Wednesday, October 29, 2014

Apologia Swimming Creatures Ch 1 and 2

"Science with out religion is lame, Religion with out Science is blind." Albert Einstein


The Little Lady is doing Apologia Swimming Creatures as her 9 week subject. (We do Math/English the entire year and switch other subjects out every 9 weeks. This allows us more focus time on the 9 week subjects!)  The Little Lady  has probably read ALL the Apologia Early Explorer books over three times already.  (So, I am looking into adding the Creation Museum Science books for more Science subjects.)   Her favorite subject is Science. She loves to learn about animals the most!  So when I asked her what she wanted to do for science this 9 weeks, she requested to do as many science experiments as we can  out of the  "swimming creatures" book and also asked me to add  more to the program! Not sure if I will get to do as much as she wants in just these 9 weeks but we are working on it now!  

On Monday's we read an entire chapter out loud from the Science book. There are actually 13 chapters in this book so with shorter chapters I double up chapters to complete it in the time allotted.  Tuesday through Friday, in the afternoon,  the Little Lady works a little in her Swimming Creatures Journal, does science experiments, works on making a clay diorama of sea animals and watching video clips that have been assigned.


In the first chapter it talked about ocean currents and how animals catch rides on currents.
She did an Ocean Current Illustration with Cheerios/Luck Charms.  You take two hair dryers one on either side and point them at the each other but across the water to where the water make ripple currents.  The food eventually follows the current ripples.  Often times the cheerios will go around in circles.
Chapter 1 also talked about how cold water sinks.  So, she did an experiment where she added  food coloring to hot water in a bowl.  She took a cup and put yellow die in it. The cup was filled with cold water with ice cubes.  She poked a small hole at the bottom of the cup. Then lowered the cup into the hot water.  The cold liquid slowly came out of the bottom of the cup.  Although you could see the yellow,  cold water coming out of the cup, the liquid did not mix the colors. The cold water did indeed just sink. Results: 1st picture.

The second half of the experiment was to flip the waters. Put cold water in the bowl and dye it yellow.  Then take blue hot water and put it in the  cup.   Make a pin hole at the bottom of the cup.  This time the hot water (warmed by the sun in theory) mixed with the cold water mixed together.  So, the hot water became cold and did not retain its heat.  Results: 2nd picture.   


The Next Experiment the Little Lady did was one on water pressure.  This experiment was to illustrate what happens to your lungs and body as you go deeper into the water.  The deeper you go the smaller your lungs get until they compress in on each other. So, for this experiment when you stepped on the bottle it made the balloon smaller. When you took your foot off of the bottle the balloon went back to the size you had blown it up.

Another experiment was to show how salt water does not freeze as fast as water with out salt.  
This experiment just required two styrophone cups.  You just add 2 tablespoons of salt in one of the cups of water. Then, pop those cups into the refrigerator and record your findings every few hours.  
 After about 2 hours, the salt water was slushy. The water with out salt totally frozen.


2nd Chapter talked about Dolphins and Whales. 

The Little Lady and I did this experiment with two cups and string. 
It was to show how sounds can follow longer distances. 
Sound travels father under water and it was just a cute little fun activity to tie in the sonar of the dolphins too!

As you can see everyone else also get to try their hand at the experiments too. 
So, you will often find everyone participating even if their science is a different theme.



The Little Lady is required to make a clay diorama for her Science project. 
So, she will be making clay animals as we go through the book. 
Here is just one of her creations. 
The dolphin.

Movie clips: 
Chapter 1:  Deep Sea by IMAX 

Chapter 2:  
The Little Lady has been watching clips from Blue World by Johnathan Bird. 
He is oceanographer/diver.  You can see small 10 minute clips off on you tube. 
So, for the whale and dolphin chapter she watched 
Johnathan Bird's: Blue World 
Blue World: Whales
Blue World:  Sperm Whales
Blue World: Wilma the  Whale
Blue World: Sully the Pilot Whale

Blue World: Curacao Dolphins
Blue World: Wild Dolphins

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