Bioluminescence Science and Chemistry Experiment Fun Friday Homeschool

I am going to walk you through the steps of this experiment so you can try it at home. This counts both as a Biology, and Chemistry lab, read why here. As you can see in the first image with my daughter, this is actually the end of the experiment, it really glows right on her face, nice and bright.

You will need:

Glow sticks
2 drinking glasses
Ice water
Warm water

Procedure:

Give each child a glow stick. Have then look at the stick only. Ask them what they notice. What does it look like, in its original form. Have them gently rock the stick back and forth. Does it do anything? Now go into a darker room, gently bend the stick, observe what happens, and note it. Now put the sticks into the ice water, observe what happens. Leave the glow sticks in the ice water for five minutes, then return to observe the results. Now put the glow sticks in the warm water, observe and note what happens. Leave the glow sticks in the warm water for 5 minutes, then observe your final results. If you have a dead glow stick, in other words it doesn't glow anymore, stick it in both types of water and observe what happens. I won't give you our results, that ruins the fun.

We are also doing a Physics experiment today, which I will share another day, baking, and art.

Fun Fridays are Back

We have not done Fun Fridays, in a very long time.  We are halfway through our school year, and I decided we could do Fun Fridays.  What is Fun Friday?  Well, if we are not doing a field trip, it means we are doing some more fun and leisurely assignments at home.  I like it to be creative, and also to get some things done that maybe there isn't enough time for during the week, like DJ walking to the Barber to get his hair cut, lol.  It also gives us time to do experiments, and research.  DJ has to do labs for Biology, and since some of the Marine Biology experiments fit Biology, and didn't get done last year, we are doing them this year.  Once my roses have some nice buds on them, we are going to do a Hybrid experiment.  I will share all that, when we do it.  Yesterday, we did an experiment for Annelids, it was real simple, but they got the right idea.

DJ's Art project, he has two, both have to do with the upcoming 4H fair.  He is doing a cover design, and a wood burning project.  Caitlin will be making a matching painted paw print shirt, to go with her pants, for the fair, and she still has to pick a photograph.  Speaking of photographs we saw our first Monarch caterpillar of the year, this week, and it made a chrysalis already.  So, we will be watching that.  I told Caitlin if she wanted to do Art on Fun Friday, that she had to pick an artist she wanted to study, and learn about.  She chose Robert Bateman Wildlife Artist.  She drew, and then used colored pencils to complete her first remake of his Lynx painting.  He really does beautiful work.  She will have to do writing assignments, along with art for her projects. 

The new SAT, is interesting, lol.  There are actually five sections, with the essay writing now optional.  I don't know why anyone would not do that part.  Even if you got a low score, it will still boost your overall score.  DJ is very strong in writing, so it will work well for him.  We took a practice SAT, full exam, he took the old version at the end of last summer.  We did not do the essay part, because it is self graded, right now, until it goes live in March.  He actually improved quite a bit on the Reading, which was already pretty good, and the Math, which is his weakest are, he improved 30 points.  Heads up there is a lot of Geometry.  So, if you have not started Geometry yet, which we had not, you might want to.  So, for now Business Math will be awarded to him a half credit, he started Geometry, and will work through the rest of this year on that, and finishing up Algebra 1.  That way when he takes the actual SAT, at the end of this school year, hopefully we will get a real good idea of where he is.  He will be at the end of 10th grade.  The SAT, can be taken as many times as you want to pay for it.  Colleges only get the highest score you get.  So, there is always room for improvement.