With Ms. Kathleen

We have been studying Pop Art and the artist Andy Warhol. They learned how to shade objects on one side to create a three-dimensional look. We made a series of the same object in four colors on bright colored backgrounds like the artwork of Andy Warhol. Look for their Pop Art to be hung in the hallways soon!

We also studied the artist Wassily Kandinsky and his painting of eccentric circles. I had the students draw several circles in two rows. I then had them draw circles inside the main circles. We then used markers to color each of the circles and inner circles different colors as like Kandinsky did in his painting. The students really enjoyed choosing their own colors and making it unique to them.

Today the first group of Master Barnick’s TaoKwondo class took their belt tests and all students who completed their testing moved up to the next belt level! Congratulations martial artists!

Martial arts helps students learn how to listen and follow directions, have respect for adults/teachers, learn discipline and patience as well as engage in physical activity.

Want to get your kids involved in more after-school activities? Martial arts Boston academy are a great way for kids to burn energy, learn new skills and learn self-discipline and defense.

Check out some pictures below from the first six weeks!

Ryan breaking a board.

Finn testing for his white belt with a yellow stripe.

We have had a blast in taekwondo during the month of September! We played a lot of games that helps to improve our sense of balance and requires us to multitask. One of these games is called Ninja Rocks. To play this game, you have to walk across the ninja rocks (punching targets) and you also have to watch for the ninja sword so you can block it when it tries to tap you on the head.

  

We also took time to practice our forms which we will have to learn for our belt tests.

The elementary students had the opportunity to challenge each other in a game of Ninja Tag. In this game, students are paired up and they each get two lunges to try and tag their partner on the arm.

 

Ninja Sneak is another game we played this month. This game is played much like Red Light,Green Light however everyone has to be as silent as possible because if the instructor hears you, you have to go all the way back to the beginning.

Tie Dye Milk Experiment: First we filled a pan up with milk. Then, we put drops of food coloring on it. The children observed how the food coloring stayed in place, because food coloring is less dense than the milk. Then, we put a drop of dish soap on it. Once we put a drop of dish soap on it the surface tension was reduced. As the dish soap spread it attracted the food coloring, this is because dish soap is a “degreaser” and the molecules in it were attacking the fat in the milk. This is what caused motion and created the swirling of the colors.

Changing of the Leaves: We took leaves from two different tree’s and placed them in rubbing alcohol then created energy using hot water. We placed the leaves in the hot water to separate the colors. At first we saw green because the chlorophyll in the leaves gives them their green color, and it is so dominant that it hides the other colors in the leaves. However, in the fall the chlorophyll in the leaves breaks down allowing the other colors to finally shine through and show their beautiful reds, yellows, and oranges.

With Ms. Kathleen

We started off the school year studying artist Wayne Thiebaud. He is a modern American artist most known for his beautiful paintings of cakes, doughnuts, and ice cream cones. I had the students paint ice cream scoops in Primary Colors and they learned how to blend white to each ice cream scoop so to make them look three dimensional and realistic as Wayne Thiebaud did in his paintings. Next they painted popsicles while learning about Secondary Colors. We used a technique called crayon resist to create a pattern on the popsicle and then used watercolors to paint over the crayon. They have had such fun painting and getting messy as artists are required to!

  

Welcome back to another fantastic year of science with Mr. John! Mr. John does science every Thursday for our classes at the Cuyahoga Falls site. He prepares fun and interactive science experiments that students enjoy so much. After each class your student will come home with an outline of the experiment, your child’s hypothesis and an explanation of what us happening during the experiment.

The science, behind this balloon baking soda experiment, is the chemical reaction between the base {baking soda} and the acid {vinegar}. When the two ingredients mix together the balloon baking soda experiment gets it’s lift! The balloon is filling with the gas produced from the two ingredients is carbon dioxide or CO2.Carbon dioxide is Mr. John’s favorite gas.

Week 2:

If you put an egg in a cup of tap water, it will sink to the bottom. Why is this?

Because the density of the egg is higher than the density of tap water, so it sinks. Density is the mass of a material per unit volume. For example, the density of freshwater under standard conditions is approximately one gram per cubic centimeter.

But, if you add enough salt to the water, the egg will actually float back up to the surface! Adding salt to the water increases the density of the solution because the salt increases the mass without changing the volume very much.

When enough salt is added to the water, the saltwater solution’s density becomes higher than the egg’s, so the egg will then float! The ability of something, like the egg, to float in water or some other liquid is known as buoyancy.

Week 3

Week 4

In week 4, Mr. John used oil, water, food coloring, an empty plastic bottle and a funnel. Have you noticed that he tends to use everyday household materials for a majority of his experiments?

Mr. John set the bottle down and everyone had their eyes glued to the bottle. The oil and water were separating!

Why does the water not mix with the oil?  

• Oil is less dense than water.  Given the variance in densities the two liquids cannot mix.
• Oil and water also do not mix because water molecules are more attracted to each other than to oil molecules.

I hope you enjoyed this month of activities. Don’t forget to check your student’s folder on Thursdays for the instructions for each experiment!

Welcome to the music blogpost! So far this school year your kiddos have been taught by Ms. Lisa, the musical instructor who teaches music at both campuses for AMMS.

The children have been taught many musical concepts over the past several weeks such as how to sing piano (soft), forte (loud), staccato (jumpy) and legato (smooth). They learned about how to “echo” Ms. Lisa and her puppet that she brings each week. Your children have played rhythm sticks, tambourines and castanets.  They learned how to follow a direction and play their instruments together. We learned what an instrumental is and played one on our castanets.  They also recently learned a Spanish song and dance called La Raspa. The children have learned how to wait for the right moment to pick up their instruments to play them along with the music. They have had a lot of fun so far in music this year!

