From the category archives:

Materials

Mountain Answers

May 18, 2012 Earth and Beyond

1. The world’s tallest mountain is a little more complicated than it sounds. Mt Everest is the official highest peak, at 8,848m above sea level. But don’t forget it gets a significant leg up by being part of the massive Himalayan range, and the mountain peak is about 4000m above its base. For the [...]

Natural and Built

May 16, 2012 Activities

I‘ve always been a bit meh about natural and built landscapes. I mean it’s so obvious – do we seriously need to point this one out? But then a whole series of little things happened at once, as they do, and I realised that maybe it does need to be discussed. Not taught as such, [...]

A Set of Science Songs

May 11, 2012 Earth and Beyond

We had another couple of days without internet which is why there was no quiz posted on Tuesday. Even the trusty 3G failed so no mobile devices either. It gave me an excuse for a trawl on YouTube to find some fun and interesting videos to share instead. An easy way to finish the week. [...]

Write it Down

May 7, 2012 General science

I didn’t start on purpose, but this is turning into a little series on how some of the things we use the most have developed and changed. So far I’ve looked at cheese and milk bottle packaging. I enjoy history and archaeology, and I think the way we use materials and the effects of social changes [...]

Bubble Painting

April 26, 2012 Activities

Some bottles of food colouring were an excellent investment of about $5.50, we’re really cutting loose with them We’ve dyed eggs, used them for normal painting, marbling and now we’ve been bubble painting. In the last few weeks I’ve actually suggested it many times to have it flatly turned down, until a few days ago I just did [...]

Baked Icecream Revisited

April 12, 2012 Activities

A while ago I tried to make Baked Icecream with fairly dismal results, but my lovely readers came to my rescue and concluded the recipe was wrong. So using suggestions from Jamie, Veronica, Lisa, Alicia and Trinity and based on Ann’s never-fail recipe, we tried again. First I turned the oven on to 230C so it [...]

Wordless Wednesday – Easter

April 4, 2012 Activities

I thought I’d look at Easters past. Last year we made home made paper Easter baskets with seeds embedded then gave them to big girl’s school friends. We dyed eggs with petals and cabbage. They were completely different to using food colouring. The Easter Chicken was a collage of petals. And the year before that we made paper [...]

Consider the humble milk bottle

April 2, 2012 Food

In my lifetime it’s gone through a lot of changes, it’s interesting to consider why. Obviously technology has had a lot to do with it, but social changes have also been part of it. What does a milk container have to do? Be watertight. Allow pouring. Allow mass production and transport. Protect the milk. Glass [...]

Little Girl’s Easter Egg Activity

March 29, 2012 Activities

Sometimes it’s tough being the youngest. You rarely get to lead, you’re never the expert, and everyone’s done it before. And if you have the same teacher as your older siblings, you don’t even get to come home and say ‘Guess what we did!’ because they probably did it two years ago. So when the [...]

Spinning Eggs

March 15, 2012 Activities

This is something that has been on my list of possible activities literally for years. But I’ve never got to it because it feels so contrived. I mean when would you have a reason to do this? No, it’s just a fun trick, not something you’d ever actually do. Except, first watch the movie. Now, [...]