Ionic Nomenclature

 This week the Co-op Chemistry class is beginning ionic nomenclature with Putting Ions in Their Hands.  Three teens can only come on Tuesdays.  The twelve year old finished everything early.  Wednesday, Rhys came for the lesson because he’s taking the PSAT and will miss it.  So, when I say we’re doing the activity this week, I mean it.  Rob’s covering my Brit Lit class so I can tutor Rhys.  I start with this Ionic Compound slide deck.  The activity, Putting Ions, was once sold as a Flinn kit.  Originally, the cations were red, the anions, blue, and the ion chart yellow.  The original kit contents are nearly all gone.  However, I bought card stock in primary colors and print the ions and charts.  I make extra for kiddos to take home to use, too. 

I also made a set of ionic dice.  I just wrote the symbols for several cations on red dice and several anions on blue dice.  The kiddos roll the two and write the formula and its name.  Teens may use the card stock ions with the dice to derive the names.

Chem Kate has a similar idea free on TPT.

Nearly every student who uses the ion set finds nomenclature easy.  Really!  A few need to use the ions for quite awhile.  So what?  Here is a practice sheet with an answer key.  Below are more pix from Thursday’s class.  I want to stay accountable.  I’m sure many of you ask if my class really does all of the activities and labs we say we do.

Birds

 Are your kiddos budding ornithologists?  There are so many fun activities!  I bought a dozen feeder kits for next year’s Science Camp, All the Hits! Lowe’s and Home Depot have kids’ kits.  Lowe’s has feeder and house kits.  My target price is $5 because I use them for Camp. Buy them on eBay. You might be able to build a feeder or house from scrap wood.  We are inept and require a kit, preferably easy, predrilled, with clear instructions.

Have  you heard of Identiflyer?  Cards fit into the device and play bird calls. (Be sure to slide the switch on before you insert a bird card.  Ask me how I know.)  The three year old in our lives, Lily, like to take the Identiflyer on to the deck to see if the cardinals will respond.  She also like to torment the parakeets in the breakfast room with it.  I’m using mine with Camp, next year, too, hopefully in a more educatiinal manner than just a toy.   Berlin Bird ID has bird songs, too.  My goal is to learn the calls for backyard birds-other than the crow.

Cornell have loads of resources: Monthly Lessons, Lessons and Activities, Free Resources (3-5), and All About Birds.  So many activities!

Print and post a Bird List or a Life List.  Look for a local guide and list for your area.  

Feeling ambitious?  After all, it’s only September.  Look at this Bird Unit Study.

Friday Funday: Secret Messages!

 Generation Genius has Secret Message.  (Yes, I saw another ad.  This time I tracked the original.)  This version is different; it uses baking soda and blackberries.  Blueberries or strawberries might work, too.  Try this ACS version with turmeric.  (Make sure you have an ammonia-based window cleaner or use sudsy ammonia.  Many window cleaner no longer have ammonia—a base like baking soda.)  Mu favorite invisible ink requires phenolphthalein.  (It used to be a common ingredient in X-LAX.  Sadly forced fed rats developed cancer.  It’s not expensive.  Don’t lick it.)  Go ahead and include the classic invisible ink recipe with lemons or lemon juice.  HST has even more Invisible Ink Experiments.  Won’t your kiddos have fun?

Moles!

Here are this year’s moles.  There are two classes: high school and middle school.  Yes, a few students owe me a mole on Thursday.  Do you think my students are any different from yours?  The two winners are immediately below.  The middle school winner is a bit shaky.  It jingles.  The prize was a bag of tootsie mole pops and Hershey kisses.

Start with a Book!

 I’m a fan!  I love to center a science lesson around a book.  Start with a Book (SWAB) has hundreds of ideas.  Explore Topics, such as Cooking and Food.  SWAB encourages families to use both fiction and nonfiction books—like a cookbook!  Read, grow food, cook!  There are Book-Based Activity Kits to try, such as Bird Buddies.  Here is the activity kit, replete with ideas, such as a bird walk, parts of a feather, habitats, pix of common birds, such as a robin, writing exercises, bird calls, and books!  Just gloss over the political bits and educational jargon in favor of interesting ideas.

Mole Day!

Mole Day is actually Friday.  We’re celebrating today.  Why?  Three teens attend class on Tuesdays and stay after class for 80 minutes to complete Thursday’s lesson.  I don’t want these three teens to miss the fun!  (Yes, we make all kinds of accommodations.)  We are having a modest Mole Day celebration.  I did make Peanut Butter Blossom Cookies or Mole Hole cookies. (No, not molasses cookies.) I tried the candy eyes; Rob and I both thought they looked goofy.  I have prizes for the best mole toy, for both the high school and middle school classes. I did sew a little bandana for the porch goose, too.  I’ll add the mole pix Wednesday.

Food Science

 Food Science makes a great elective or unit study, especially for tweens and teens.  It’s also one of those topics which can be adapted for a wide age range. 4-H has a 436 page Food Science Curriculum.  It’s comprehensive!  You could spend the year wading through this program as a family. There are recipes, questions, activity sheets, experiments—a complete home study.

Younger Kiddos: My American Farm has this teacher’s page with lessons such as Beef Up Your Nutrition, Built From Beef, an activity sheet, and Beef Heritage, an E-Comic.  Try one activity to see if your younger kiddos like the resource; it’s a little goofy.  Their Science Day Camp includes Crazy for Compost, Kick the Can Ice Cream, and Parts of the Plant.  I think the activities would work better for a unit study than a science camp.

