Apologia's Chemistry & Physics Update

I have been slacking this year with blogging....had high hopes at the beginning of the year, but you know, life happens.....living in the moment happens.....can't document everything!  We started the year with Real Science 4 kids Chemistry for upper grades with Thumper & Bambi.  It was not clicking with them at all!  Some of the experiments were working but the reading was just too confusing for them.

I wanted Chemistry & Physics this year together so I bought Exploring Creation with Chemistry and Physics through Apologia.  I read the text and edit a lot of the reading.  It is very wordy....I skim through to pull out the main ideas of the lesson....Bambi notes any science terms and they both write narrations on what they learned from my reading/lecture.  I bought the Jr. Journal for Thumper so he would not feel left out when Bambi does her journaling.  I definitely could have just had them create science notebooks like we did last year instead of spending the extra money.  But it is all there....they don't use every sheet of the notebooking journal, which in my opinion has told me that this was a waste of moo-la!

Experiments have been great!  We don't do every single one of them though..... It is a little annoying if you don't do an experiment because the text following it talks about that experiment.  This is why I read it and not the kids!  So far we have finished up to Lesson 7...... (The first 5 lessons of the book is Chemistry & the rest of the book is Physics) The kids want to get to the Electricity, Magnets, and Machines so we will be jumping ahead to finish out the year with the last three lessons of the book.  Next year, we will study the rest of the topics of Energy, Thermal Energy, Light, & Sound, using this book and most likely adding in our Kingfisher Encyclopedia. (Flower does jump in with our videos and experiments...she is studying the same topics but using Science Fusion.)

Through the year we have used Discovery Education videos (sign up for their free month trial then order from this site b/c it is sooo much cheaper) before and after lessons.  Study Jams (Free) is another great supplement....concept videos are short & sweet and work well to start the lessons off.  The kids have been watching Popular Mechanics for Kids on Amazon Prime and they absolutely LOVE it!  (If you have Amazon Prime then all the seasons are free for you to watch)  I think they learn more from watching those videos than they do in our science lessons!

I'm adding some pictures below of some of our experiments we have done in Apologia's Chem & Physics.  Though I have mixed feelings about this book....I do like the consistent lay out and schedule it provides.  I seem to tweak just about everything anyway....I don't feel I would be happy with just one resource anyway!  Here you go!

Lesson 1:  Density

Lesson 1:  Buoyancy

Lesson 1 Project:  Lava Lamps!  This was neat!

Lesson 2:  Learning about Solid, Liquid, and Gas Atoms.  I don't think this was an experiment in the book.  I think I got it from somewhere else....they enjoyed doing it at snack time.  This really cemented the idea for Thumper!

Lesson 3:  Atoms and Chemical Reactions.  We immediately moved from a cookie sheet to a big bowl once we realized what we were about to do!  This one was fun!

  

Lesson 3:  Atom Anatomy, protons, electrons, neutrals using m&m's....

Lesson 4:  Making a Polymer ball!  

        

Lesson 5:  Colloids....making butter from cream.  We loved this!  The kids did it all week!

Lesson 5:  Homogeneous Mixtures.

Lesson 6:  Making a Newton's Cradle

Greek Feast!

We have been learning so many great things about Ancient Greece!  We are coming to an end with Greece and decided to throw a little Greek Feast.  To prepare for this feast, the kids researched some foods that were eaten in that time period.  We made a field trip to our Greek Market to see some of the products from Greece.  There was a lovely lady that worked in the bakery that gave the kids a lesson on Greeks while I shopped!   We also found some music that the Ancient Greeks may have listened to and of course we dressed the part!  Plenty of activities after our yummy feast!

 Greek Sweets!

 Greek Rose Water.... it wasn't as good as we thought!  I would suggest adding it to a beverage, like lemonade.  Don't drink on its own!

The feast begins!

Ionic Column

Eating like the Greeks!

Making eyeballs for the "Cyclops" game!  Pin the Eye on the Cyclops!

 Greek Designs........ Painting terra cotta pots.

Essentials in Writing Crack Up!!

I got a kick out of Thumper's writing assignment from Essentials in Writing grade 2 the other day!

In this lesson, I stepped away from the table to let Thumper do this on his own.  His assignment was to write about his mother or father, practicing using capitalization in sentences and names of people.  When I returned to the table I was amazed at how well he wrote and how humorous it was!  I knew he could do this on his own and now he knows that writing isn't so bad when you can make your mom giggle.

Essentials in Writing has shown Thumper that writing isn't as scary as he thought.  He is definitely building confidence in writing, spelling, and editing.  We are only on lesson 19 and I can't wait to see how much more his writing skills will flourish by the end of the book.  Writing has become an enjoyable part of Thumper's day.  I only assign it on Tuesday and Thursday, but since he has become fond of it recently, I may add a third day of writing.