martinzoo

This experiment was in our local newspaper today. So GB and I decided to give it a try. He is unbelievably picky about food. So I suspected that he would be one of these super-tasters.

A super-taster may be someone who dislikes strong-tasting foods such as vinegar.

For this experiment you will need:

• food color
• magnifying glass
• cotton swab
• mirro
• clean piece of paper with a 1/4 inch hole
• and an adult helper

First put a drop of color on a swab and rub it on the end of your tongue.

Look at your tongue in the mirror - Do you see small pink dots or bumps on it? Those “taste buds” let you taste different foods.

Hold the hole in the paper over your tongue, then use the magnifier to count the number of bumps in the hole. ***Very hard to do if you have a wiggly kid.

Most people have 15-35 bumps.

Fewer than 15 bumps makes you a “non-taster’ and that would be sad. Doncha think? But that also means that strong tasting food probably doesn’t bother you.

People with more than 35 bumps are “super-tasters” and they often dislike foods like these:

• pickles
• cabbage
• spicy food
• grapefruit
• soy sause
• mustard
• chocolate (WHAT? Who doesn’t like chocolate?)

GB had 43 bumps —- but he’s young —- they’ll probably start dying off soon, right?

This sure explains a lot!

Thursday at the Martinzoo is science day. I didn’t think it was going to be a science day today. We were going to go on a field trip to Hollywood Cemetery. Unfortunately, I committed to the cemetery field trip without GB’s input and he didn’t really have any desire to go. I’m not sure of his reasons, and I don’t want to say that he was *nervous* about being in a cemetery, but that could have been part of it. It’s too bad. I’d like to try it again someday because there are a lot of famous people buried there.

Anyway, we decided to not go and just have a typical school day instead.

We are doing a bit of life science this year, and our current chapter is on  plant structure. So after reading the chapter and doing a virtual dissection at the BBC School Science site we went outside find our own flowers to dissect.

We were very pleased with the results of the morning glory dissection. It’s parts were easy to see and easy to get to.

This photo clearly shows the petals, sepals, anther, filaments, pistil, and receptacle.

GB studies the flower with the magnifying lens.

This is the anther under the stereoscope. It’s very easy to see the pollen on it.

We looked at the anther under the microscope, too. But it was much easier to see under the stereoscope where the light source came from above.

We also did this marigold. GB was having a great time with his scalpel. He dissected the morning glory, the marigold, and a zinnia. I’d love to get an iris or something like that from a florist and check that out also.

We also made a slide by mixing up a bit of sugar water and placing a drop on the slide, then dragging the anther through the water drop. After placing a slide cover we were able to see the above bit of pollen.

Further magnification gave us this picture. See the spikes? THAT’s why I sneeze repeatedly every Spring. Yuck!

Other sites that we found helpful:

Great Plant Escape

This Youtube video was really awesome.

WikiEducator

You will not think this is a big deal. But, good grief, we struggled!

Our assignment was to scrape some cheek cells from the inside of the mouth. And to prick a finger to get some blood, so we could study the cells. First of all, GB insisted that my cheek should be the one to scrape since I’m older and lose more skin cells than he does. I don’t know if that is *true* but my dh laughingly agrees with GB.

The cheek scraping went off with nary a hitch. And we got a very nice slide out of it when we looked at it under the microscope. The cheek cells were very nicely defined and looked just like the book.

Oh, but the blood………… Yuck!
Ok, I will admit it. We are a family of fainters. Not my dh, I want to clarify, because he’d be highly offended to be lumped in that category. But the rest of us are fainters. I’m sorry to say that I passed that unfortunate trait onto my offspring. I faint when I get too hot, too tired, get badly injured, see blood, or THINK I’m going to see blood, or view or participate in medical procedures. I once fainted when my dog had to get a rectal exam. Good Lord! That’s embarrassing!

So now you know the background.

GB and I knew this day was coming. Even though I have made great strides, since I have became a parent, with my fainting, I still knew this would be a chore.

Our assignment was to take a sterilized needle and make a tiny pinprick in a finger (guess who’s finger GB chose) and use the resulting blood drop to make a slide.

You wouldn’t think it would be a big deal at all, would you? Well, I tried for a few minutes, unsuccessfully, to pierce my finger. I guess my needle wasn’t pointy enough? Or maybe I wasn’t *stabbing* sharply enough. But it was taking too long to get a drop of blood out of my stupid finger!

