Living Science--literature v. mulitimedia

I have commented before about how limited the living science literature field really is. If you want a nature story, or a biography you're in luck, but beyond that you will have trouble. That's why I like to feature good living science literature here.

Interestingly, while discussing this topic on Julie's Living Math Forum Yahoo group, she noted how hard it was to find any biographies of mathematicians. It seems math is full of concept readers, where science is lacking, and science is full of biographies, where math is lacking. Both, of course, have their share of text books.

While I am not giving up on science literature by any means, I have discovered that it is much easier to find wonderful science multimedia and web sites than literature. I have mentioned some of them here, and will continue to do so.

A related topic came up on the MEP board in the context of being unable to advance in science because of a lag in math. Living science multimedia is one good way to continue learning science without the math intensity of a science curriculum.

Science Saturday Challenge goes live!

I have thoroughly enjoyed the live webinars at Homeschool Connections, and many more have been scheduled, including mine! Science At Home: Static Electricity live webinar airs on Wednesday, May 13th at 8:30pm Eastern time. You can register here. I will be discussing homeschooling science as well as static electricity, and then demonstrating several experiments relating to the topic.

If you miss the live webinar I will post a link as the next Science Saturday Challenge so you can view it at any time.

I hope this effort will make homeschool science easier for those who are just a touch intimidated by the subject, or for those who want to break away from the textbooks and boxed curricula.

You can see all the upcoming webinars here.

Blessings,

Electronic well-wishes

One line of science kits that lasts a long time and can be used by a wide variety of ages is Snap Circuits. We bought our kit a couple of years ago and the kids still play with it all the time.

All the parts are mounted on plastic bases that simply snap together to form a circuit. The one pictured is the mid-priced 300 part set; they also make 100 and 500 part kits. Even when Ds#3 was only 4 years old he was snapping these together and making circuits.

And on birthdays Ds#2 likes to put this together:

Hyperdo Kit from Zome

We are on school break for Holy Week and this is a good time to do special projects, kits, and other activities that we don't seem to get to during more scheduled weeks.

I've blogged about Zomes before; this "toy" is one that both the kids and I agree is great. Zome changed their product so they no longer sell long struts in their kits (they are special order.) Instead they now have super short struts plus hyper short red (pentagon) struts. You can see the parts here. While kids can't make models they can crawl through as easily, the models they make are easier to handle and build.

The Hyperdo kit is an economical way to get a large number of super short and hyper short parts if you already have the other sizes. That's what I did when they were first available. This month you can also buy the half pound or two pound bag of random parts for 50% off using code pbb-50.

If you don't have any Zomes yet, the "naked" kits are a good deal. I bought tackle boxes at Walmart for under $5 to keep them in. For this month you can get them at 30% off with the code nkd0409.

Yesterday we finally put together the hyperdo (short for hyper dodecahedron.) As you can see in the picture, if you look at it from one angle you see a flower in the center; look from a different angle and you see a tunnel. Interestingly, the thumbnail of the flower-center angle clearly shows a Star of David in the empty spaces of the model that is harder to appreciate in the larger shot. I'll have to see if I can see the star when trying to cast shadows with the model--it should look golden as the sun will come through those areas!

Studying the Heart

We are continuing to work our way through the body using Blood and Guts and The Body Book, and it's been great! The heart model, however, was a bit of a disappointment.

The Body Book model is constructed with a single top layer containing all the structures that opens up to reveal a bisected heart with vessel connections. I had them color the vessels based on oxygenated v. deoxygenated blood, not as arteries and veins. The model has several problems. The inner heart is not the same size or shape as the outer layer. The aorta is not labeled, and the three vessels coming off the top of the aorta (going to the upper extremities and the head) do not line up so when the top flap is closed it looks like there are four vessels. The labels on the pulmonary veins (the smaller red structure coming into the left atrium) are upside down. And when the pulmonary artery is lined up to match the outer layer, the part glued onto the inner hear covers over the pulmonic valve. Perhaps these errors were corrected in the Scholastic release of the book.
The book does come with two coloring sheets, one for the entire circulatory system and another a series of pictures depicting how the heart fills with blood.

The kids had fun with the activities from Blood and Guts. It comes with instructions to build a stethoscope, but why do that when you can just borrow your mom's real stethoscopes? Ds#1 and Ds#2 are listening to their brother's heart sounds (S1 and S2, or lub dub.) We also checked out most of the pulse points on the body at rest and after running up and down the hallway 10 times.

Ds#2 pulled this book of the shelf for us to read "because it goes with what we studied," he said. The Let's-Read-and-Find-Out science books are his favorite right now.