Flower Power

بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم

In the name of Allah the most gracious the most merciful.

As part of our ongoing work on growing plants for self sufficiency, we decided to take an experiment out of the book Mini Scientist - In the Garden by Lisa Burke called Flower power.  We used this experiment to learn how plants take in water through their roots and stems to feed the leaves and flowers.

Saffiyah wrote up her experiment using a pre-made  sheet from www.twinkl.co.uk so that we could refer to it another time when we eventually complete our living things (plants) lapbook, probably after Ramadan inshaallah.

So far we have set up the experiment using white flowers and red, yellow and blue food dye in water, Saffiyah predicts that the yellow colour will be soaked up first.  We have a further experiment to add later on using a split stem technique with one split in red water and one in yellow water, Saffiyah predicts that the colours will mix to form the secondary colour orange, we will update this post later once that experiment has been performed to see if Saffiyah was correct in her prediction.

 

For our first flower power experiment, we took three white flowers and cut the stems at an angle to help them to take up the water, we then filled three glasses with equal amounts of water and places each flower in a separate glass.

Next we placed a few drops of each food colour into each separate glass and noted the time, observations will be made every two hours and updated with photos.

I took a copy of the experiment in the book so that we could refer back to it another time when we want to complete our plants lapbook inshaallah.

The flowers after two hours.













The yellow showed tiny changes to the very tips of the petals from white to yellow.  The blue showed no changes.

The red showed a little more change to the edges of the centre petals from white to red and also the tips of the outer petals.  The changes were too small to pick up with my camera.

The flowers after four hours.

The yellow still showed small amounts of colour to the tips of the petals and no more, the red showed a tiny bit more noticeable change in colour.

The blue still showed no change.

The flowers after six hours.

The red showed a little more change to the edges of the centre petals from white to red and also the tips of the outer petals.  The changes could now be picked up by the camera.

The blue still showed no change.

The flowers after eight hours.

Still no change to the flower in the blue water.

The flower in the yellow water still showed no change since the first observation at two hours, the flower in the red water showed little change since the previous observation at six hours.











The flowers after ten hours.

Saffiyah's recorded observations written every two hours over a period of ten hours.

At-Bristol home Educators Day 8th May 2012

بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم

In the name of Allah the most gracious the most merciful.

We've been doing some work on forces for Saffiyah's forces lapbook, and we used the @Bristol HE Day as an additional resource.

As ever, the day was organised brilliantly, I'm a great fan of @Bristol and the amount the do to facilitate children's learning.

So Natural baby Festival - Bath

بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم

In the name of Allah the most gracious the most merciful.

Seeing as this was right on our doorstep and there were to be some children's activities, we thought we'd pay a visit; we ended up making a day of it as the workshops I had an interest in were quite spread out over the day.

The website set up for them is as follows:

http://www.sonaturalbaby.co.uk/

Although most of the companies there were catering for a much younger age than Saffiyah, we alhamdulillah managed to make use of our time there, Green Park Station is always quite a small set up and so there can never be huge events held there, however, there was quite a wide range of interests catered for. 

Saffiyah quizzed the osteopath as to why there were holes in the pelvis (which we are still researching), although she couldn't give an answer she did manage to talk to Saffiyah about why she became an osteopath and amazing facts such as why babies are born with more bones in their bodies and that Saffiyah had more bones in her body than her, Saffiyah recalled reading that in her body book which was a good reinforcement for her.

We talked to the lady at Vintage Twist about her organic cupcakes as Saffiyah loves to bake and we do try to use as many organic ingredients as possible, the lady had the same difficulties as we did in sourcing organic colouring and suggested using natural ingredients such as beetroot or turmeric sparingly so we may give that a try inshaallah.

Saffiyah managed to discover a face painting station and swiftly seated herself and requested a face full of hearts and glitter after which we were told that a Steiner felting workshop run by Laurel Farm Kindergarten would be taking place shortly, as Saffiyah showed interest in giving that a try we did.

First, each child was given a rectangle of felt and showed some example felt pictures (obviously completed by adults), on the table were a collection of wicker containers of coloured wools, the children were shown how to use minimal amounts to create their pictures as using too much would cause the wool to fall off.  This was quite an interesting activity and well run, although there needed to be more tools for 'stamping' the wool into the felt towards the end as many children had to wait quite some time, but for a free activity I believe it was very well run.

I took some pictures of the process to give us ideas for later:

 

The 'stamper' tool to stamp the wool into the felt and the finished picture after stamping.

In between events we visited the park for a bit of a break and something to eat so as to make a day of it, we even managed to get home to pray on time then back in time to catch the end of the cloth nappies and slings workshop demonstrated by Born which I wanted to see out of curiosity.  

Following that workshop was the Why Parent, led by Linda Mallory of http://www.thewhyparent.com/ which I consider the most beneficial workshop of the day and was surprised to see so few parents in attendance, but pleased to see on mum-to-be.

Before the workshop began I had a look at the books out on display, recommended by Linda Mallory, I took photos so that I could look them up later:

We had a short chat about the workshop before it began and others arrived, about my ideas, we even had a chat about home education and my thoughts about the school 'system'; I was pleasantly surprised that as an educational psychologist with experience of teaching within the 'system', she agreed with what I was saying and I noticed a couple of other mums raising the home education subject within the workshop so it seems that many are noticing that the education system as it currently stands is not suited to their child's needs.

I thought the ideas offered, albeit in brief, were important to us as parents and I would have liked to continue with one of the courses that Linda offered, they are however out of my budget capabilities so I was pleased to gain the knowledge I did from the workshop which was offered free.

Although the event was tiny and aimed more at parents-to-be and new parents, I still feel that a lot was gained by myself as a mum of a six year old and could be gained by other parents to, we bypassed the parts that did not apply to us and broke the day up using the local park and a trip home to pray on time and so we both alhamdulillah enjoyed the day.