So here are all the fun activities we did to make language arts and math a little more exciting this week:
For this letter identification game, I wrote all the letters of the alphabet in upper and lowercase on the top and bottom halves of each egg. Then, I took them apart and tossed them out in the yard. The boys had to go find the matching top and bottom of each egg and bring it back inside.
Once back inside, they had to match up the eggs to its rightful letter on the poster board.
After they got both parts of the egg with its matching letter on the poster board, they got to trace and copy (just trace for Sawyer) the letter on their lined paper. The great thing is: Hayden didn't even fuss about having to write his letters. He didn't even think of it as a writing assignment! Score!
This one was just for Hayden while Sawyer did Reading Eggs on the computer. I wrote several of his high frequency words and words from the book he was reading this week onto construction paper. Then, I cut them up and put them into some of the plastic eggs. He would have to pick out an egg, unscramble the letters, and find the index card with the same word on it. After he found the word, he'd read the word to me. This activity was actually pretty hard for Hayden. I only had him pick out 5 eggs thinking we'd be done with it within 15-20 minutes, but 45 minutes later he was still at it. I meant to do this once each day, and if I had followed through with this plan, I think he would have gotten better at it. It's a hard concept for sure because he's so used to seeing the letters in the correct order. So, I may try to do this once a week - without the Easter eggs maybe?
This one was more fun for Hayden. I had three Easter baskets lined up, each with a card indicating a specific word family (-at, -op, and -am). He is very familiar with the -at family, somewhat familiar with the -am family, and the -op family is new to him for the most part.
For this activity, I wrote a bunch of words onto the Easter eggs with the ending on the bottom half and the beginning letter(s) on the top half. I separated all the eggs into the same container. Hayden's job was to find the matching top and bottom (similar to the ABC hunt but with words instead of just letters), and then put the egg in the correct basket.
Easter Sentences
Another unscrambling activity, but pretty easy. It was just a fun thing to do to give me a reason to bust out my new sentence strip pocket chart and give Hayden a chance to understand the basic parts of a sentence.
That was pretty much it for the language arts side of school this week other than reading another book and working on our flash fluency cards. Now, on to the math part......
Sort and Graph
I love graphs! We had a good time with this one. The first thing I had Hayden do was sort out most of the Easter eggs by color (remember we had over 100 eggs and I was NOT going to graph that many eggs. We'd still be working on it today!). There were a few different shades of the same color, and after discussing it, we decided it'd be easier to just group them together as the same color. Otherwise, it would have become too complicated.
After sorting them all out, we built a bar graph on the board. I drew it out, and Hayden filled in the blanks.
Egg Patterns
I never thought we'd have a difficult time with this one because Hayden has always been good at identifying patterns. However, creating his own pattern is a whole nuther story. I showed him a pattern, and he could tell me what came next. Then, I told him to build a repeating pattern using 3 different colors of eggs. Instead, he'd make a long line of all these random eggs and say "This is my pattern." After correcting him and going over it several times, he finally got the hang of it. I'd have him do an AB, AAB, AABB, and ABC patterns. Then, he'd have to point to each egg as he called out the letter pattern. This seemed to be really helpful to him, especially if he got an egg out of order because then he was able to correct his own mistake without me having to say anything.
Easter Egg Number Hunt
Also similar to the ABC Hunt....I wrote the numbers 1-20 on some of the Easter eggs. Then, inside each of the eggs I put one of the other numbers. The goal here was to find all the eggs by using the numbers inside each egg. For example, the first egg he picked up was egg #8. Inside egg #8 was the number 15. So, he had to search for egg #15. Then, inside egg #15 was the number 3. So, his next egg to find was egg #3. Etc. etc. I thought I had done it correctly, but either Hayden misread one of the numbers, or I screwed it up because we wound up not going full circle as planned. Still, it was fun. Sawyer refused to participate on this one because he wanted to swing instead. Plus, I wouldn't let him just pick them up at random like he wanted to.
