Wingardium leviosa

Lately my son and me are preoccupied with the story of Harry Potter, So I came across this wonderful spell which is used to elevate objects.

I couldn’t resist thinking about Gravity in this context. But also that science can’t explain real magic and that maybe people are so fascinated by magic because it defies the laws of science. 

Some milestones in the research of gravity:

Galileo started dropping things from Pisa tower to show that they will hit the ground at the same time. Surprisingly, a feather and a hammer will hit the ground at the same time because Gravity pulls them to ground with the same force.

In 1687 Isaac Newton Figured out the rules for how Gravity works.

….And last week the kids and us were rediscovering gravity during Science Kids, “How Gravity Works?” unit.

Here are some photos:

Keep experimenting with Gravity. It has everything that’s fun about science.

Aliza.

Keep in touch

Hello Parents,

What a great 5 Wednesdays I had because of you all guys. Thank you everyone for participating in the last round of SEEDS in Mountain View. Wanted to let everyone know how we can keep in touch with each other.

Here are some ways:

Email. Don’t hesitate to shot me in email if you feel like it. AlizaSavransky@gmail.com.

Blog. I am blogging here about SEEDS rounds and Science Kids rounds. I am blogging about variety of subjects. Please find what you are interested in and don’t hesitate to comment or ask me some more questions about what you read.

Facebook. Join the “Talk to me, I’m yours forever” (Secret) Facebook group. This is the link: https://www.facebook.com/groups/721727114574655/?ref=br_tf.

I’ll miss you all.

Aliza.

My take on “Art Studio” (Elizabeth’s class)

I was assisting Elizabeth in her class, “Art Studio”, for 4 weeks during summer and I had an absolute pleasure. I also spent one of the sessions with my daughter that especially liked the part in the class where Elizabeth showed different pictures of art connected to facial expressions. Later, they created two masks, happy and sad face. We enjoyed changing masks in a fast pace for ourselves later at home. We also noticed the facial expressions of different faces in magazines or pictures hang at our home.

Inspired by this class I designed an activity to do with my kids during our visit to MOMA (Museum of Modern Art) in New York. What I did, is to build a “Family Art Scavenger Hunt” in the museum.

What I did?

I chose some of the art pieces aimed to a young audience that MOMA is offering. For each, I created a hint, a picture or a video. I glued the hints to different pages of an empty booklet, added some suggested activities for the hinted work of art, and left an empty page for the kids to artistically express themselves. I also asked them in the very beginning of our visit to draw their own self portrait. 

The Kids Self Portraits.

     

An example,

The work of art: “The dream” by Henri Rousseau, 1910

The hint

This photo is taken from a famous Hebrew children book: “Mitz Petel” (“Rasperry Juice”) by Haya Shenhav. Mitz Petel (Raspberry Juice) is a mysterious creature lives in the woods, but hides his identity from the other creatures. Everyone, of course, want to discover what kind of animal he is. My intention was to hint the above work of art by showing another forest with many animals hiding in it. 

But….Surprise!!!! My son related to the mystery motive in story from which the picture was taken and started  looking for art pieces that has the mystery motive. For example, in this picture he found a mysterious character turning his back to the viewer. We used this opportunity to observe this art through hearing the museum audio guide and discussing it.

Here is another work of art that my son found mysterious. We asked ourselves what happened to the women?, what will happen next? Are the two characters know about each other existence at all?

The discoveries were surprising to me and we enjoyed strolling together in the museum and find mystery in work of art.

Suggested Activities

• “Find as many creatures hiding in the wood”
• “Create a new creature which is a combination of creatures that you discovered”

Here are the kids’s invented creatures.

 

The whole idea of this activity was to slow my kids and encourage them to look. A visit in the museum can be overwhelming and one might think that the point is to go through as many art pieces as you can. But I wanted them to take the time to create their own meaning of the work of art. That’s also what Elizabeth is doing at her class. She allows the kids this moment to ponder upon a work of art. Thank you Elizabeth!!!

Aliza.

Science Kids in Sunnyvale

Hello Caregivers,

It’s been already 5 meetings that we had great scientific explorations  in Vargas elementary school in Sunnyvale.

We’ve been mixing colors.

 

Exploring Space.

 

Wandered through the inside of the Human Body.

  

 

Investigating Magnets.

          

Appreciating plants and trees in The Garden Party.

    

 

Next Thursday we will have our last but not least meeting in Vargas.

In this meeting, we will combine and take apart shapes to create 2 and 3 dimensional objects. As part of our “Kindness to earth challenge” we’ve been collecting recyclables the whole time. Please keep bringing your recyclables – Boxes and bottles of any kind and shapes also next time we meet.

Please remember to document our Garden party. You can do that by asking your kid questions such as:

* Why trees are important for us?

* What did you noticed in the jar after we soaked the leaf in the water?

* Repeat our experiment. Observe what happens in the jar after 10 , 20 , 60 , 120 minutes. As time goes by more and more bubbles will appear and the kid will appreciate more the phenomena of oxygen releasing by the plant.

* Take notes of your child comments about things we experienced or draw a picture together.

 

See you next time,

Aliza.

 

Gravity – Cupertino & See you in Sunnyvale

Hello,

It was such a fun round with you all in Cupertino. This time we explored Gravity. In the cube game we explored some examples of overcoming gravity.

Paper airplanes

 

Building and towers.

Balloons

The mice were creative about overcoming gravity to escape from Chili.

We explored Gravity by building ramps with different slopes, rolling and sliding different materials and with different surfaces.

