My Fruitful Life: Week 27: My Father's World K

We just finished our 27th week of preschool, which was Unit 23: Fox of My Father's World Kindergarten. We spread this lesson out over several weeks and did some fun science experiments along the way for fun. Our summer has been busy with VBS, a trip to New Mexico to see my husband's parents, a week of music camp, and weekly gymnastics camp. In addition we've been swimming, playing with friends, and are enjoying the summer.

Memory Verse: Your commands make me wiser than my enemies, for they are ever with me. Psalm 119:98 NIV

Main Idea: God's Word makes me wiser than my enemies.

This unit we talked about enemies and the importance of knowing God's word. Blue Rock didn't know what an enemy was and why someone wouldn't like someone else. This was somewhat challenging to explain as I have always struggled with fully knowing why some people don't like others and want to harm them. We talked about strangers as well and how it's important to be careful around people we don't know. We talked about how the fox in many of the stories we read is sneaky and out to get the innocent animals. Two stories we read related to our theme were The Gingerbread Man and The Tale of Jemima Puddle-Duck. We also had fun and played a fox game where I was the fox at first and I went around trying to catch Blue Rock. I sang this song to the tune of "The Farmer in the Dell."

A hunting we will go, A hunting we will go. We'll catch a fox inside a box, And then we'll let him go.

Blue Rock thought it was a lot of fun. Then he was the fox. We even have a huge box that our stroller came in that we let him keep and play with as his little house. He'd hide in the box from me. It was fun.

Blue Rock did a comparison chart and we made a list of how foxes are like dogs and how they are different. We played a rhyming game with animals and objects. We also classified animals by habitat. One cool things was he made a boat on his own and put animals in it that didn't live in the ocean. The animals that live in the ocean he put in the sink full of water. His boat worked. However, after a while it started sinking. We experimented with making it stronger by putting foil on it.

Two science experiments we did had to do with why boats float and blowing up a balloon with carbon dioxide.

Boat Experiment

I got this experiment from The Usborne Internet-Linked Children's Encyclopedia. This book is great and we just got it and I LOVE IT! I highly recommend it for anyone, especially if your kids are curious. There's lots of experiments throughout the book and it does a great job explaining how things work. For the boat experiment we took play-doh and made a ball. I filled up a bowl of water. I asked him if he thought the ball would sink or float. He guessed right, it sunk. Then I took the same play-doh and made a boat like shape with it. I asked him if he thought that would sink or float. He said it looked like a boat and would float. He was right. We talked about why it floated when shaped like that verses the ball and tried other shapes as well. I loved our book's definition, it says, "When a boat is in water, it pushes downwards. The water pushes back, which makes the boat float. This is called upthrust." (p. 242)

Balloon Experiment

For the balloon experiment we talked about chemical reaction and how when you mix vinegar and baking soda it causes a chemical reaction of carbon dioxide. If you close it off, the carbon dioxide will produce enough gas to blow up a balloon. I took an empty water bottle, added some vinegar to it. Then I made a funnel with paper and put some baking soda in the balloon. I put the lip of the balloon over the bottle and let Blue Rock dump the baking soda from the balloon into the vinegar and voilà! The gas blew up the balloon! We did this a few times. Then he blew up another balloon with air and we checked the density of the balloons. The balloons filled up with the gas from the vinegar and baking soda were more dense than the air from his mouth. He loves experiments and this one was so cheap and easy. I'm sure we'll do in many more times.