The Night Sky

There are so many resources out there on the night sky (of which we only covered a fraction---we were focusing just on constellations this time) that I don't really feel like I need to add to them. I guess I will highlight this book as one of the very best---we loved his constellation drawings (MUCH easier to visualize and remember than any of the others we saw).

There are lots of fun activities and crafts to do; we'll try a new batch next time we study the night sky. This time we made up our own constellations with white-chocolate chips, made stargazers (fun), and learned The Constellation Song, which I remember fondly from my 2nd grade program. (I bought this whole album on iTunes and it is AWESOME; better than the [still fun but blatantly-anti-religion in some songs] They Might Be Giants remake. I learned most of the other songs in 2nd grade so I suppose I'm viewing it through a soft-filter of nostalgia, but my kids like it too.)

We were planning a trip to the observatory to wrap up the week, but unfortunately had cloudy skies. So instead, we got out these glowsticks that had been waiting around for the right time to be brought forth (I think I bought them for Christmas once and then forgot about them?). They are really fun---they change colors and have several different settings. The kids loved holding the glowsticks while wobbling around on their bikes like noisy little fireflies.

Night photography

On Thursdays, when he can, Sam teaches a class for us, usually an art-related lesson related to our current unit. I really love participating in these classes myself, and of course the kids love having their Daddy teach them. This week Sam's class was Night Photography. Since none of the rest of us are photographers, it was sort of an Intro to Photography class too, with an emphasis on low-light situations.

We learned about aperture, shutter speed, and ISO, which were all news to me. (He tries to teach me these things periodically but I always seem to forget. Hopefully this class will solidify it for me so I don't forget again!) We all got chances to practice and experiment with variations on these three settings. Sebby, especially, really got into it.

In fact, a few days later, he was still setting up this photo studio and making his (reluctant) siblings pose in it. :)

The best thing, though, was our night field trip. We went to a park with our cameras and tripod and used what we'd learned to take night photos. The results were not amazing, but they were really fun to get (and we learned a lot).

Seb took this one

Sam taught us how to do "light-painting," which we loved

And we liked getting images like this, of ghost-Sebby

Night Music and Poetry

One of my favorite parts of this unit, surprisingly, was playing these night-themed piano pieces for the kids.
I played Nocturnes by Respighi and Grieg and Chopin, and Debussy's Clair de Lune. We also listened to recordings of "Eine Kleine Nachtmusik" (how could we not?!) and Cole Porter's "Night and Day."

I remember having a conversation with my sister-in-law one time about teaching music to my (then hypothetical) children. I said I didn't know if I wanted to teach them myself, and she said, but didn't I want to share my love of music with them personally---didn't I fear that no one else could convey it the same way I myself could? I saw her point, and I saw that her enthusiasm for teaching her own kids was a huge bonus for them, but I still just wasn't sure: I'm not a piano teacher, I'm a pianist! I felt (and still feel) like I didn't have the extra musical energy (if that's even a thing), or the training, to improve my own piano skills at the same time I was trying to foster my kids'. Not that I couldn't gain that ability by experience, or that others might not do that very thing quite effortlessly, but I just didn't think I could. And I didn't really have the desire to.

All that background to say, that those were my feelings on teaching my own kids piano lessons---but I find that teaching them MUSIC is very different. Here is where I LOVE to share and discuss with them. I love to play for them and ask them, "What did you hear?" "What did you notice?" I love it when they say, "Play that part again!" or "How did you make those sounds?" It's so fun to share my excitement about music, as a language, with them---not necessarily the terms and the specifics (though I find those interesting and work them in when I can)---but just the overall joy of it all. The way certain chord progressions surprise us. The way keys have color, and mood. Text painting and tone painting. I loved those parts of my theory and music history classes and I really love sharing them with my kids.

Poems we talked about:
"Acquainted with the Night" (Robert Frost)
"The Raven" (Edgar Allen Poe)---they loved this one

Dreams and catchers

Annoyingly, when I was looking online for interesting ways to teach about dreams to kids, my searches kept returning hits for "Helping kids follow their dreams" and "Kids can dream big!" and so forth. No, no, no, I don't want my kids to FOLLOW their dreams! Just to learn about them. :)  I also got a really horrible book at the library that was outlined as follows: psychic dreams . . . are they real? . . . anecdote, anecdote . . . total lack of meaningful information . . . YOU DECIDE! If there is one way I can think of to totally freak my kids out and make them never want to face the world again, it is to tell them that their (sometimes weird, often disturbing) dreams are predicting the future. Honestly! I hate psuedo-science (not that I am discounting the idea that dreams may be predictive, but anecdotal "evidence" is never going to tell the whole story, and I resent them trying to pass it off as scientific).

Anyway, I had to resort to looking up sleep and dreams in my old psychology and child development textbooks and then making my own presentation from those. I also had this really good and useful book--very basic, but good. My kids loved learning about the stages of sleep and the (theorized) reasons for dreams---they found it fascinating---as well they should, since it IS fascinating! (Read this, for example!)

