A free printable for The Great American Solar Eclipse of 2017.

I’m sure if you live in the United States, you’ve been hearing a lot about The Great American Eclipse.  My family lives very close to an area of totality, so this has been a big deal for months.  As a homeschooling mom, of course I had to turn this into an educational experience, so I’ve put together a solar eclipse printable for my family to use.

Obviously, I have to start this out by saying that you should never look at the sun, even during an eclipse, without proper eye protection.  Go here to find out what NASA says about eye protection.

Although the solar eclipse is happening tomorrow, I thought I would still share this printable with you, in case you would like to use it too!

Make sure you know what you and your family are looking for before the solar eclipse happens.  Some of these phenomena will only be present for a few seconds, so you don’t want to miss them while you’re trying to figure out what they are.

For more information about the items on the solar eclipse printable, you can find them here:

To watch a video about the crescents you can find in the shade under trees, look here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SRcwoAHdTlI

To watch a video about shadow bands, check here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_XMnU7Ad40

Measure the temperature before the eclipse and during the eclipse to see how much it changed.

Take note of things going on around you. You may be able to see the stars, if you’re in an area away from city lights.  You may be able to see some planets, even.  The planets that should be visible are Jupiter, Venus, Mars, and Mercury.

We have chickens, so we will be watching to see if they go and roost.  We have also heard that sometimes they think it’s a new day and lay eggs again, so we will be watching to see if this occurs.

I’d love to hear what fun things your family notices during the eclipse, so leave me a comment below to let me know!

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Today, Miss Magoo is going to show you how to do a pepper and soap experiment!  It’s a simple, cheap experiment that demonstrates how surface tension works.

I love how simple this experiment is.  It doesn’t require any prep time for the parent.

If you’re wanting to conduct this as a real experiment and not just for fun, don’t forget to go through the scientific method.  We use the same method at home that we use in our class at Classical Conversations, so it includes purpose, hypothesis, materials, procedure, results and conclusion.  It’s a nice and simple version of the scientific method that works well for young children.

Purpose: To demonstrate surface tension of water.

Hypothesis:  Have everyone involved come up with a hypothesis.

Materials needed:

• Pie plate
• Pepper
• Water
• Dish soap
• Toothpick

Watch in Youtube: Pepper and Soap Experiment

In case you aren’t a movie watcher (I’m not much of one, so I completely understand) here are the directions (also known as the procedure):

1. Pour water into the pie plate.  Maybe 1/2 an inch deep.
2. Sprinkle pepper over the water.
3. Dip a toothpick in the dish soap– it doesn’t take much.
4. Poke the toothpick near the center of the pepper and watch the pepper “run away.”

Results:  Record what happened when you placed the soapy toothpick in the pepper.

Conclusion:  We can see how surface tension in the water works when we touch the soapy toothpick to the peppery water.  Pepper is hydrophobic, meaning it repels water.  Because there is surface tension on the top of the water, the pepper floats on the top of the water and doesn’t soak up any of the water.

Soap breaks down the surface tension of the water, so as we put the soapy toothpick in the midst of the peppery water, we can see the water pull away from the toothpick, in its attempt to keep its surface tension.  When it does this, it carries the pepper with it, causing it to look like the pepper is running away from the toothpick.

I hope you enjoyed this fun and simple pepper and soap experiment Miss Magoo shared today!