 

At home, keep building structures and ramps to explore gravity. Here is a great idea with simple materials: http://innerchildfun.com/2011/08/boredom-buster-marble-run.html

I had the best time with you all!!!A special thanks goes to Iris and Sharmila!!!

See you next round in Sunnyvale with some new units.

Aliza.

Combining Shapes – Cupertino

Hello,

Being able to notice the different shapes that makes an object is a foundation for more developed capabilities in Geometry, Computer science, Art, Reading, Writing etc. Therefore, this time, we played with 2D and 3D shapes to create our unique scene.

In the Cube game we:

Hunted for shapes. The kids found a triangle in the letter A.

Completed shapes puzzles.

  

Switched from 2D to 3D and vice versa by examining boxes and paper.

    

Examined how a car is combined from different shapes

In the adventures of Chili and the mice, the mice asked themselves how to combined slices of cheese to escape from Chili. This led the kids to the exploration stations.

Lots of creativity in the 2D station.

Lots of creativity in the 3D station.

    

We also created a cube of shapes to play at home.

Look how beautiful our scene of shapes came together.

Next time it’s the last one for this round. We will play with Gravity!!!

Aliza.

Magnets – Cupertino

Hello,

So happy to explore with you in our 4th adventure – Magnets.

The Magnet-Opus food tray was the highlight of the Cube game of Magnets. We also imagined our hand is a special magnet that attracts Reds and Rectangles. The kids explored our room to discover Metals and realized there are things that look like Metals but are not attracted to magnets. Some photos:

   

In the mice and Chili adventure – Chili had a giant magnet. We helped the mice escape with wonderful ideas from the kids.

In the exploration stations we collaborated to create a pond.

We colored fish.

The kids exercised their eye-hand coordination while drawing the pond’s water, algae and corals with magnets.

Created a Magnet-Opus and discovered his favorites from a tray full of Magnet-Opus food.

 

The kids loved to see the pond come together so beautifully and use magnetic poles to fish in the pond they created.

First it was just a cardboard box.

but than it started to fill with water and corals and fish

and Magnet-Opuses and food for them.

and the kids got fishing poles and started filling the bucket with fish and Magnet-Opus food.

     

We even had a jumping frog that uses the fact that like magnetic poles repel each other.

See you all next time for Combining shapes adventure.

Aliza.

Sound – Cupertino

Hello,

Playing with sounds in the preschool age is the foundation of morphological awareness in school age.

In the cube game we guessed sounds from the sound box, danced to music, felt the vibrations of a triangle, shaked, banged, meowed, stomped.

     

The mice discovered how to sneak from Chili in a dark room by producing sounds.

In the exploration stations we created a drum, a banjo and phone caps. Each vibrates differently to produce sound.

1. Creating a drum.

2. Creating a banjo.

3. Phone caps

And producing more and more sounds:

Goodbye everyone, I was happy to explore here with you!!!

Next time it’s Magnets.

Be prepared to feed a monster, paint with magnets frog leap and more.

Aliza.

Space – Cupertino

Hello,

The space adventure was so much fun.

The cube game of Space was full of Moon walks, Strange Aliens, Rockets and more. The cube game purpose is to discuss the subject of the session in a fun way while elevating existing knowledge that the kids already have. This sets the stage for more exploration and discovery. Here are some photos:

      

This time we had a collaborative exploration stations to recreate the solar system. Each kid worked on a different planet or planets according to his choice. Books about spaces provided us inspiration and information about the characteristics of the planets. we noticed shapes, relative size, color, special features of the planet surface and more.

    

We created our own Alien to populate the Solar system:

Continued having fun with the rockets:

And documented our experiences in the journal

:

This was the result of collaboration.

Now for the final touch. Constellations.

Thanks Kimai for leading us to sing “Twinkle, Twinkle” while creating the constellation.

Next time be prepared to make noise in the  Sound session.

Aliza.

Mixing color – Cupertino

Hello Parents, Nannies, Grandfathers and Grandmothers!

This is the second round of “Science kids” in First 5 at Mercy street. This time in “Cannon Music” in Cupertino. Our team, myself, Iris and Sharmilla creating together your experiences in this program.

We started by exploring color mixing. This subject of mixing color is such an intuitive and lively way to introduce the structure and rituals of “Science kids”.

First we explored primary and secondary colors by playing The Cube Game of Mixing colors.

Here are some photos where the kids are hunting for colors and placing them on the Color Wheel.

 

On The Adventures of Chili and the mice. 

The mice are trapped into a paint box and getting curious how to change their color to find a hiding place in the garden. The kids started thinking with the mice and from that we went on to the Exploration stations.

1. Creating a mouse after mixing two primary colored play-dough. This great fine motor activity shows how much effort we need to insert in creating a new color. First the new color appears on the area of contact between the two colors, and only after much kneading we can see a whole piece of new color.

2. The magic top. In this station we see another method of mixing – by movement. Two colors in proximity moving fast will appear as a new color. The adults among us also recognized that not every design provided the same effect of mixing. Try different designs at home and let me know what worked best.

3. Mixing paint in a ziplock. This station is a mess free lab of color mixing. Again the kids can appreciate the process of mixing as they insert effort in mixing all the content in the bag.

4. Stained glass art. Another mixing method is overlaying. Here, by overlaying two pieces of semi-transparent tissue paper, we can discover a new color. It works well when placing the creation in front of a light source. At home attach the creation to the window to appreciate the color mixing.

Here is part of the exhibition we had:

As real scientists always do, we document our experiences in a personal journal. I will write more in the future about the importance of Journaling.

Finally we met again Chili and the Mice to see how they resolve their adventure of mixing colors.

Next time it’s all about Space. Get ready to Blast-Off!

Aliza.