Think Back Thursday: Science

We are thinking back about science this week. I collected some pictures of the hands-on type things that we've done during science classes over the last couple of years, and have included links to some of the past blog posts that explain a little more about the experiments or activities. I hope the pictures are entertaining, and that some of the links provide useful information and ideas!

In 2007, we studied Geology. We did a lot of hands-on activities, including making our own 'metamorphic rock' by applying heat and pressure from our hands to Laffy Taffy to make 'marble'.

One of the kids' favorite activities was making an edible volcano. It's made out of ice cream, with chocolate syrup 'lava' and chocolate cookie crumbs for 'ash' and then we put a little bit of root beer on it too.

In the second semester of that year, we studied meteorology. One of the things we did was make whirlwinds/tornadoes.

We made quite a few weather instruments at home, including our own anemometer (which measures wind speed).

For the 2008-2009 school year, we worked on Physics. We studied simple machines and how they are combined into more complex machines, and we learned all about the laws of thermodynamics and motion.

This is from a lesson on how screws are actually modified wedges.

In this lesson we were studying gears and how they work.

Our 2010-2011 science course was Chemistry.

This is part of Kennady's diagram on the nitrogen cycle that cracked me up. It's a dead hippo, in case you can't tell.

There were lot of chemistry experiments for us to do.

One of them involved making our own soda. The lesson Soda and Science was about solutions and suspensions. We made a cola and an orange soda.

And we found out that club soda doesn't taste very good all by itself.

Of course, we learned about a lot of flavors that we liked much better, like chocolate and spices. I wrote a blog post about some of those lessons called Science Class=Delicious!

I summarized a lot of the information from the Chemistry study in my Blog Cruise post on How I Finally Learned to Love Science.

In 2011-2012 we studied Ecology and Ecosystems. We got to experience a couple of biomes first-hand during the school year. The closest to us was the deciduous forest, so we took A Walk in the Woods.

That year I was teaching a physics class at our spring co-op, and Landon and Kennady helped me prep at home for the class. I posted the lesson plans for the class week by week. Go to Physics Week Eleven and find the links for all the previous lessons.

We learned how suspension bridges distribute stress.

We built miniature trebuchets and catapults.

We made a Viking catapult too, although it didn't work nearly as well as we'd hoped.

We made staff slings and tested them out by flinging water balloons.

And finally, this past year we studied Classical Astronomy. Our major project was making a backyard compass that we could use to orient ourselves and make observations of the skies throughout the year. I explained how to make a backyard compass in An Astronomy Update.

And we worked on some projects inside that helped us understand the movements of the sun, moon, planets, and stars that we can observe.

We also had some fun with an outdoor project that helped us understand the relative distances of the planets. 

Okay, actually what they are doing here is extra to the lesson... we marked out distances of the planets, but they decided to put the asteroid belt across our road too. LOL

This was from Supercharged Science, which we reviewed in the spring.

How do you make Science fun in your homeschool? Leave a comment and let me know!

This post is linked at: Debbie's Digest for Think Back Thursday. Visit Debbie's Digest to join in with Think Back Thursday, and to see what other bloggers are sharing this week. Upcoming themes include: Vacation

 Think Back Thursday is a photo meme that encourages sharing something from the past.  It is hosted by Debbie's Digest.  You can find out more about it, and how you can participate, by clicking the link or the button below.  

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