Quilts, egg unit, check ups etc

Today saw the end of our egg study unit. We've all enjoyed it a lot. I think I'll do more stuff like this with Hermione and Miles together in the future.

In essence we have -

Asked, what is an egg? It's produced by females. It can be fertilized or unfertilized. It can contain the beginning of a new life.

Dissected an egg and identified the shell, yolk, white, membrane and air cell.

Looked at the purpose of each part in relation to the growth of the embryo.

Discussed relevant terminology - hatching, oology, embryo etc.

Discovered that hard boiled eggs spin easily and raw ones don't. We now know how to tell is an egg is cooked or not without cracking it. This happens because solids (hard boiled egg) and liquids (raw egg) move in different ways.

Placed hardboiled eggs in white vinegar for three days in which time the shells disappeared. This is due to a reaction between the acid in the vinegar and the calc carb in the egg shell.

The eggs which had been soaked in vinegar developed a very tough membrane. This meant that we could bounce them (gently) without them splattering all over.

We filled a large plastic bottle with boiling water and placed a hardboiled egg on the opening. The heat generated by the water caused the egg to be sucked into the bottle.

We placed our hands evenly around a raw egg and pressed as hard as we could. Providing we applied even pressure we were unable to break the egg - however, were we to tap just part of the egg it would beak easily. The key was to apply *even* pressure. This helped us to understand how birds can sit on eggs (and rabbits sit on eggs too in the case of our gang) yet they don't break. Eggs have an arched shape. This is one of the strongest shapes in nature because of the way in which it distributes force.

We have watched eggs hatching on YouTube, done egg word searches, coloured egg pictures, drawn pictures and made records of our experiments etc.

Moving on, here's a small quilt Hermione has made. She still needs to hand sew the edges. She's very proud of it and rightly so. She has been invited to join a Quilting Guild.





We had our six monthly dental check up today and all was well. Miles sat in the chair long enough for the dentist to actually see in his mouth today which was a first. We're making progress. I am determined to do all I can to ensure the children feel comfortable with the dentist. It has taken me years to overcome my dentist phobia and I have to say I still get a bit anxious. Our practice has a new hygienist and I think she was a little shocked when nana, Miles and Hermione trooped in after me to observe. Our dentist is used to it being a family affair and it's always fine as nana makes sure that Miles doesn't get too involved in the process whilst I am being 'done'. I hope that by watching and getting to ask lots of questions they will feel comfortable in that environment. Only time will tell I guess.

On the way home we called into a museum we had wanted to visit for a while but it is always very busy. We tried today because it was the last day of term. I can recommend going places at the end of term. There were no school trips in at all. I'll certainly do this again with places which are usually either full of school trips or busy with school holidays.