Last Week's School Pictures

I didn't take the time to post a bunch of pictures with my Weekly Wrap-Up, so the school pictures get their own post this time.

In Science class, we tried doing our own chemical analysis of food.  We tested for oil by placing samples on brown paper for a few minutes.

When held up to the light, the places where there was oil should be translucent.

The water soaked into the paper, but there was a clear difference between that and the vegetable oil next to it.  The peanut butter contained oil, as did the tortilla chips, although it's very hard to see in the picture, since it was just a few small spots.  I think potato chips would have been a better sample for the purposes of this experiment, but I didn't have an open bag.  See the oily fingerprints under the apple slice sample?  Oops!!! LOL

Our next task was to test some samples for starch.  This can be done using iodine.  The reddish brown iodine will change color to a very dark blue when it combines with starch.

Final results show starch content in the bread and the flour, but not in water or the apple slice.  Thankfully, that worked the way it was supposed to!! And then the kids at the rest of the apple, along with some peanut butter and I think they had some tortilla chips too.  Upholding my theory that Science (and all school, really) is better when it involves food. 8-)

The other photo-worthy school event from last week was Field Day.  Our homeschool fellowship group holds a Field Day each spring, and this year we were blessed with a perfect day for it - not hotter'n blazes, and not rainy or drizzly.  The one downside was that the city park had mowed the fields without bagging the grass clippings, which I found really quite inexplicable.  Soccer fields, baseball outfields, etc - why would you NOT bag the clippings?  So when we all arrived, we had to have our boys rake so that we could use the fields.  I think we asked for some kind of discount on the field rental fee...  Anyway...  I didn't take many pictures, because I was kept rather busy keeping track of my group of third and fourth graders.  Our first event was an obstacle course and I got a couple of pictures there, then pocketed my camera until after lunch.

After lunch, we have some Tug-of-Wars.  The first one is usually pretty evenly divided with moms and kids on both sides (that's when I took these pictures), and then after that we go parents against the kids. And by "parents" I mean "moms, and one or two dads if we are lucky." We moms are definitely outnumbered (a disadvantage of the 'homeschool families are larger than average' stereotype! LOL) and although some years we give the kids a run for their money, this year was one of those in which we had no chance.  Too many teenage boys on the kid side of the rope...

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