In school even! Elizabeth was near tears when she realized I was going to teach them about fire. Funny since she's always begging for a fire in the fireplace so she can roast marshmallows. She calmed down when I used two of her favorite things to demonstrate the lesson: birthday candles and clay.
The book we were studying was explaining that fire must have three things to exist. Does anyone know what they are? I only knew two of the three. They are 1. Heat 2. Air 3. Fuel
So we did an experiment with 3 birthday candles, each of them stuck fast into a ball of clay. I lit them, one at a time, and the kids got to extinguish them by removing the heat, air or fuel.
I let Elizabeth squirt the first with water, to extinguish the Heat. Andrew then got to cover the second candle with a glass jar to suffocate it. The third? We just let it burn until the entire candle was gone! It only took about 10 minutes.
Andrew loved it. I've scheduled a field trip to the Fire Station across from our neighborhood for Monday. I'm looking forward to it. And I drew a very bad picture of our home to demonstrate and discuss fire escape options. In the process, I realized that we only have 2 smoke detectors in the whole house (master bedroom, and hall). Does anybody know how difficult/expensive it is to get some more of those?
The book we were studying was explaining that fire must have three things to exist. Does anyone know what they are? I only knew two of the three. They are 1. Heat 2. Air 3. Fuel
So we did an experiment with 3 birthday candles, each of them stuck fast into a ball of clay. I lit them, one at a time, and the kids got to extinguish them by removing the heat, air or fuel.
I let Elizabeth squirt the first with water, to extinguish the Heat. Andrew then got to cover the second candle with a glass jar to suffocate it. The third? We just let it burn until the entire candle was gone! It only took about 10 minutes.
Andrew loved it. I've scheduled a field trip to the Fire Station across from our neighborhood for Monday. I'm looking forward to it. And I drew a very bad picture of our home to demonstrate and discuss fire escape options. In the process, I realized that we only have 2 smoke detectors in the whole house (master bedroom, and hall). Does anybody know how difficult/expensive it is to get some more of those?
I love this story! It makes me reminisce my teaching days. It was the science experiments that were cut when time was short. But, they were always so fun! Your kids are lucky to have such a great mom and teacher!
ReplyDeleteI wish I was in your science class!
ReplyDeleteDid the fire fighters give you some smoke detectors? They usually have a few on hand.
ReplyDelete