Water Cycle: Ocean Deep

• Difference between the salt water and fresh water
• Discovering the properties of salt water
• Looking into Oceans, Sea and Lakes

Salt Water vs.. Fresh Water

Majority of the Earth’s water is in the oceans but the water here is not pure.  Ocean water contains components and elements that have been dissolved in the water through time (water eroded the Earth’s surface). 

From here, I started to discussing why water in the ocean is called salty water and those in the lakes are called fresh water.  Note that the term “fresh water” can be misunderstood.  Water in the ocean is not good for humans as it is salty.  Too much salt in our body is not good because the body cannot take it out.  Same thing as water in the lake, though it may be called “fresh” or may look clear, it may still  have something in it that can be dangerous to our body.

Seen below is our “salty” water mixture.  It’s made up of clean warm water, plenty of salt and a blue food colouring for the ocean effect.

Create a salty water mixture as mentioned above and let them taste the salty water and the freshwater for comparison.

Properties of Salt Water (Ocean)

Around 70% of the Earth’s surface is covered by seawater (water, salt, and other substances and gases).  Seawater is more dense, meaning if you mix salt and fresh water without mixing, the salt water will stay UNDER the fresh water.  Other amazing facts about sea water includes:

• Easier to swim in salt water because it helps to keep our bodies higher in the water.
• It needs more heat to boil and more cold to freeze

To demonstrate this, we conducted a few experiments to see first hand the properties of salt water and fresh water.  Click on the image below to see our experiments!

 

Investigating Oceans, Sea and Lakes

Using our printed and painted map, we identified four major ocean bodies:  Indian Ocean, Atlantic ocean, Pacific Ocean and Arctic ocean. 

 

Also, we revisited our study of organisms that live in salt water and the fresh water and a refresher of our landforms (an island is part of the Earth, it doesn’t float in the water LOL).

Animals in the freshwater ecosystem: lakes, ponds and streams. Animals in the marine ecosystem which includes the seashore, temperate and tropical oceans.

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Simple Experiments: Sinker!

Objective:  This experiment was conducted to determine how density affects water movement. 

Sinker!

1.  Prepare your  materials: salt, 200ml of warm water for your salty ocean water and a half filled clear water (representing freshwater).

2.  Create a mixture of salty water for your ocean.  Make sure that your water is warm enough to dissolve all the salt.  Add more salt until it can no longer be dissolve in your water mixture.  Add food colouring, I used a blue colour to represent the ocean.

                        

3.  Pour your salty water in the bowl of clear water.

4.  Observe the bowl from the side as you pour the water (as your helper pour the salty water). 

                      

As you can see the coloured salty water sinks to the bottom of the container, forming waves under the clear water above it.  The salty water (ocean) is more dense than the clear water it will stay under the clear water.

Floater!

Now another experiment we performed was to test how the water density affects the ability of an object to float.  This case, we prepared another salty water (in a big bowl) and a clear water in a separate bowl.  We used a boiled egg, as our test subject.

Drop the egg in the bowl of clear water.  It sank into the bottom of the bowl right away.

Now we tested the same boiled egg in a bowl full of salty water.  Once dropped,  it sank for a second but then it started to float afterwards!! Mavi was in awe!!

 

In this case, it easier for humans to swim in the ocean because of the higher density of the salty water helps to keep our bodies higher in water :) 

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FREE Stamp Game Sheets

Like my Stamp Game sheets that were used in our Static Addition and Dynamic Addition activities?  You can get your copy now by clicking the image below. Or by clicking this link.


For the first page, I printed it multiple times. Then, I cut it in the middle and created a booklet.  For the second page, we used it to practice writing numbers as seen in my Static Addition post.  And the last page, I randomly wrote a number and Mavi has to indicate the correct number of thousands, hundreds, tens and units.

Colorwheel Flowers

I came across this project at Deep Sparkle and decided to try this with Mavi.  I love how simple the project is and it uses basic colour combinations.  Since the project involves the colorwheel, Mavi and I revisited our basic art lessons about colours a few years ago. We talked about the primary and the secondary colours and how the are organised in a wheel type figure so we can easily remember the colour combinations.