I guess I didn't get a picture of this one. But you can always go back and look at the ABC Hunt picture. It looked pretty much like the same activity.
And so ends our math activities for the week. Moving on to the big whammy of the week: SCIENCE! Our favorite subject of all!
So, I found a TON of science experiments involving eggs. It was great! The boys loved it, and we were checking back on our experiments every day. Here is what we accomplished:
Investigating Air Pressure with Boiled Eggs
This was the first experiment we did. It was really weird looking for the boys, and it was kind of a challenge because nearly all the boiled eggs we had were boiled beyond that "easy peeling" stage, and you really need a smooth surfaced egg for this to work right.
The first thing we did was find a large enough container that could hold an entire egg, but have a neck too small for it to fit through. That was a tough project in itself, but we finally found a salad dressing jar that worked out well enough.
Then, I lit a couple of matches and threw them into the jar while Hayden quickly placed the egg over the opening of the jar, and voila! The egg gets pushed down into the jar! (Well, it actually got stuck halfway through just like the photo below, but it was cool anyway).
Egg Geodes
This was really cool. We had lots of scrambled eggs the morning we did this activity because we needed 6 empty eggshells in order to do the experiment. Here's what they looked like after I broke off the top.
After the eggshells were ready, we needed rock salt (which we switched out for kosher salt after we couldn't get it to dissolve enough), sea salt (we used iodized salt), and borax to mix with hot water. We also needed some food coloring to help us keep identified which eggs held which solution. This was our whole setup. I ended up switching out the bowls for big mugs because we had to stir pretty vigorously to dissolve the salts and borax in the water, and the bowls just weren't deep enough to keep from making a huge mess.
Once we got everything together, I let each of the boys stir the solutions. Then, I poured them carefully into each of the eggs. Each solution filled up 2 eggshells with just a tiny bit left over.
We were supposed to leave the eggshells alone for 5 days in order for the water to evaporate leaving only the crystals from the salts and the borax behind. Sounds like a long time, but it was fun to watch the change each day. In fact, even by the end of just this first day, there were already crystals developing. This is what they looked like the next day.
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| Red - Kosher Salt Egg |
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| Yellow - Iodized Salt Egg |
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| Blue - Borax Egg |
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| We moved all the eggs to a mini muffin tin for a better (and more visible) container. As you can see, the iodized salt egg seems to be permeating the shell the most whereas the borax eggs are staying pretty much clean. |
After 4 days, this is what the eggs look like:
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| The Kosher Salt Egg crystals look like they have climbed up and over the top of the shells and moved on to the muffin tin. |
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| And the inside of the Kosher Salt Eggs are nearly evaporated entirely. |
The Iodized Salt Eggs have just permeated their shells. It almost looks soft and fluffy!
And the Borax Eggs look nearly identical to the second day of crystallization. Almost nothing has evaporated and it looks like very delicate ice crystals clinging to the inside of the shells.
We owe a big thanks to Steve Spangler for this one. He is one fun guy when it comes to science. If you've never heard of him or checked out any of his experiments, do it now. He's awesome.
For the naked egg experiment, we used a raw egg and covered it with distilled vinegar. Immediately, bubbles developed on the surface of the egg as the vinegar broke down the properties of the eggshell.
After 24 hours, we were supposed to change out the vinegar with fresh vinegar, and already, you could feel the eggshell disappearing. It kind of felt like a boiled egg. Once we put on the fresh vinegar, we're supposed to wait a full week before messing with it again. So, next Tuesday, we'll pull it out and see what other cool stuff develops. Today, it looks like this:
If you're thinking that it looks swollen and yellowish, you are right! It looks totally gross! Apparently, the vinegar is penetrating the membrane of the egg itself thereby enlarging the egg. So, the boys are learning the meaning of osmosis this week!
And that ends our "egg"citing week of egg lessons!! We will obviously be carrying over a couple of things next week. So, stay tuned....
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