A Week With Physics for the Grammar Stage: Day 2

This is the second post in the “A Week with Physics for the Grammar Stage” series, where I am detailing how Physics for the Grammar Stage looks in our homeschool.

You can read about our routine for Day 1 in my last post.

A Week With Physics for the Grammar Stage: Day 2

Here’s what day two looks like in our house.

Vocabulary Words

We started the day with princess looking up the weeks two vocabulary words, density, and surface tension.  She was supposed to do this on day one, but she had had enough writing that day, so I let her postpone it.  She copied the definitions out of the glossary I made for her to use with the program and when she was done, we started our reading assignment for the day.

Reading Assignment

Today we read from pg. 18-19 in the Usborne Science Encyclopedia.  The two-page spread was titled “Changes in State”.  We actually read this several months ago when we did Chemistry for the Grammar Stage, but princess didn’t seem to notice that fact.  We did skip over the pressure section as princess’s eyes were starting to glaze over.  Once we were finished reading, I asked her to write 2-3 sentences about what we had just read.  She gave me a deer in headlights look.  Honestly, she’d given me this look several times today, so I’m wondering it she didn’t sleep enough last night.  So, I told her that a good narration should include something about melting & boiling points as well as condensing and freezing (I chose those topics as important ones to include because 2/3 of the spread we read was on those subjects.).  She nodded her head and grabbed her pencil.  Here’s what she wrote…

A liquid freezes and it becomes a solid.  A solid melts and becomes a liquid and at it’s boiling point it becomes a gas.  All things have a different freezing point and have a different boiling point.

I was pleased with this, considering it was much longer than Day 1 and it included the information I told her to include.  Could it be worded better? Sure.  Could she have added some more detail?  Sure, but this is fourth grade and we are working on those things.  For now, I’m happy that she got the basic gist of what we were studying.  Here’s a picture of her narration sheet from the week…

Physics for the Grammar Stage Week 4 Narration Sheet

Unit Project

We paused after the reading, as Daddy is the project man and he wouldn’t be home until later.  He asked me if he could take over the projects this year and his enthusiasm has been contagious.  The two of them are so cute because they pretend to be Mythbusters out to bust some project myths, it’s hilarious to watch!

Anyways, today’s assignment was to try out different containers for your hovercraft.  They discussed possibilities and then decided that they would remove the variable of air delivery by using the hair dryer.  They tried a paper funnel, a paper cup and the top of the bottle for their different containers.

They determined that the weight of the container was important as well as how close the container was to the ground.  They concluded that the original design was the most effective one.  Our daughter is learning a lot from the projects, plus she’s really enjoying them, so I can’t complain.

Well, that’s our Day 2 routine, tomorrow I’ll wrap up the week and share some of my thoughts.

Total Time: 50 minutes (They were really engrossed in the project today.)

Don’t miss a post from this series!

• A Week With Physics for the Grammar Stage: Day 1 
  
• A Week With Physics for the Grammar Stage: Day 2 (this post)
• A Week With Physics for the Grammar Stage: Wrap-up