                      

Read about colour theory I and colour theory II.

Mavi worked on the red, orange, green and yellow combinations, while I painted a blue-violet flower combination.  And here’s how they looked like after we added  black and white paint details.

The flowers turned out really good and the colours were vibrant! You can see these hanging in Mavi’s room as of the moment.

For the details of the projects, click this link from Deep Sparkle.

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Dynamic Addition

Our dynamic addition starts with a brief discussion of what makes a 10 using a unit (1’s), 100 using 10’s and a 1000 using 100’s.  This is a visual presentation of smaller units that we can group together to form a bigger units.  From here, I told Mavi that whenever he encounters this when he plays Stamp Game, all he needed to do was to “substitute” the group with a bigger value. 

 

 

The concept of dynamic addition in Montessori is the same whether you use golden beads, stamp game or bead frame.  Here’s how we do it:

• [Top left photo] Mavi would take out a strip of paper with a written equation and copies it in our booklet.  [Top left photo]
• [Top right photo] He would layout all the stamps according to the equation.  Then perform the addition by combining the two sets. See our Static Addition for this.
• [Lower left photo]  Count the stamps starting from the unit’s place value. He counted 13 units, grouped the 10 units (green) and replaced it with a 10 (blue).  As you can see, he was confused at first he put the 10 (blue) in the units area.  This I emphasized that he has to place it on the correct area in the place value mat.
• [Top right photo]  He recorded the sum after he worked on the tens and hundreds, applying the same concept of regrouping.

Note:  Mavi has memorized a lot of number pair in addition.  Most of the time he doesn’t use the stamps or beads, he automatically do the addition work.  Sometimes he would start on the thousands going down to the units. I have to explain that he always need to start from the smallest unit.  This is because he will produce an incorrect sum once the equation is dynamic.  That is the number changes (addends) because of the regrouping.  And he understood this somehow when finished a few equation strips.

Well, that’s all for dynamic addition for now.  This is just an introductory to my 6 years old.  We’ll practice more of this next year. 

FREE Skip Counting Learning Materials

Here’s our homemade math learning material for skip counting.  You can avail a FREE copy by clicking on the image below.  We’ll use this next week so keep visiting my site if you want to see how we use it at home. Enjoy! 

Montessori Inspired Skip Counting

I wonder how you teach kids to skip count?  When I was younger this was one of the thing that I despise the most. Why? Because basically they just want us to memorise it.  With the available resources now, I want my boys to love skip counting…. as I always tell Mavi, you will use this technique all the time for the rest of your life :)

We had a few practice on this but I never had a the chance to come up with a serious unit or lesson for this.  Now he’s a bit older to understand and appreciate, I decided to come up with sheets to get him into the skip counting thingy.

First I created the hundred sheets, and discuss the concept about skip counting (by 2’s, 5’s and 10’s).  I cross-out the count in our sheets and made him mark it using our Do-a-Dot markers.

“Look Mom! It has a pattern!”

Now using these visuals, we put it into action using our decanomial beads and hundred board number tiles (both Montessori Math materials from Absorbent Minds UK).

Here we have the counting by 5’s. 

 

And I compared it to the counting by 10’s. 

And his least favourite skip counting is by 2’s (because it takes a long time to read 10, he said LOL).

Now well be practicing this for the entire week.  I’m coming up with materials so we can use the concept using non-Montessori materials.  I’ll be sharing it with you so watch out for it.

 

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Water Cycle: All about Water

Last week we worked on the first part of our Water Cycle study which is all about water.  The objectives of this study are the following:

• Define the states of matter using water
• Discover the properties of water
• Analyze the water cycle

WATER

Water illustrates the three states of matter:  solid (ice), liquid (water) and gas (steam).  The presentation includes a glass of water, a bowl of ice and a cup of hot water (steam is not visible in the picture).  Mavi explored the three states, touching feeling and tasting (we waited for the hot water to cool down). 

“Mom, they don’t have a taste!”

Yes, because water is tasteless, odourless and transparent. 

