4.5.14 Science Fair

What a weekend. And it continues thru this week. An ambitious teacher at the kids school is hosting a science fair this week. I admit I am thrilled with the idea and love the thought of it... the doing has been much more of a battle. 1. to find to unique science projects two kids would agree to spend their time on- meaning I scratched anything volatile, expensive, and over my head. So yes I guess we went into it as a downer but we have had a lot of learning happening even though I was helicopter parenting- or knowing our limits and tendencies!

I loved Aliza's experiment figuring out the best laundry detergent. It was fun to orchestrate meaning help her stain things, help her figure out how to replicate the washing machine, watching her and her brothers "agitate the soap" or dance!! And it has been pulling teeth to do the write-up but good. I see holes in her super duper learning and reputation as being the top academician in her school and things we are going to work on in the coming months.

The stains hot chocolate, grass, mustard and black pen ink.

Mimicing a washing machine by shaking mason jars. We used two temperatures of water and three soaps with no soap as a control. Tide was the clear and clean winner. All with oxi was a close second.

Harold and I are still in process on his. He always makes me thankful I went to college that I learned a little more than he wants to know right now. This weekend it was microscope time. Ugh I hate microscopes! It's so hard to share what you see. But I think we finally got the hang of it and found some interesting phenomena.
We were clued into a new process where people in third world countries can purify water in plastic water bottles bottles, more info HERE by placing it on their roofs for the sun and UV rays to kill the dangerous bacteria. A sweet friend came to get strawberry plants and while weeding my overgrown bed expounded her knowledge of water practices in other parts of the world. How I want to be a knowledgeable person like the ladies in her family. They are all interesting, well read and kind, and most impressive to me very strong in their sense of self and not self-centered, rather concerned with helping others and making the world a better place.  We found that water that had sat on the kitchen counter was much more dead than fresh water collected within hours of observation. This was a thankful finding as I was super frustrated looking through the microscope at the same nothingness from our original samples. Finally viewing fresh water showed activity and life and we changed our hypothesis.
Trying to help Harold articulate this to the judges did not happen as he did not place in the fair but the time spent with him and the energy that comes from learning was priceless. For some reason he gets or needs that uninterrupted one on one mom time where we do some project together. Last time it was taking care of the neighbors  chickens while she recovered. I'm thankful to be able to spend the time with him even though it is really hard to leave the other 8 and spend much needed time and thought on the 1. Oh the trickiness of being a mom.

Mr. Huston was so patient and kind to open his lab and help us with supplies to achieve Harold's objective of looking at stuff under a microscope.

Figuring out how to manipulate the functions of the microscope. Note our jar of rain water from a puddle in the background. It takes a solid week for all that suspended dirt to settle. I watched.

John and Addie collecting fresh water samples