Force, more writing and Jo's math

 After going through Simple Machine,  we're continuing by studying force. Not surprisingly, it is Nel's favourite topic, and she herself said "I Love learning about this mum!"

We started by looking through a simple but captivating book "Fascinating Forces" (picture above) and tried some of the experiments in it. We learnt about the different types of forces, friction, inertia, momentum etc etc and of course, Newton's laws.

We discussed how Force equals mass times acceleration. A simple thing we did was to drop diff size objects from various heights, on my poor piano to illustrate how the volume differed when diff strengths of force (affected by mass and acceleration) was used. We also tried some stuff from http://www.maverickexperiments.com/ and other such pages.

Finally, intrigued by Newton's 3rd law, Nel picked out an experiment from this fun book .

She chose to make this simple boat out of a styrofoam cup, bowl and plates.

Basically when water is poured into the cup above, gravity pulls the water down and backwards into a pool of water, causing the boat to move forward in accordance to Newton's 3rd Law. And so her experiments continue.

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As for Jo, I gave her a simple assignment of creating cubes out of playdough and toothpicks. She made a cube, and she also made a pyramid and tetrahedron below.

 A while later when I came back, she had made 2 bridges, one of triangles

and one of squares.

Then she commented, the one with squares are wobbly and not strong. The one with triangles are better. So she's discovered a new thing for herself! :)

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A Limerick written by Nel

There was once a girl named Fain

Who got caught in the rain

She got terribly wet

Then she tripped over a net

So she cried in great pain.

She put a plaster on her big cut

And went to eat a hard nut

She went to her friend's house

Where she saw a large, fat, mouse

She got so frightened she fart!

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Finally, an observation of my child Nel this week:

Nel my child is quite an introvert. Ask her to stand on stage, talk in front of a crowd or present something, she'll start to mumble, stammer and just shy away. But she has a strength that I don't have, the strength of Doing and getting things done, kinda like the "behind the scenes person". Some time last year, when my kitchen sink clogged up, I gave up washing and left it. Few minutes later, I heard the slushing sound of water being pumped. I ran to my kitchen, found Nel using the plunger to unclog the sink.

Yesterday I found an army of ants in a kitchen cabinet, I pulled out a tray, and bcause I just felt so tired after a day of work, I left it. A few minutes later I heard the sound of the vacuum cleaner at work. It was Nel, sucking up the whole nest (queen ant included) into the vacuum (water based.)

Today..the CHristmas tree ornaments finally came down.....guess who did it? Yup...Nel.

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