EXPLORING THE PROPERTIES OF WATER

Then we discuss what makes the water liquid, solid and gas.  I pointed out that temperature affects the state of the water. If the temperature is low (and freezing), the water turns into ice (solid) because the molecules that in the water does not move around as much.  Thus they form into crystalline (rigid) structure which turns it into ice.   As seen on the photos below, we made ice… and  took a photo of before and after exposing the water to low temperature.

                              

I asked Mavi to look for a spot in his body that can melt the ice easily.  One, he ate some ice…. and then another he put some in his underarm LOL. Try this with your kids!

For water turning into gas, that’s because it is exposed to a hot or high temperature with molecules moving very fast with large spaces between molecules.  Here I showed Mavi how to produce steam.

WATER CYCLE

I conducted a simple demonstration of how water cycle works.  You can read about it here.

 WATER PHASES SORTING CARDS

You can download our free water form cards which we used to sort out whether the water form is in solid, liquid or gas state.

Thank you and enjoy!

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The Water Cycle Experiment

 

Objective:  Analyze the water cycle.

Materials:

• clear crystal container or jar
• lid cover or plate (crystal in our case).
• ice
• boiled water

Procedure:

Heat water until it produces steam or boiling.   Pour the hot water in the bowl/jar until it is about 1/3 filled.

 

Cover the bowl/jar, with a lid.  Wait for a few minutes, then add some ice cubes on top of the cover.

 

And now observe what happens.  Streaks of water starts to form at the bottom of the cover. When it gets too heavy it starts to fall down just like the rain!

 

So easy and fun!  You can read the scientific explanation here.  Mavi was like “Mom it’s raining inside the bowl!”

Static Addition

My son has been doing a lot of addition exercises (static) using both the stamp game and bead frames.  I created equation cards, place value mat and stamp game booklet for the exercises.  I’m sharing how we do static addition using both materials.

Static Addition using the Stamp Game. 

1.  Take out an equation card and copy the equation in the booklet.

2.  Using the equation, select the stamps for both numerals placing them on the place value mat.  

3.  Now say “Let’s add the amounts together.” Push the rows of stamps together (combine them), starting with the units.  Count and record the number.  Do the same thing for the tens, hundreds and thousands.

4.  The four rows of the bead frame represents the decimal.  The upper green beads is for the units, the blue for tens, red for hundreds and the lower green beads for thousands.  Now using the same concept as the stamp game, count and move the appropriate beads from the left to right side. Once you’re done counting, record the numbers.  In this case, Mavi used it to check his work.

Here’s Mavi working several times. Can’t believe he’s glued.

 

For a PRINTABLE STAMP GAME, visit MONTESSORI PRINT SHOP for the free download. Follow Pinay Homeschooler's board Montessori on Pinterest.

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Mastering the Decimal System

I decided to shift back our Montessori materials to review our decimal system, skip counting, addition and subtraction using Montessori Materials. We’re almost done with our Singapore Workbooks so we’re taking a break from all the paper works and shift back to tactile activities :)

THE DECIMAL SYSTEM

We used the Montessori golden beads for presentation and the stamp game and bead frame for the activities.  My main goal here is for Mavi to really understand how the system works, to refine his knowledge of reading and  number formation.

 

QUANTITY AND SYMBOLS

The beginning of the lesson I presented to Mavi how to write the 4 digit numbers. This has always been a difficult subject for him, for he cannot understand why some units must take the place of 0's in tens, hundreds and thousands. We practiced forming the numbers using number cards and in writing as well.

He compared the digits to the body parts LOL.

For the exercises, I created a number checklist table.  Given the number, Mavi will give me the correct number tiles and bead frame counts . This activity is similar to Bank Game, but we’re not using the number cards and golden beads.  As you can see in the pictures below, he has to show me the correct quantity using the stamp tiles and bead frame.

                                  

 

FORMATION OF NUMBERS

This exercises is for Mavi to master how to write the correct number forms.  Given the quantity in number tiles, Mavi has to write the correct amount in our activity sheet.  I liked this activity, as he was able to understand the relationship of decimals.  This also enhances his skills in reading and writing large number units.

Our next step would be static and dynamic addition using the stamp game and bead frame.

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