Light: Expansion, Translucency and Shadows

Yesterday we did a couple of activities dealing with how light expands as it moves outward.
First we focused our beam of light on a small object so that the light only hit the object. Then slowly moving backwards and watch the light beam grow larger and larger.

Then we split the beam into rays and shadows to observe how only the center ray travels straight ahead, while the others spread out to the sides.

Cale's notebook:


Finally they made designs on tinfoil and placed them on a cup with a flashlight inserted through a hole in the bottom. They played around in the dark seeing how big they could get their designs to expand on the wall.


We finished yesterday by testing and classifying items according to their translucency. They gathered items and decided if they were transparent, translucent or opaque.

Today we talked about shadows. We read the book What Makes a Shadow, played around with making shadow animals with our hands and made silhouettes.

Can you tell who's who?

School? What School?

I think it has been quite awhile since I have posted anything school related. The boys do school work....book work. They get up in the morning do their math, read for 30 minutes and do some writing. If Annika's in a good mood we read some history. But that is about it.

But I think my brain might have finally made it back from maternity leave. I spent a couple hours Saturday night writing out a unit on Light and Color....I plan to do sound, but didn't get that far. I also made a pretty good dent in my outline for next year.

And today we did science! A first in many months.

We talked about what energy and light are. We talked about how we see light in 2 way- luminous light and reflected light and we sorted items accordingly.

We also did a short experiment on how light travels using cards with holes in them and a flashlight. Then they drew in their notebooks about it. I have a feeling most pictures I will share will be of the notebooks since a lot of our experiments take place in the dark.

Our little co-op is holding a science fair at the end of April and the boys picked their topics last week and we finally gathered most of the supplies and got set up today.

Rylan is studying which medium pineapples grow best in. And 9 fresh pineapples are in my home n0w. Well, 6 actually. We at one for dinner and 2 more are now residing in the pineapple upside down cake in my oven.


Cale is testing which type of light is best for growing seeds. Cohen chose to test substances to see which melt ice (as in icy roads) the best. And as we were setting up tonight Lakin decided he wanted to participate too. And he wanted cups of soil like Rylan and Cale. And zucchini seeds. So here's his set up:

Pulled out of my head last minute based on his chosen supplies: how different liquids effect seed germination. He chose to water them with water, coffee, vinegar and milk.