Then GB started rolling his head and moaning….. Ah, God!…….. I was doing ok until that point. Then I started to get frustrated with the procedure and my stomach started to roll around………

Finally, I got a teeny, tiny speck of blood. And I hoped it would be enough. GB was beyond the experiment at this point and even refuse to take a picture of our procedure. So I took a DEEP breath and did it myself.

After a brief recovery time, we started working on the slide. A blood slide takes much more careful preparation than the cheek slide. First, we had to (ugh!) smear the blood around the slide. Then we had to let it dry for a minute. Then we had to add a drop of the blue dye, I used methylene blue chloride. After letting the blood absorb the dye for one minute, we had to gently rinse it off the slide. I was worried that the rinsing process would get rid of the blood too, but it didn’t . Then we had to let the slide sit for three minutes to dry. After three minutes, we added one drop of water and put on a cover slip.

Usually when I set my camera to the eyepiece of our microscope I get that black circle around the view (check out the cheek cell photo). But during this procedure I discovered that I can zoom my camera a bit, and it gets rid of the black circle and actually magnifies my subject even more.

So GB and I were able to look at my blood. And after all the drama, the slide turned out pretty cool.

So, that is my A positive blood. We didn’t check to see what kind it is. But after three children, you just know what kind of blood you have. I’d like Doc Bish to look at this photo. Because if we are right, there may even be a couple of white blood cells in this picture.  According to our book, the white blood cells will grab more of the dye and look darker than the rest.

So now you know my weakness. Please don’t think less of me…………….LOL!

Today was our first day of 5th grade. And as expected, it went fabulously!

The beauty of our first day is that we spend it in our pj’s. We think it’s kind of funny to stay in pj’s when our neighbor’s kids are all decked out in new outfits, headed off to the good old public school.

We began our day very academically with a load of Language Arts. We learned about the four major skills that must be learned in Language Arts; reading, listening, speaking and writing. We learned new skills to make reading more effective. And we learned an easy technique for finding the topic of a paragraph or story:

Step 1: Underline the nouns in each sentence that you think are the subject of that sentence.

Step 2: List all the nouns that you underlined

Step 3: Write the noun that you listed most often, that noun will be the topic.

And we learned about vowel diphthongs; which is when two vowels join together to make their own sound - such as the “oi” in oil and “ou” in couch. This will be the basis for our spelling list this week. GB finished the LA aspect of our day by playing the spelling bee game on his computer and doing some worksheets to reinforce the words.

After lunch is when we do our unit studies. This first unit will be on the effects that drugs, alcohol, and tobacco have on our bodies. I blogged earlier about the great program that we are using from the National Institute on Drug Abuse.   We did the first module today. It’s mission had two purposes: to introduce the child to the processes of science and to illustrate how information is transmitted through the senses.

The first half of this activity was to watch a video explaining the unit, and then examine the gooey object in the ziplock bag. He should observe and predict what he thought it was made of.

The second half of the activity he was to work on the experiment. Given the ingredients, plus some other ingredients, he was to try and duplicate the mystery goo.

Here is GB examining the mystery goo.

He immediately went straight for the cornstarch and water. Can’t get anything by him!

Mixing with fingers turned out to be the best way.

After mixing the water and cornstarch, he compared the mystery goo to his new mixture. Just for comparison I asked him to mix up the other two choices too. Just to be sure that he had the right one, even though he said he was 100% sure that it was cornstarch and water. And, of course, he WAS right. But I still wanted him to see the differences.

So his next target was the talc and water.

It gave him this greyish, clay-like substance. It was definitely NOT the same as the goo.

And lastly, he mixed the sugar and water, which had no substance to it all. So he concluded that he was right from the beginning about that cornstarch. But I feel like that just shows that he is in touch with his sensory abilities and was easily able to use them scientifically in an investigation. …………

…….Or, it was just too darn easy for him. But we shall see how the rest of the unit goes. He’s pretty curious about the effects of drugs and alcohol. Hopefully I’ll be able to keep his attention with it.

Today GB and I decided to try the alka-selzer rocket again. But this time we wanted it to be bigger. So we used a water bottle that has the pull top on it. That way, when the gas needs a quick exit from the bottle, it will be able to escape without exploding.

We tried a couple more times, and got better results with the angle of the rocket. But we didn’t get good video. So this was the one we decided to use. You get the picture, though.

