From the category archives:

Working Scientifically

Wordless Wednesday – What is it?

February 8, 2012 Observation

OK my friends, what do you think it is? Or is this incredibly simple and you all know?

Pendulum Waves

February 6, 2012 Energy and Change

First watch this video: How cool is that? And did you like the setup in the beginning when they showed you there were no tricks, it’s just a line of pendulums of different lengths. This, my friends, is all about maths. And physics, but at this level physics is pretty much applied maths. Pendulums Pendulums [...]

Marvellous Marbling

February 2, 2012 Activities

The big girl received an art book for Christmas. Most of it is way too old for her, but she loves picking things out and then we get to work out how to modify them for her. She wanted to try marbling, but we had a few problems to solve so we tried lots of [...]

Wordless Wednesday – Rubbings

December 14, 2011 Materials

Do you have any idea how many patterned, textured surfaces you have around your home? Hundreds. Trust me. Obligatory Christmas tie-in – use rubbings to make wrapping paper, just use crayons or pencils on butcher’s paper. Kidlet’s creatively entertained and personalised paper as elaborate as you want.

Kid Questions: Why do we see the lights after they are switched off?

December 5, 2011 Kid Questions

If you stare at a light for about 30 seconds then turn it off or look away you will still see a light in front of your eyes. This is called an afterimage, or technically a positive afterimage. In the back of your eyes are lots of little cells called cones. When certain types of [...]

Colour Answers

December 2, 2011 Energy and Change

1. We see because our eyes pick up light that has bounced off the things around us. It feels a little backwards, but the colour something appears is the colour it reflects rather than absorbs. A green book would absorb every colour except green and bounce the green back to us. Colour is determined by [...]

Wordless Wednesday – A Day

November 30, 2011 Earth and Beyond

This is something I’ve been trying to do for ages, either life gets in the way or the day is deadly boring. Most photos are half an hour apart, the evening gets closer and the last sunset shots are only a couple of minutes. For a camera set up on a tripod there’s a worrying [...]

Sparkles

November 24, 2011 Activities

Little girl loves gluing at the moment. She doesn’t care if it’s a stick or brush, the sheer pleasure of spreading glue around is enough. It’s even more important than actually sticking anything to the glue, which is driving the control freak in me mad. In a bid to make it a bit different I’ve [...]

Quiz – The Baby Edition

November 15, 2011 Life and Living

I should probably call it the reproductive edition, although I’m only looking at animals. But have you ever thought about all the different solutions to passing your genes on? What is the difference between precocial and altricial babies? A nice easy one for Australians – how do monotremes have babies? How is gender determined in [...]

60 Second Science

November 14, 2011 Energy and Change

Logo belongs to 60 Second Science, definitely not to me. The Victorian Education Department sponsors a fabulous competition called 60 Second Science. It’s very simple and open – make a video of 60 seconds or less and explain some science. That’s it. Forgetting the competitive aspects, this is a great idea for any teacher or [...]