creating our own lapbook pages is taking up more time than I would like. I am looking forward to completing Botany soon (was suppose to be finished by 2008 :-b) so we can start on either Astronomy or Zoology 1. There are free lapbook pages created by other homeschooling mums for these other books so I am hoping our study can move a little faster then...

We performed the suggested activity in our Botany book.



After about 3 hours, the leaves of the celery stick in the orange water was more orange in colour. The most obvious were the orange tips (which isn't in focus in this picture).



This picture shows the cross section of the celery sticks clearly showing the xylem (stained orange) in the celery stick on the right. The one on the left is the control.



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Starting a Fresh Water Aquarium

We were blessed with a free fish tank and all the add-ons needed to start a fresh water aquarium. I have put off setting it up for almost 3 months! This is due to hesitation on my part. I just wasn't sure I could cope with one more commitment. And all this time my boys have been begging me to buy fishes.

We finally did buy. 22 to be exact. That looked like quite many at first, but when we emptied them into our large tank, they hardly filled the tank!

Excitement was in the air. During the first few days, we spent many hours watching our fishes. I was glad we bought a variety of fishes as they each had their own characteristics and thus interesting to observe. They were rather therapeutic to watch.

We bought guppies, Neon Tetras, Mollies, and some others unknown fishes. The aquatic plants I chose without thought turned out to be rather hardy water plants. They are the Java Fern and Malayan Aqua Fern.

Within 2 weeks of setting up the tank, we discovered that our female guppy delivered 6 guppy fry. B described our experience in his blog. I read up more about pregnant female guppies here and gathered some other information for D to read and answer a few pertinent questions. He documented his "findings" in his blog too.


We learned about the gravid spot in females. This is a dark spot on the rear end of the abdomen of female guppies. The gravid spots are actually the eyes of the baby fry! Nearing delivery time, this spot becomes very dark. In the photograph above, you can see the distinct gravid spot of the female guppy below as compared to none observable in the female guppies above (although they were all obviously pregnant).

Our guppy fish fry were at first about 0.6mm long. They were almost transparent except for their large black eyes. They knew well enough to hide safely under rocks and amongst the leaves of the water plants in the tank.


Now after almost 3 weeks, they have grown to about 1.2 cm and have turned opaque and more brown. They have become bolder and were spied swimming fearlessly with the larger fishes.



It was not all well and good. We had many casualties to the point that my boys were making guesses as to which fish will die next! We found guppies rather vulnerable in general. However, thankfully, of the 6 guppy fry we discovered, 5 are still alive today. I hope we can be able to at least see ONE of them through to adulthood.

Science : Roots

We started out our study of roots by reading from Exploring Creations with Botany. After that, it was intensive work producing mini books and notebook pages for this chapter. Look at our work zone...


Here are some notebook pages that we added into our botany file. This page shows a flap book where the boys narrated what they have learnt about roots; their functions, development and morphology.


Our attempts in trying to make a mini tab book on geophytes (as mentioned in our Botany book) led us to google search for pictures. We found useful diagrams for our geophyte mini book here.


We chanced on a wonderful blog that has an interesting root word search that the boys insisted on doing. There were terms in this word search that were unfamiliar to us. This led us to google search for what these terms mean. In the process we learned about adventitious roots and the various types of adventitious roots. (Good information on adventitious roots can be found here.) We decided to make a notebook page on adventitious roots.


This site clearly explains how a fig tree starts off having aerial roots and how it gradually takes over its host with its strangling roots.

As we read up more on adventitious roots, we noticed that mangrove trees have specialized roots to adapt to their unique environment. This site has some good information on this.


At this point, I was getting excited because in a few days' time, the boys will be attending a Naturalist Camp in Sungei Buloh Wetland Reserve (a mangrove area). All these readings about mangrove trees will serve to gear them up for the camp. What perfect timing!


Visit Rumphius Science Webpage to learn more about how we approach Science in our homeschool.