And no, no dogs were injured in the making of this video. Sometimes that dog is such a ding-a-ling………..LOL!

I don’t know what’s been up with me lately. I’m in some kind of funk. I have no real energy or zest. I think part of it is that GB is finished with school. And part of it is that, even though I had a spectacular time in Santa Fe, I got all pooped out. I love to travel, but it does wear me out. And I just can’t seem to get my get-up-and-go back.

I keep worrying that I’m gonna forget some major commitment, or be slack about something big. Right now, I’ve been pretty slack with my house keeping. My floors need washing and my bathrooms need scrubbing. But all I want to do is read and watch my new favorite show, Jon and Kate plus 8. I keep thinking that if she can keep it together with eight kids, I ought to be ok with my group.

Anyway, we did do one school-y thing today. We made a rocket out of a film canister, some water, and some crushed alka-seltzer. We’ve tried it before, but we had major success today. It really makes a huge difference when you use the film canisters that snap when you close them. Don’t use the ones with the easy-off lids.

Here is GB demonstrating. And just in case you can’t hear him, he cracked me up when he called the alka-seltzer ‘Alcatraz’! How funny is that!?

On day 21 we finished our Tomatosphere project. We found that we had better germination in the “B” plantings. Of the 33 planted for each test group, we had 12 germinate in the “A” group, and 15 germinate in the “B” group.

As far as the growth and vigor of each group, we found no visible difference. All the plantings were roughly the same height (4 1/2 inches) and all showed good growth. GB was unwilling to do the extension activities because that involved cutting the plants off at the base and drying them in a paper bag to weigh them. He felt as if that was a waste of good plant life. Since I’m the only one who will really eat the tomatoes, I felt as if it was my call…………. but I bow to the child with the strong opinions.

Today was an excellent homeschool day. GB liked it because he didn’t have to write. And I liked it because we learned a lot and got a lot accomplished.

We started with our Tomatosphere project plantings. We got 33 seeds in the ‘A’ packet and 37 seeds in the ‘B’ packet. So we planted all but 4 of the ‘B’ packet and decided to use those 4 seeds to do an experiment that we’ve been pondering.

Last year when we did the Tomatosphere project our only difficulty was keeping a consistent water level for the plantings. They either seemed too dry, or too wet. We’re going to try to do better this year. BUT it made us wonder about how that situation could be improved to the point where we didn’t have to be so diligent.

You know how diapers have that gel stuff inside them to absorb moisture? And you know how some expensive potting soils have something in them to help them retain water? Well, we wondered if we could mimic that result using a diaper’s gel.

We also worked on our Colonial Unit. I know some of you who read us all the time are wondering when on Earth we are ever going to finish this unit. But until now, we have been concentrating on our packaged curriculum, which is finished now. So for the rest of the school year GB and I will be learning in an interest-based environment. It’s kind of like having the best of both worlds for us. The packaged curriculum is nice and orderly, and I don’t worry about missing things that the County might want him to be learning. But I also like to let GB learn things that he is interested in. So the units had to be done in bits. Until now.

So today we learned about the cities and villages in Colonial times. And we focused on some of the people and businesses that would reside in those villages. Personally, I had never heard the term ‘whitesmith.’ So I learned that that was another name for the smith who worked with tin.

This project required a simple tin can. We then drew a pattern onto a piece of paper and taped it to the can. We thought a star was nice and appropriate.

Then we were supposed to use a hammer to bang a nail through the can, creating holes along our pattern’s lines. Maybe I’m overly protective, but I just kept having awful visions of what could happen if GB (who really has terrible small motor skills) was allowed to use a hammer on this can. So we used an awl tool instead. After trying the hammer/nail technique myself, I determined that the awl was much easier anyway.

These pictures are presented courtesy of GB. This is the inside of the can with a little tea light in it.

And this is the view from the front. We had to take it into our bathroom to get the full effect. Cute, huh?

Then we proceeded to dip some candles. Those of you who are observant will notice that, yes, that is a paraffin wax pot. But seriously people, it made the project so much easier. Thanks to Aquagirl for the nice Mother’s Day present!

Because we were learning about whitesmiths today, we used our ‘tin’ cup filled with cold water to cool down our candles after dipping.

Ta da!

And because we worked SO hard today, we decided to give our hands a nice paraffin wax treatment. Because we deserve it! I just love the older hand with the newer hand thing. Don’t you?