STOP PRESS! It's snowing in Canberra!

Wrap up tight in that pashmina, Ms S. It's snowing on the Science website in cool Canberra.

Can you make your own snow? Here's a fun link if you want to give it a try.

Seahorses have a secret...

And the secret is that the male carries the eggs.

Seahorses live in small compacted places. They like to eat shrimp and lots of other small kinds of fish. The eggs are in the male's pouch for nine days then they hatch. Some Seahorses hatch 2,000 to 3,000 eggs.

There are 32 different species of seahorses. They live from three to five years in the wild.

The Latin name for a seahorse is Hippocampus. You can also read more about seahorses here. The one in the picture lived a very long and happy life.

Somewhere over the rainbow

What you need to make a jello rainbow:

Measuring jug
Boiling water 125 mls
Cold water 125 mls
Packets of different colored jello

Directions:

1. Empty jelly crystals into a measuring jug.
2. Add half a cup of boiling water. Get an adult to do this.
3. When it is stirred together, add a half cup of cold water.
4. Stir until the jelly crystals are completely dissolved.
5. Pour into a container and refrigerate until it is almost set.
6. Do steps one to five several times using different colors of jello.
7. Use a glass container to layer the many colors of jello to make a rainbow effect. Refrigerate until it is set hard.

Questions:

Did you ever drink unset jello? Try it, you might like it!
Did you ever try to make a jello sculpture?

Facts:

- In 1845, industrialist Peter Cooper (who built the first American steam-powered locomotive, the Tom Thumb), obtained a patent for making powdered gelatin.
- Some discontinued flavors are: Italian salad, pickle and bubble gum.

The lyrics for the Aeroplane Jelly Song:

I like Aeroplane Jelly, Aeroplane Jelly for me.
I like it for dinner, I like it for tea,
A little each day is a good recipe!
The quality's high, as the name will imply,
It's made from pure fruit - one more good reason why
I like Aeroplane Jelly, Aeroplane Jelly for me!

Supersize me!

The kitchen is the best place to do science experiments! Today, we are going to make pancakes!
Did you know, baked goods are like balloons and need gas to rise? Rising agents like baking powder and baking soda produce carbon dioxide, and trapped air and steam are additional sources of gas. The protein in eggs and flour provide a stretchy structure that traps the gas as it expands due to heat, causing the batter to rise.

If you like pancakes and want to make some then follow these instructions.

Ingredients:
1 cup self-raising flour
1 cup milk
1 egg

Method:
1. Pre-heat a large non-stick frying pan.
2. Add all ingredients into a bowl and mix until combined.
3. Lightly grease the pan with butter or cooking spray.
4. Cook large spoonfuls of batter until bubbles burst on top and the edges start to go dry.
5. Turn and cook other side until golden.

Delicious toppings:
Maple syrup, lemon juice and sugar, jam.

Stun your friends with a playdough sculpture

Ingredients:

half a cup of salt
1 cup of plain flour
2 tablespoons cream of tartar
1 cup of water
1 tablespoon of oil
food colouring

What to do:

1. Mix all the ingredients together in a bowl.


2. Knead it until the dough is pliable.


3. Store it in a well sealed plastic bag or a container.

Things you can make and even bake:

An ashtray, Christmas ornaments, a pendant for a necklace, animals, or a sculpture.

FACTS:

Salt is used as a preservative.

Salt is the most common food seasoning.

Over consumption of salt can lead to high blood pressure.

Salt is bad for plants and can kill them.

Bread Making Word Bank

bread, yeast, breadmaker, flour, water, loaf, crust, ingredients, dough, knead

Bread Making

What You Need

Water
Flour
Yeast
Butter

Here is a link to make bread at your home. Breadmaking

How to Make A Solar Oven

Equipment and Material

• 1 pizza box
• newspapers
• scissors
• tape
• black construction paper
• clear plastic wrap
• aluminum foil
• ruler

Method

1. Draw an 8 1/2 inch x 11 inch square in the
lid of the assembled box.
2. Cut out three sides of the square, and fold
the flap back along the uncut edge.
3. Cover the inside of this flap with aluminum
foil, using tape to hold the edges securely.
4. Line the inside bottom of the box with black
construction paper. Use tape to hold the edges down.
5. Create insulation by rolling up some newspaper (about 1 1/2
inch thick) and fitting it around the inside edges of the box.
6. Tape one piece of plastic wrap (stretched tightly) to the underside
of the lid opening, to cover. Tape another piece on the top of the lid opening, to create a layer of
insulation that will help hold the heat in the box.
7. Prop the box at an angle facing the sun. Use a ruler to prop the flap open.

