San Francisco Garden and Flower Show 2011

Two weeks ago I had no intentions of visiting this show until I came across the kids event "Sproutopia" being hosted as a part of this show. The activities and workshops for kids seemed exciting and we decided to go and I was glad we did for this show is hosted annually.

Bonsai Planting We reached in time for the "Bonsai for kids" workshop. Each kid was given a tray, a pot, a chopstick and a bonsai. There were 2 instructors and about 2-3 volunteers helping the kids. Parents were specially instructed to stay back and just watch! It was about 45 minutes activity and at the end of it each kid had their own Bonsai planted in a pot and caring instructions to remember.

Bugs: Another workshop was on bugs and insects in the garden and kids got to touch the millipede and beetle as well as see various species of bugs in bug boxes with magnifiers. Some of the insects they saw were centipede, daddy longleg, wolf spider with egg sack on its back, honey bee, ladybug and potato bug. There were some specimens in of butterfly, moth and other beetles as well.

Among other activities were making fancy headbands, planting grass seeds in a sack to make a funny face, when the grass grows it would be the hair and kids can style it the way they want. A cool idea!

Carnivorous Plants: There were displays of carnivorous plants: sundew, pitcher plant, venus fly trap and butterworts. Each of the kids also got to take home their own pet carnivorous plant. We got to know a few interesting facts:

• Venus fly trap has sensors on the inside of the leafy part and the it closes only when a buf touches sensors on the insides of both the parts and for atleast 20 secs. What a great way to avoid false alarm.


• Carnivorous plants do not need any fertilizers as it can be strong for them and they can die.


• They grow abundantly in the hot and humid climate.


• They need to be watered with rain or distill water.

Miniature Gardens: There were displays of miniature garden's by elementary and middle school kids. Each of the garden had a theme and some were my kids favorites like: the island of blue dolphin, jack and the beanstalk, Alice in wonderland, Candyland etc. Award ribbons were displayed for the best ones, however we thought all of them were excellent.

After spending couple of hours in the kids section we headed to explore the actual show. We were amazed at the different plants and garden and indoor plant accessories that were displayed.

Garden displays: The most intriguiging part was the actual displays of the garden. They were a feat to the eye as well as wallet! Amongst the gardens were also the displays of corn snake and bearded dragon lizards!

Overall we spent about 4 hours at this place and could have spent more but the kids were really tired!

Techno geek challenge at MOCHA

Museum of children's art, MOCHA hosts "Family Extravaganza" once a month and this week's theme was "Techno geek challenge". Kids and parents had to team up and make art out of electronic and waste material. As a reward, the kids would get a gift!

The variety of material that is offered to kids is really amazing(and that's why I like MOCHA!). The kids just have to bring in their imagination and create wonders. The kids were provided with circuit boards as a base and hot glue to make their structures. More

Since we recently had read a book "The moon", I and the little one decided to make a space craft. While rummaging through a miscellaneous box, the little one found a metal shaped foot and a thermacol piece(to be her moon) and she wanted to make a footprint on the moon, just like Neil Armstrong's! The elder one made the theme of Cinderella with a fancily dressed figure, carriage and dinner table etc.



After working on the art for more than an hour we decided to go to other tables. The kids made a fish tank scene in an empty DVD cover, some painting and played with clay.

Aquarium spotlight @ MSI and Fujitsu Planetarium

Marine Science Institute (MSI) hosts aquarium spotlight days for parents and kids to come in to their facility and look at the marine life that they have. Its the time when kids can touch the fish, sponges, mussels, sea stars, crabs, leopard shark etc and feed some of them. The facility also has the skeleton of a 44 foot gray whale which some how made its way in to the Redwood creek in 1990.



The kids got to see the flat fish like the California halibut, diamond turbot, starry flounder which camouflage themselves really well with the sand and pebbles at the bottom of the ocean. There were tanks with surfperch, monkey eel, swell shark, sea anemone. The kids could hold the sea stars and got to see their tentacles and mouth. There was a huge tank with the leopard shark and kids fed it pieces of squid.



