Tiffany Tuesday - The Apple Experiment

A guest post from Tiffany, who is starting a new semi-regular feature, Tiffany Tuesdays. Enjoy!

This was supposed to go up yesterday, but my shoulder left me immobilized most of the night last night.  But here you go, anyway!

Monday, when we went to the library, I told Isaac that he needed to choose 1 apple and 1 pumpkin book BEFORE he chose 2 train books.  Well, he did one better and chose 2 apple books, 1 pumpkin book, and 2 train books (including one about how they brought Abraham Lincoln's body back from Washington D.C. to Illinois for burial).  On our way home, Isaac dove into his first apple book ("My Apple").  It's a great little book with various mini-experiments for kids to do with apples. Well, he found the "does it float or sink" page and wanted to know the answer.  One thing I like about this book, is that it doesn't give the answer, forcing you to do the science experiment with him.

We dialoged a bit about apples and whether they might float or sink.  I asked Isaac what he thought would happen. He answered with, "I think the apple will sink."  I decided now was a great teachable moment and taught him a $5 word, explaining that when we make a guess about what will happen and then do an experiment to find out, our guess is called a hypothesis.  And oh, how I wish you could hear him say it.  It is unbelievably cute!  

So, we got home and raised the platform on our learning tower.  Zeb got out a bowl of water, and I raided our bag of apples left from our picking adventure last week!  

Here is our first go round at introducing Isaac to the Scientific Method...


The Question: Will apples sink or float? 
Hypothesis: The apple(s) will sink.

Experiment: 

1. Place one small apple in the bowl. 
2. Place one large apple in the bowl.
3. Place multiple apples in the bowl.
4. Let them be kids and just make a royal mess...

Conclusions: 

1. The small apple floats.
2. The large apple floats.
3. You can put 4 apples in the bowl and they still float!
4. We had to leave the tower upside down overnight to let the feet dry.

And the documentation of said Scientific Method!

 

And if that weren't enough, Isaac's class "Storybook Forest" had the theme of apples this week!  They did some fun crafts and read the book "Ten Apples Up On Top", which is a fabulous book if you've not ever read it!  One of their activities was to put 10 apples on the page (picture below).  Isaac did put exactly 10 pictures on his page, which is not a surprise.  What was startling to his teacher, and what I thought was pretty cool, was that he put 3 of the apples in their mouths.  A few minutes later, he went to his teacher and asked, "May I please have another apple paper. The kids' apples are in their bellies now."  She let him have another paper.

Isaac is doing very well at homeschool co-op and even helps to clean the rooms afterward to earn money for things he wants to save up for. He has the opportunity to sit and watch a movie, but chooses cleaning instead!  I love this kid and it makes the cleaning job (we have for 6 weeks) go so much faster and a lot more fun!  Hopefully, Zeb will post soon about Isaac and his money scheme plan!