On a hot, sunny day the temperature can reach 200°°F in
your oven! Use it to make smores, or to warm some muffins.

Who are you calling a Pee Wee? - the Magpie Lark

Hello to my commenter. :)

How about a couple of blown up balloons tied to the chairs or table top? Streamers - like you use for a party - we scared away crows at school outside our classroom this way. The paper streamers flutter in the breeze and are off putting to birds. A mobile hanging up above the table? One that will chime or make a musical sound? This may disturb them. Good luck!

Description:
The adult male has a white eyebrow and a black face whereas the female has a white face and doesn't have a eyebrow. The young, no matter what gender, have a black forehead, a white eyebrow and a white throat.

Habitat:
Pee wees can be found in Australia, New Guinea and Timor. They can be found in almost any habitat except rain forests and the driest deserts. Birds that don't breed and young birds make large wandering groups that move flock together. These groups can sometimes consist of several thousands of birds.

Food:
The pee wee is a mostly ground dwelling bird and can be seen slowly searching the ground for a variety of insects and their larvae. They also like to eat worms and freshwater invertebrates.

This bird does not at all sound like the noisy magpies but yet, does not sound as sweet as the lark but... as Slinky likes to say - "I like to think that they are there, having a peaceful time as they fly, eat and enjoy life."

Here is a female on her nest in Brisbane in an African Tulip tree about 3 metres off the ground. The nest is covered with mud on the outside and the eggs have not hatched out yet. They lay from three to five, and they are pale brown with splotches.

* Can you name six black and white birds found in Australia?

* Did you know? Magpie larks are very attracted to mirrors and will look at themselves for hours.

(Article written by Slinky.)

Why is it so?

This is a simple (excuse me, I am laughing really hard here) test to see if you are correctly processing what you are reading. After all, if you don't read your Science instructions correctly you will end up with very queer results in your experiments.

Take this color test and see how you measure up.

Are these colors for real?

... or are they photoshopped? Wait for it - they are REAL!

Nature gives us some pretty amazing sights, and on Mommy Bytes by Angela we find an unusually colored frog.




Can you find some more blue creatures in nature? Here are some other examples:



This is a blue footed bird from the Galopagos Islands.





And on Fish and Frog, Turtle and Blog, we can learn all about the beautiful blue damselfly.

Test Tube Aliens - Are they real?

They LOOK real! After looking up Roswell on Google, we studied two views of an alleged alien crash site.

We discovered that the town of Roswell, New Mexico, USA, became famous on July 7, 1947, as there was speculation that an alien space ship had crashed near there.

Reports from the United States military say that what was actually recovered was debris from a high-altitude surveillance balloon.

However, many UFO believers spoke up to the media, saying that a crashed alien space ship and some UFO bodies were recovered from the crash site and that the military covered it up.

The name Roswell is now mentioned whenever talk turns to UFOs. It's the most famous UFO incident. It even got its own TV series!

So to simulate the Roswell incident, and just in case it wasn't a weather balloon, or a sleek Stealth bomber, we hatched and raised a Test Tube Alien.

They come dehydrydrated, and encased in a white cocoon which melts away as the alien hatches, until a very live looking alien is revealed. To hatch it, you add water and keep adding water until it stops fizzing. Then you feed it. The heart beat is fascinating to watch as it flashes from green to orange to red - signifying that the alien is alive and well!

Word Bank:

alien, test tube, live, water, melt, cocoon, heart, hatch, fizzing, encased, revealed, dehydrated.

Cyber Scope! Turn your world upside down!

Can you imagine how strange the world would look if everything was upside down? When you put on the Cyber Scopes glasses, that is exactly what happens! Students will have a fun time watching each other try to complete challenges while wearing the disorienting glasses.

It's a board game with a difference. It contains a pair of special glasses, game board, 16 puzzle pieces, 7 puzzle cards, 1 foam ball, dice, a pen and two timers. Students compete to make their way around the game board as quickly as possible by completing tasks wearing the Cyber Scopes. The tasks range from putting together a puzzle, to catching a ball in the air, to reading a single word.

While the tasks may initially sound easy, they become a whole lot more difficult when the world is turned upside down by the Cyber Scopes glasses! These distinct glasses put a new spin on the board game that will have you attempting to work in reverse, upside down, in a disorientated state - all in the safety of your classroom. Is it all an illusion, or is it real? You decide!

It's moving!

It's moving! Hold the page still! Double click on the image to make it larger.

An optical illusion is also called a visual illusion. The brain processes the information given to it by the eye, but - the effects of certain stimulation, like brightness, tilt, colour or movement, can give a false perception.



