Saturday, April 9, 2011

Apologia Science Experiments

This year in science we have been studying ocean creatures using Exploring Creation with Zoology 2: Swimming Creatures of the Fifth Day from Apologia Science, which we are enjoying very much!  With this text, I also bought one Notebooking Journal that follows the text and includes questions, crossword puzzles, and mini-books for each chapter.

Apologia books are faith-based texts that are packed with lots of information and science experiments for each lesson.  Throughout the Apologia books, they recognize that our awesome Creator made the world around us and He made wonderful creatures on land and sea.  It is amazing to study God's wonders through this great science curriculum!

I decided to buy the Zoology 2: Swimming Creatures of the Fifth Day Deluxe Science Kit at the beginning of the school year from Creation Sensation so all the experiment materials would be gathered for me and mailed to my door.  Each Apologia text does include an extensive materials list at the beginning of the books, but I wanted to save time from hunting down items by purchasing the kit. I was excited to win the Apologia Anatomy Science Kit this past summer through Creation Sensation's Facebook page!  I'm thinking since I already have the science kit, I'll do Anatomy next year.

One item that was in our kit that corresponds with Lesson 8: Crustaceans is an envelope of sea monkey or triop eggs.  Triops, sometimes called tadpole shrimp (not true shrimp ,but shrimp-like) are tiny crustaceans that can stay inside their eggs for many years in a dry state.  They only hatch if they have been dried first.  It's when we followed the directions on the envelope and dumped the eggs into water in our small habitat pictured above, that our triops hatched and began swimming around.  We have  4 of these little creatures swimming around and my son was especially happy to see them hatch since he was the one who worried the most that we somehow killed them! Unfortunately, these crustaceans only live a few months, so we are enjoying them while we can.

Here is a close-up of one triop in the top left side of the photo.  It's not the best shot, but it was difficult to get a clear picture (especially since the container needs a cleaning!)

On page 171 of the Zoology 2: Swimming Creatures of the Fifth Day, there is a science experiment in the cephalopod chapter to learn about buoyancy. On yesterday's post, I came up with Water Art, using the eyedropper that was used for this experiment. The above picture shows the textbook open to where the experiment is with the materials used: glass of water, water bottle filled with water, 2 different eyedroppers decorated with google eyes and orange and yellow chenille sticks.

The idea was to fill the eyedropper with a little bit of water by placing it inside the glass and squeezing and then put it into the water bottle.  Here is the eyedropper in the glass of water:

After we put the eyedropper in the water bottle and closed the lid tightly, my children squeezed the bottle really hard so the eyedropper sunk (because water rushed into the eyedropper, making it heavier) and then the eyedropper rose to the top when they released the pressure, water rushed out of the eyedropper, making it lighter.
We were very excited that this experiment worked and my son was so happy when he saw the sinking and rising of the eyedropper for the first time!  I was glad we got the same results as the book since I get frustrated when experiments don't go as they should! :)

This easy and quick experiment was used to explain that some cephalopods, (what's a cephalopod? It's in the text, of course) like the nautilus, can control their buoyancy like we demonstrated with the bottle of water and the eyedropper.  Nautiluses can take in water, which makes them heavier, then makes them sink, or they can expel water to become lighter, and they rise in the ocean water.  The book mentioned that submarines do the same thing when they fills tanks with ocean water to sink and then submarines push water out of the tanks to rise.

Please join Lynda, Anna-Marie and myself for April's No Ordinary Blog Hop (NOBH). You can link up any or all your posts for the entire month of April. The blogger with the most posts will be awarded a Star Blogger Award!  Click below for details!

15 comments:

Mary said...

Zoo 2 was our favorite of all the elementary books. :)

Hi Tracy,
Triops are fun we did them last year but only got one to hatch. Kids were so unhappy when it died. We are getting ready to study the ocean next week so I will keep this experiment in mind as I haven't looked for many ocean/ocean sea life experiments to do yet with our unit. I am still researching it. This looks like a good one to do with my kids. Voted for you today have a great day:)

I love the pics, looks like such fun!

We'll be moving onto this book next. We're finishing up the flying creatures and are really enjoying it. I love how all the kids can go through it together and even the littlest ones glean something from it. I'll have to consider ordering the experiment kit - I alway come close and then my frugality wins over. Sure would be convenient, though! Thanks for sharing!

Unknown said...

Hi Tracy,

These experiments look like so much fun. I know I already told you, but we are doing Astronomy right now and plan on moving on to swimming creatures when we finish. I love the pre-made kits. That is defiantly on my list of needs for next year. I am always turning down projects due to lack of materials. The water droppers are really cute. Did you make those, or were they in the kit as well? I love it. Your experiment with the tadpole shrimp looks pretty cool. That one I would have to build up to as "fish" tanks are not my favorite thing. The kids sure would love it though. Thanks for sharing! I love the pictures of the kids! They all look so involved and excited to be learning about science. Talk soon.

I clicked a vote for you today.

Kimberly

Happy Sunday Tracy, Stopping by to vote for you.

noreen said...

Hi Tracy, I loved hearing that your science books are faith based! After all, God created all of those sea creatures!

Hi Mary!
We are enjoying this text too! It has a lot of great and interesting facts in it! Thanks for stopping by and commenting!

Hi Anna-Marie,
I'm sure you will come up with great ocean experiments! I look forward to reading about them on your blog :) Thanks for stopping in, commenting and the vote :)

Hi Kim,
My kids did enjoy this experiment, especially since I don't do a lot of them :( or if I do they are a bust :( Thanks for stopping by!

Hi Heather at "happymomonline"
We did Flying Creatures last year and enjoyed it! Thanks for stopping in and commenting! I enjoyed "meeting" you on your blog :)

We haven't done Astronomy yet and I can't decide to either do Astronomy or Anatomy next year? The water droppers came with the kit. I actually ordered the Deluxe Kit and then I ordered the supplement kit also if you have more than one child using the kits. Thanks for stopping by and for the vote :)

Hi Noreen,
I agree that God made ALL things great and small :) Thanks for stopping by and commenting!

Dawn said...

Tracy,
Thanks for stopping by my blog and for your kind words. I'm very grateful that our schoolwork is getting done too!
I put a link up for a new post and its under science experiments as well. We got a surprise package in the mail this weekend so we are over the moon about doing science right now.....

Saw your comment about maybe doing astronomy next year. Did you get the Journey to the Stars free disk and lesson plans from NASA? I have a couple of extra's.
Hopefully, I'll get caught up with my blogging and not so much in the wee hours of the morning...LOL.

Hi Dawn,
Getting a surprise package is always fun! I'll have to check out your post. I have never heard of the disk and lesson plans from NASA, but it sounds good. Thanks for stopping in and commenting!

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