Fun on Friday: History and Science

Even though we aren't participating in our home school group's Friday Fun classes, I am still trying to switch things up at home, and make the stuff we do on Fridays extra fun, or at least different from the normal routine. We do history and science on Fridays.

Today for history we read Chapter 3 out of Story of the World which taught us about the first writing. We colored maps of Egypt and Sumer to show where some of the earliest writing came from. Then we made salt dough and with tooth picks carved our names in it using cuneiform for the letters. We practiced the letters on paper first. Then we baked the clay in the oven until it was dry, and painted over it to help the cuneiform stand out better.

Ivan's name in cuneiform.

Ivan's turned out the best. He did a really good job, and was careful while making his letters. Lincoln was kind of throwing a fit about something, I can't remember what, and was really whiny and unwilling to follow directions. He didn't scratch deep enough into the salt dough, so when his baked the characters didn't show up very well. Adelia pretty much just played with hers and made it into a big smooshy pile.

After lunch and quiet time we did a couple of science experiments from our Magic School Bus Young Scientists packet on water.

We got a large bowl of water, and everyone got to pick ten things from around the house. Then we tested them one by one to see if they would sink of float. We noted the material each object was made out of, and determined that objects made out of certain materials float better than objects made out of others.

For our second experiment, we learned how a submarine works. We took an empty Pepsi can and filled it with water and the put it in our bowl full of water. It sunk to the bottom. We stuck one end of a clear tube into the opening of the can. Using the other end the kids blew air into it. The air going into the can pushed out the water, and the can floated to the top. Cool!