Ms S once watched a movie called "The Goonies" and she believes that if you feed these things Dr Pepper, they will multiply!

The Monarch Butterfly

To start with, here is a website I follow which gave me the idea.

Torch Lake Views

Here is a fun website to look at, with migration maps and information inside.

Monarch Butterfly site.


Now we have the activities:

1. Show the life cycle of the Monarch Butterfly in a diagram.
2. On a map, show where it lives and how it travels.
3. Full illustration, either by drawing or scrapping.
4. Interesting and unusual facts.
5. And just for fun, write a Haiku poem (5, 7, 5) about the Monarch Butterfly.

Do oil and water mix?

Question:
What happens when an oil tanker spills oil into the ocean?

Answer:
The oil floats on top of the water, causing environmental damage and killing fish and seabirds. Oil floats on water because it's less dense.

Oil and water don’t mix.

What you need:

four clear glasses, each half full of water
cooking oil
food colouring – red or blue show up best
liquid detergent

What to do:

Add a few drops of food colour to the first glass and stir. Notice how well the colour mixes with the water.
Pour some cooking oil into the second glass. Does it mix in like the food colour did? Try stirring the oil and observe what happens. The oil will eventually rise to form a layer on top of the water.
Pour enough cooking oil into the third glass to form a layer on top of the water approximately five centimetres thick. When the oil layer has settled, add a few drops of food colour. Don’t stir. Watch how each drop behaves as it hits the oil layer.
Now mix everything in together. What happens to the drops of colour? Some tiny drops of colour will probably stay in the oil layer. Watch what happens to them after a while.
Create the same oil and water mixture in the fourth glass, with several drops of food colour. Add a teaspoon of dishwashing detergent and stir vigorously. What is different this time? Notice the colour of the oil layer. Is it the same as the water layer?

What's happening:

Even when you stir them together, they will soon separate. The oil, which is lighter (or less dense), rises to the top. Food colouring is water-based, so it mixes easily with water, but can’t mix with the oil. Did you notice how the drops of food colour behaved when they travelled through the oil? Sometimes the food colour forms perfect little beads, which slowly drop through the oil layer.

Slime - make mine lime

You can make your own cornflour slime to learn about fluids and viscosity.

To do this experiment you will need:

cornflour
food colouring
a small mixing bowl
water

What to do:

Pour some cornflour into a mixing bowl.
Stir in small amounts of water until the cornflour has become a very thick paste.
To make the slime the colour of your choice, thoroughly stir about five drops of food colouring into the mixture.
Stir your slime REALLY slowly. This shouldn't be hard to do.
Stir your slime REALLY fast. This should be almost impossible.
Now punch your slime REALLY hard and fast. It should feel like you're punching a solid.

What's happening:

Anything that flows is called a fluid. This means that both gases and liquids are fluids.
Fluids like water which flow easily are said to have low viscosity, whereas fluids like cold honey which do not flow so easily are said to have a high viscosity.
Cornflour slime is a special type of fluid that doesn't follow the usual rules of fluid behaviour. When a pressure is applied to slime, its viscosity increases and the cornflour slime becomes thicker.
At a certain point, slime actually seems to lose its flow and behave like a solid. Cornflour slime is an example of a sheer-thickening fluid.

Make two columns in a book and call one "Low Viscosity" and the other "High Viscosity". Which column do these liquids go into:

honey, molasses, water, Dr Pepper, whipped cream, jam, ketchup, milk, yoghurt, juice, tea.

Invisible Ink - can you see it?

Some inks are developed by heat.

Some of these oxidize when heated, and usually turn brown. For this type of 'heat fixed' ink, any acidic type of fluid will work. As a rule of thumb, the most secure way to use any particular ink is by diluting it - usually with water - near to the point when it begins to get difficult to develop.

Cola drink (diluted)
Honey (diluted)
Lemon, apple or orange juice
Milk
Onion juice
Soap water
Sugar solution
Vinegar

Ah ha! I am about to use invisible ink to write you a message:

Did you read it? First one to tell me the correct answer wins a prize!

Keep a Pet Journal

You might like to work in pairs or teams.

How are you going to format this? Will you blog it? Will it be in poster form? Use a class work book? If so, which one?

Is your pet real or just on your wish list?

Keep it up every day for a week from Monday through to Friday, then we can spend a week finalising the presentation, then we can do a class sharing session.

Your assessment will be based on your teamwork and cooperation, your illustrations, your oral presentation at the end, and the quality of your writing.

Read Pyewacket's journal from topcatrules before you begin.

Sultana Soda Pop