I tried so hard to think of an activity to go with this discussion, and finally settled on making dream catchers, since we had discussed several ideas, including legends, about why we dream/where dreams come from/etc. I don't love making crafts we aren't going to USE or that don't teach something interesting---but the kids ended up liking these and hanging them in their rooms with somewhat hopeful amusement ("They don't really catch the bad dreams . . . but they might!"). So I thought it was a good craft after all. It's fairly obvious how to make it (paper plate + strung yarn) but I did look at instructions here.

Nocturnal Animal games and Chirping Cricket Craft

"Nocturnal animals" as a category is, of course, too large to cover in a day, so we were specifically focusing on adaptations and the associated vocabulary. We learned about the tapetum in cats' eyes, the extra rods in owls' eyes, echolocation in bats, and stridulation in crickets. We played several really fun games (all of which the kids wanted to do again and again)---one was an owl/mouse game where the owl approached with stiff wings vs. soft wings (flapping paper vs. kleenex) and the mouse closed his eyes and could only run away once he heard the sound of the wings. Another was a game where we got a bag of objects, sat in the dark, and pulled the objects out one by one, trying to identify them by touch alone. After several minutes, our eyes adjusted and we could see too well for the game to be fun---which was a good chance to talk about pupil dilation, night vision and light sensitivity.

Afterwards, we made crickets. I found a few suggestions for showing the "cricket-chirp mechanism"(?) online, but none seemed quite accurate enough to be useful. In our books, the descriptions we read said one wing is serrated, like a comb, and the other wing is stiff, and the rubbing together of the wings makes the sound.

I found a paper-craft cricket pattern here, but it was very small and difficult to fold, so I knew that wouldn't work for the kids (plus it didn't chirp). Instead, I modified that pattern and enlarged it to just be a cut-out. I left in a few of the fold lines along the abdomen so it would have some texture. Then we just cut out both sections and attached them to a toilet-paper roll. (I can't believe I'm describing this; I feel silly doing so because I'm not even GOOD at crafts, but this worked and it got across the point I was trying to teach, about the way the wings work, so I just reproduce it here in case it's at all helpful for anyone else Googling "cricket craft" like I was.)

Okay, so here are the images I printed (each of these was full-page size; on the lower image you only need one of the bodies, obviously, per cricket)

The dotted lines are "mountain" folds, the dot-dash lines are "valley" folds

Next, you make a slit and a hole about 1/3 of the way into the toilet paper tube. Into the slit you slide a comb; into the hole you insert a drinking straw (larger-diameter straws make a more resonant sound).

Then you just tape the head, thorax and wings of the cricket the the front of the toilet paper tube, on the short side, in front of of the straw and comb. Leave the wings free; they flap up and cover the comb and straw (since the comb and straw are supposed to be PART OF the wings). You can tape the comb to its wing, but leave the straw free since you'll be getting it in and out. You can cut the straw so it's the same length as the wing.

Like so. Ignore those green tubes; Seb just taped the extra parts of his straw onto his cricket's back for fun.

Behind the straw and comb (on the other 2/3 of the tube), you tape the abdomen. Fold the sections first if you want it to be ridged. Then tape it down, so the legs wrap around the side of the tube.

From the front he looks like this.

To create stridulation, you remove the straw and scrape it along the comb. My kids liked experimenting with different techniques to get better sound (along the inside of the comb teeth vs. along the outside, with the end of the straw vs. with its side, etc.)

If you'd like to hear the sound, you can listen to this: (it's not exactly like crickets, but you can imagine how this same effect does produce their sound. I think if I could have found a way to get higher-pitched combs [smaller ones?], the sound would have been pretty realistic).

Night Unit (and the Morning Bakers)

There is so much great literature featuring NIGHT as a theme or a symbol. We loved all the stories we read this first day, and kept track on a wall chart of what the different connotations and metaphors associated with the nighttime were. After we read a bunch of stories using the "something secret that happens while everyone else is asleep" formula, we wrote our own on the same theme. (Well, I wrote Malachi's while he dictated.) The boys got really into it, especially Abe, who made chapters in his. So cute!

We also read a few books about jobs that happen at night. We talked about which ones we would like to do, and which ones we wouldn't. Then we made bakers' hats (I looked at this for instructions but ended up just sort of winging it. Crafts are not really my forte.):

I told them whoever wanted to could join me in getting up at "bakers' hours"--4 a.m.--to bake cinnamon rolls for our breakfast the next day. They all wanted to.

They were sleepy, but willing, the next morning. (I didn't wake up Daisy.) They wore their hats, of course. It was fun to be up in the dark and talk about what it would feel like if we had to get up every day at 4 a.m. We got the dough rising for its first rise, and then went outside for a walk in the dark. We listened to all the night sounds and speculated about any cars or lighted houses we saw: why were they awake? Where were they going? The boys were so happy and talked in giggly whispers. They loved the feeling of being awake while everyone else was still asleep.