Tweens: Food Science Files has Oatmeal Bread, Color Changing Noodles, Garden Lab, Polymer Power, and Salad Dressing Study—just enough for a unit study.  It’s has brief lessons and student hand-outs.  Food Master has both math and science booklets. Yeah!  You do NOT need to send them your information and email.  Look at Milk and Cheese and teacher’s guide; kiddos make cheese from scratch.  Try Fruit’s Math; here are the answer keys for all of the Food Master math units.  Your family can do activity sheets and try recipes.  Food Master can ba adapted into a lesson, a unit, or just a Friday Fun Day!

Teens: Food for Today is a textbook focuses on food science.  Here is the teacher’s guide with answers and experiments.  Once you have a textbook, experiments, and a solution key, you have an instant course.  Since it’s an older textbook, you’ll need to make modifications.  For example, one recipe, Substituting the Sugar, calls for saccharin and aspartame.  Substitute Sucralose and Stevia instead.  BTW there are other Food Science textbooks, typically older books, designed for high school cooking classes.

Apologia Chemistry: Nomenclature

 Next week, the Chemistry Co-op class is beginning Module 3, Nomenclature.  Here are the lesson plans, including Putting Ions in Their Hands.  BTW this is a key module.  Here is my introductory slide deck.

I have used Putting Ions for many years—including the college classes I taught.  It works that well.  One tip is to print the positive and negative ions on to different colored card stock.  (I use a third color card stock for the ion chart, too.  Originally, this was a Flinn kit—with red, blue, and yellow card stock.)  Students may use the ions as long as they need them to name compounds.  At the same time, my kiddos are working on memorizing about 50 key elements on the Periodic Table.  

Be sure to practice!  This practice sheet has practice problems for days…with answers.  Flinn’s ion formula chart has most—but not all of the ions.  This periodic table chart of ions has more.  This ion chart should cover any other missing ions and their names.  One more resource…The Chemistry Name Game.  It use cards with hole punched—much like the numbers of electrons which are actively bonding.  It’s worthwhile if the Flinn ions aren’t working.  Here’s hoping this is helpful.  I know from personal experience just how hard it can be to go ot alone!

Don’t buy expensive science kits. Just do more labs!

 Wow!  The social media influencers are pushing more kits and more subscriptions.  Hold on!  Before you panic shop, pause.  These kits are promoting hands-on science.  You can achieve the benefits of hands-on science by just doing more labs, trying more experiments.  Are you using Apologia’s textbooks?  Just do the experiments in the textbook.  Find a project which interests your kiddos, such as casting wildlife prints or build a catapult.  (We shoot ping pong balls.  This time of year you can find ping pong balls with eyeballs.)  Borrow an armful of science experiment books from the library.  Pick three which are achievable—those which won’t require any special equipment or materials.  Don’t feel as though you are short-changing your kiddos because your budget isn’t elastic enough to buy $500 worth of kits.  Any hands-on lab gives your kiddo more STEM exposure.  

Skip a module or chapter?

 Here we go again!  I’m going to ruffle a few feathers with a bit of heresy.  Sometimes it’s okay to skip a module or chapter.  Are you wading through Module 2 of the second edition of Exploring Creation with Chemistry?  Is your teen in tears over specific heat?  (A few of our kiddos have come close.)  Skip it and move on to Module 3–especially if you did Experiment 2.1 and most of the questions.  Really.  The third edition moved Module 2 to Module 12, which should tell you something.  Rob and I are working like crazy one-on-one with teens to get through specific heat and problem sets.  Both of us have loads and loads of experience.  (Rob teaches math.)  This is a hard concept!

You are going to be stumped.  Another example is Experiment 5.1, Measuring the Width of a Molecule.  There is a ton of math and inferences.  If both your teen and you are in tears, stop.  You might want to copy the sequence of math equations from the slide deck to see if the lesson makes sense.  If not, so what?  No one is going to ask if you skipped the experiment.  Ever.

Instead, do your best.  Try to complete two-thirds of the textbook.  Do as many experiments as possible.  Give the tough material, such as Gas Laws a good try.  But, don’t be defeated by a single module or lab and give up on Chemistry entirely.  Put aside the hardest lessons.  Ask friends if they have encountered the same problems.  Did they figure out specific heat?  Could they show your teen and you how to proceed?  Would it be nice to say you worked through every single concept in the Apologia Chemistry textbook?  Sure.  But sometimes you hit a road block. If your teen, your husband, and you have invested hours trying to make sense of a single idea, such as specific heat, without any success, quit.  Stop beating yourself up!  Your teen is still taking a hard subject and you can only do what you can do.

Fall Science Ideas

 If your family likes to use a theme, Fall is a good one.  HEAV has a collection which includes Candy Corn Catapults.  (Some farms open to the public have trebuchets which launch pumpkins. Let me give a shout-out to Belvedere Plantation.  You have to be there to appreciate the pig races or candy cannon.) HST has an Science ebook: Fall Science Projects, which feature colorful, fall leaves.  Be sure to try Leaf Chromatography.  Explain to your kiddos Why Do Leaves Change Colors?  Do you have Littles?  Check out Little Bins Fall STEM.  

The backyard looks more romantic than in reality.  Missing are the three dogs barking next door and the regular thump from the basketball hoop out front—or the two hundred cars in our tiny dog-leg of thr neighborhood.  But, the pond, trees, birds, ducks and geese sold me on this house.  I’m grateful for view!  We wanted a vibrant neighborhood.  There are I’ve one hundred kiddos.  Their laughter outside is like music.