Hot Air Balloon Experiment

The kids were very interested in how a hot air balloon works after getting to take rides in one.

I gave the kids a bunch of supplies and they created all different types of hot air balloons. We discovered if you leave the basket off, which was a cup, it floated better. The basket would get caught up on the air dryer when it would start to float away.
Cold morning air works best (just like for the "real" hot air balloons).
It was a lot of fun watching the bag fill up with hot air and then float off of the air dryer into the air.
On Saturday Andrew and Jay are going to a hot air balloon festival. The girls and I are going to be Girl Scout camping on the coast. I have the whole time planned out. I will share in another blog afterwards what we did and how it went. I will tell you that I did plan for it to be a Survivor type camping trip with challenges and tribes.

Carbon Dioxide

In science we have been learning about water. The kids had been studying about the 3 states of water (liquid, solid and gas). Their science book had an experiment making carbon dioxide and putting out fire.

The kids put baking soda in a cup and poured vinegar over the top of the baking soda. Then they put a piece of cardboard over their cup and waited a minute and half for the solution to mix and make the gas, carbon dioxide. Once 90 seconds was done they took the cardboard off and put a match into the cup. The carbon dioxide put out the fire.


They thought that was very cool to watch the match barely be put into the cup and then go out once the gas came into contact with the fire. The more they tried the deeper they had to reach their hands into the cup because the gas was escaping from their cups. In there science book it talked about how gas changes shape and size (it will fill the area in which it is in).

They like doing experiments better they "learning" from the text book. But don't we all?