I made everyone go back to bed while the dough rose. They all said they were too awake to go back to sleep, but they all did fall asleep anyway. :)  When I woke them up the second time, it was good because we were able to talk about that hour of sleep, how long it had seemed, if they'd dreamed, etc. even in that short time---a good prelude to our discussion on sleep and dreams the next day.

We shaped the rolls and made frosting while they rose again, then baked them.

The cinnamon rolls were delicious and we all had a new appreciation for people who get up early to do their jobs! If I had to get up at 4 every morning to do something, I suppose baking would be the best thing. The boys said we should do this every day. I said NO. :)

Demolition

I decided to make the last day of this unit a study of other uses of explosives---they're not only for fireworks, after all. We read some fascinating books on demolition, and watched some videos:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sK50So-yYRU&feature=youtube_gdata_player (this was the best one we saw---a great montage of different demolitions---the kids wanted to watch this over and over)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ggg3C87UVCY&feature=youtube_gdata_player (the kids thought this was hilarious)

The night before, I had the unexpectedly brilliant idea of having the kids carry out their own demolition with blocks. It sounds like kind of a terrible idea, doesn't it? But it wasn't. It was so fun! The kids looooooved it.

First we surrounded the area with blue CAUTION CAUTION CAUTION tape (very important), and added some animal bystanders. Just to make it interesting. :) We wanted our building to collapse within its own footprint, if possible.

Our first attempt

The suspense was significant! My heart was pounding as we did our first countdown. :)

This one was pretty much a failure. The building wasn't sufficiently weakened beforehand. It hardly collapsed at all, as you can see.

Oh, I suppose I should specify how we made our "explosions": I just tied dental floss (leaving the ends long enough to trail out away from the building) around the most important blocks. The boys decided which ones those were (usually some central pillars on the first and second floors, or foundational blocks around the edges). When the countdown began, everyone grabbed a few strands of floss and, at the appointed time, PULLED outward. It worked pretty well, considering. (Considering what? That it wasn't dynamite, I guess.)

After that first try we got smarter, and more complicated. We had sequential explosions going on (this is a very useful technique, but tricky for certain ones among us to master---the older boys inspired much awe and fear with their insistent warnings and instructions). Unfortunately, a few animal bystanders were taken out in this explosion---well, let's not mince words: killed---but the children showed an admirable ability to put it behind them and try again.

This attempt was even better. Only a few casualties.

The final attempt! Sober and concentrating faces.

Demolition in action!

Anatomy of a firework

There are some really cool books and websites that explain how fireworks work. One of our favorite websites was this one, but there are lots more. This one was extremely helpful as well.  Inspired by this picture:

we decided to try to make our own fireworks models, with viewable cross-sections, of course.

I broke out the dried beans, colored lentils, and black sesame seeds. Ah, the joys of spontaneous creation and using what we have on hand. :)

The boys loved carefully including each part: the timed fuse, the short fuse, the lift charge, the burst charge, and so forth. Malachi and Daisy just wanted to pour lots of beans in theirs, and Junie (providing a nice symmetry) wanted to empty all the beans OUT.

We also found several diagrams/lists like the one above, telling about the names of various firework effects. You can even take a quiz here, though we found this one a little bit lacking in clarity. Still, it was fun.

Sparklers and Colored Fire

Probably my favorite part of our Fireworks Unit was this colored flame demonstration. We had talked about chemical compounds and their flame colors, but seeing them actually burn was just amazing. The first time we did this I used old mandarin orange cans to light the flames in, but then we wanted to do it again and glass bowls worked just fine too.

These are the chemicals we used. I had read that boric acid was available "at any pharmacy, as an eye antiseptic, or home improvement store, as ant and roach killer." I knew as soon as I read the words "readily available at your local ____" that I was in for trouble (I can never find anything that's supposed to be "readily available" at grocery stores etc.). And sure enough, none of the ant killers at Home Depot listed boric acid as an ingredient, and the lady at Walgreen's Pharmacy said she never carried it anymore. BUT, I lucked out and found it in this huge container at IFA (it's used for an eyewash in horses, apparently). IFA also had this antifreeze, brand-named HEET, which is just methanol. (I also saw some at 7-11.) Methanol is what you use to mix with the other chemicals since it gives you a nice clear blue flame. You just pour a little bit of each chemical (they're powdered) in your container, pour methanol over them, stir each to dissolve, and then light them.

We ordered the lithium chloride online here.

I just love this colored fire. I could have watched it burn all night. So pretty!

The idea for this next experiment came from this video here (subscription required). Basically, it just shows how they make sparklers: they use tiny bits of iron to create sparks. In the video he shows how you can file an iron nail and sprinkle the filings on a candle to make those same kind of sparks. We just decided to try it on the spur of the moment after watching the video, and I didn't think it would work since I didn't even know if our nails were made of iron or if I'd be able to get any filings from them. But they were and I did, and the kids  LOVED watching the sparks come from the candle. They even understood why it worked (more surface area=more oxygen, plus the smaller bits heat up faster) thanks to our study of combustion the day before.

The cast of characters

Success!

Thus prepared, we were able to enjoy our Fourth-of-July Sparklers at my mom's house even more! 

Hooray!