The Leak-proof Bag: We took a plastic bag, filled it with water and then poked a few pencils through it. The students learned that the plastic bag was made out of polyethylene molecules. They discovered that when the pencils were poked through the  bag the molecules in the plastic created a seal making the bag leak-proof.

Walking Water- We placed three glasses side by side, filled the two outside glasses with water and food coloring (yellow and blue) and left the middle glass empty. Then, we twisted two paper towels placing one end in the glasses with water and the other end in the empty glass. After about 30 minutes we noticed that the water started to climb the paper towels making its way to the empty middle glass. We learned that this process is called capillary action and is also how flowers and plants move water from the ground up through their stems and into their petals and leaves.

Explosion of vinegar and baking soda

What will happen if we put vinegar and baking soda in a sandwich bag?

We put vinegar in a sandwich bag and added baking soda, and the zipped sandwich bag popped!

Mixing vinegar and baking soda causes the sodium bicarbonate (baking soda) to react with acetic acid (vinegar) releasing carbon dioxide gas and making sodium acetate. The CO2 gas production caused the ziploc bag to pop.

Fire Resistant Water Balloon

What will happen if we put a flame under a balloon? What will happen if we put a flame under a balloon filled with water compared with putting a flame under a balloon with no water?  The balloon without water popped when a flame was placed under it. The balloon with water in it did not pop when a flame was placed under it.

The thin balloon allows the heat to pass through very quickly and warm the water. As the water closest to the flame heats up, it begins to rise and cooler water replaces it at the bottom of the balloon. This cooler water then soaks up more heat and the process repeats itself. In fact, the exchange of water happens so often that it keeps the balloon from ever popping! The carbon was deposited on the balloon by the flame, and the balloon remains undamaged.

Paper Towels vs. Diapers

-Absorption  “ To take something in”

What will happen if we pour water in a container containing paper towels and another container containing Sodium Polyacrylate(the stuff in diapers)? Which will hold  more water, paper towels or Sodium Polyacrylate?

The container with the paper towels absorbed some water but not all the water. Some of the water spilled out of the container. The container that had Sodium Polyacrylate absorbed all the water. None of the water spilled out of the container.

The Sodium Polyacrylate holds more water than paper towels and is therefore, more absorbent.

Magic Milk Rainbow

Surface Tension

“A property of a liquid keeping an object from going into the liquid”

What will happen if we put drops of food coloring on the top of milk in a bowl and place  dish soap in the middle of the milk?

We placed the drops of food coloring(green, red, and yellow) on top of milk in a bowl and we put  dish soap on the end of a Q-tip in the middle of the milk.

When we dipped the dish soap soaked Q-tip in the milk the food coloring swirled!

Food coloring is less dense than milk so it floats on the surface of the milk. When the dish soap touches the milk, the milk’s surface tension changes and the milk begins to move in an attempt to keep normal surface tension. This movement causes the food coloring to mix creating a milk rainbow.

Pop Rock Expander

-Chemical Reaction

 What happens when we mix Pop Rock candy and soda? Should we ask Mikey?

First, get an entire package of Pop Rocks into a balloon using a funnel and place the balloon over the mouth of a bottle of soda. Grab the balloon and dump the Pop Rocks into the soda. And then the balloon was inflating!

Both candy and soda contain pressurized carbon dioxide gas. When the Pop Rocks are dropped into the soda, aome carbon dioxide is able to escape from the high fructose corn syrup of the soda and, because the carbon dioxide gas has nowhere to go in the bottle, it rises into the balloon.

Dancing Spaghetti

-Carbonation

What are the bubbles? What will happen when we put cooked spaghetti in a fresh glass of baking soda/vinegar mixture?

We made a “batch” of baking soda/vinegar mixture(2 cups of  water and 2 cups of vinegar). We dropped several strands of cooked spaghetti into the baking soda/vinegar mixture, Add 1 tablespoon of baking soda to the water/vinegar mixture.

The spaghetti sinks to the bottom of the baking soda/vinegar mixture. Then when the baking soda is added bubbles are produced lifting the spaghetti throughout the liquid.

The carbonated bubbles rise to the top “pushing” the spaghetti towards the top of the bowl creating dancing spaghetti,

Tea Bag Hot air Balloon

What will happen when we set fire to an unused, empty tea bag?

First we cut the unused tea bag and discarded the tea leaves and then made the tea bag into a shape of a cylinder. Mr, John set fire to the tea bag, As the tea bag burned, it began to float up.

When the tea bag burns down it gets lighter in weight and the air around the flame gets hotter. Hot air rises and once the burnt tea bag is light enough it gets carried up with the hot air.

Suspension(chemistry)

-A state of matter “A fluid containing solid particles”

What will happen if we mix cornstarch and water?

We mixed cornstarch and water and slowly put our finger in the mixture. We quickly hit the mixture.

 When we slowly put our finger in the mixture it went into the mix like a liquid. When we quickly hit the mixture our fingers stayed dry, out of the mix. It felt like a solid.

 By mixing the cornstarch and water we created a state of matter known as suspension. When we hit the Cornstarch Suspension it felt like a solid because its molecules line up. But it looks like a liquid and acts like a liquid when no one is pressing on it because the molecules relax.

With Ms. Renee