Magnetism

 

 

What a fun topic!  At least the kids thought it was hilarious when the magnets would slap together and scare them.  Kui has done some previous work with magnetism, but we stepped it up a notch with this binder.  It fell off the weekly (or monthly to be honest) work cycle.  Kui is only on Lesson #5.  This topic has quite a few lessons and it really challenges the child, even the adult sometimes! I came across the website Supercharged Science and decided to try out one of their curriculum dvds in addition to the free emails/projects that are emailed to us.  Below is the table of contents for the Magnetism work.

 

There are many topics like Light, Energy, Chemistry, Earth Science, Astronomy, etc. You can buy the dvd and then print out the information and put in a binder. 

Here is the lesson she was working on recently: Bouncing Magnets.  It gives a brief overview along with what the child should learn.  Then you watch the short video on the lesson and the child works with the materials.  I photocopy the pages for Kui so that she can write her answers directly on the paper.   

 

Here is the box of random magnets that are available for the lessons.  Other materials may be needed, but the child can gather those on her own.

 

The idea behind this particular lesson was to make the magnets "bounce".  Kui struggled with this for a bit, but she persevered and was able to get one magnet to stand on one end.  She is playing with the magnetic field between the two magnets.  You had to be very careful to not place them too close to each other or they would snap together.  Kui was patient and found the "sweet spot" (her teacher gave up after about 5 tries!!)

Once one magnet was standing, the trick was to get the other magnet to do the same thing on the opposite side.  This proved to be even trickier!  With even more patience, Kui did it!!  She was so proud of herself.

Here they are!  See the video below for the "bouncing" of the magnets.

Warning:  Please forgive the cranky baby in the video.  It was clearly nap time, but we were trying hard to get these magnets to bounce!

Bubs was working alongside his sister while she did her lesson.  He discovered that when he put two magnets on top of the shelf and then two underneath the shelf that they moved!