SCIENCE EXPERIMENT & SNOWSTORMS !

What else does one do with a pile of weather-related science books for elementary grades (K, 2 and 4) and a major Nor' Easter snowstorm underway ?  Well, of course it's a great time to use one of the stories, select a science experiment that goes along with it, and learn something new.

We snuggled on the sofa, and the book we read that was connected to the experiment is titled, Hurricane Watch by Frank Branley.  The book discusses how hurricanes develop, expand, are tracked as well as covering safety tips for people who live near the water, or even inland.  I think that it taught about a frightening subject to children in a very tasteful manner.  There were even references to three major hurricanes and there were colored paths showing the tracks that they took, along with citing the m.p.h. for the highest winds recorded.  Interesting.

So, back to our experiment...
We opened the door to our back decks and Sophia, Louis and Madison each made a snowball from the freshly fallen snow.  The snowballs were placed into a ziplock bag and the time was noted.  We took pictures and notes every 15 minutes to watch the snowballs in the melting process.  They were placed on the kitchen counter.  It took just about one hour and 15 minutes for the snow to melt completely.

Tomorrow, we'll transfer that information into a paper on scientific experiments and have them write it up like a lab; make some charts...good experience !  It fits in nicely with our study of weather - a unit study, that is.

We learned from watching The Weather Channel and recording our findings on a large Weather Tracker wipe-off board that I splurged on for the children.  Additionally, we're using the Weather Channel's "kids' section" of  their website to learn a lot, too !  Check it out http://www.theweatherchannelkids.com/ .

Here are some pictures from our 29+ inch snowstorm today, as well as our time tracked snowball melting experiment.  Gotta love New England !

The biggest shift in the melting process happened between 30 and 45 minutes for sure, as you can see from the difference between the pic above and the one below.

Thank you for visiting the blog !  Now that the holidays are gone by and we're recovering from lots of friends and family fun, there will be more time for posting.  I have a l-o-t of great homeschool information to share for all ages.  Stay tuned =-)