There was a lab set up where kids could look at the drop of water from the creek under microscopes and see the planktons like the diatoms, copepods etc.



We then took a stroll on the small beach next to the institute and observed dead barnacles on the poles, algae, shells and floats on the water.

After the marine science immersion I decided to take kids to the Fujitsu planetarium as it was the second last Saturday they would be open for this season. We watched the show "Cosmic journey" which was about the planets in our solar system. We then were shown the view of the sky that night and shown how to spot the Orion, the hunter (the belt, shoulders), Taurus the bull that he fights and Orion's 2 dogs. The narrator also showed the Leo constellation. He identified the stars Sirius, Beetle juice, Rigel, Polaris, Aldebaran and the star group Pleiades, the seven sisters. He pointed out that the stars which are red, orange color are cooler than the blue - white stars.

After the show we tried to identify some of the stars in the sky!

Dr. Seussology @ Museum of Children's Art

My kids are always ready to go to any art event, so last weekend I took them to MOCHA(Museum of Children's Art). The theme was Dr. Seussology to celebrate Dr Seuss's birthday, and all the art was to be focused around it. There were 5 tables setup for the activities : making hats, clay modeling, painting, building figures from egg cartons and decorating them and making fish from cut-outs. The kids tried their hand at each of the tables.


There was a story reading program and the award -winning author Elissa Haden Guest read her book "Harriet's had enough!". The little one loved this session. Then the kids make drawings based on the story.


The museum also had display of top 150 selected drawings from the Cray-Pas Wonderful, colorful world 2011 contest. It is a national contest for K-8th grade. It was unbelievable that kids as small as Kindergarten and 1st grade could draw immensely detailed and colorful pictures.


It was a good place to spend couple of hours and we returned back with whole lot of art work.

Mother-Daughter Discovery Day

AAUW (American Association of University Women) organizes Discovery Day for 3-6th grade girls and their mothers. There was one organized on this weekend for 3rd and 4th graders and we sure did attend. It was 4 hours of science fun! There were 9 activities out of which we had to pick 5 that we could attend. Here are the science activities that we picked:

1. Origami -Magic circles: The session started with the discussion about matter, its forms and how matter changes. Paper was identified as a matter and ways to change it are cutting, folding, crumpling etc. Then the instructor led us through a step-by-step instructions to fold papers and arrange together. Here is the beautiful pattern we got to do with the papers:




2. Gravity Defying Frogs: This session started with a discussion about gravitational force and the instructor gave example of center of gravity. Then a sheet containing a figure of frog was handed out to each kid to cut along the outline. The kids had to guess how to change the center of gravity of the frog so it could be horizontally balanced on its "head". They were then asked to glue 2 pennies on the front legs of the frog and fold them a little. And there we had our frog completely balanced on tip of a tack/pencil etc. The instructor then showed a device for stabilizing camera and showed us the difference in quality with and without the stabilizer



3. Dry ice is nice: In this session we all had fun with a "mad science" teacher showing us the amazing, cool experiments with dry ice.

4. Levers and pulleys: In this session kids were shown simple machines like lever and pulley. Kids got to see how some of these machines reduce the efforts that are required to do work. They got to learn the class 1 , class 2 and class 3 levers with example demonstration. The best part was in the end where daughters got to lift their moms using a lever!

5. Electrical Circuits: In this session kids and their moms made circuits using RAFT materials and idea sheet.

Overall it was an educational morning for the daugher's and moms too. My 4th graders verdict: I loved the Origami and the dry ice the best!

Science Fair ideas and judging

I got the opportunity to judge science fair projects of 5-8th graders in my daughter's school. I wanted to see the ideas that the kids came up with and how they presented. A more personal motive was to see what my daughter will be getting in to next year when she would be in 5th grade!

Here are the guidelines on what a judge looks for while judging a science project. They have been derived from the evaluation sheet that was provided to us.

1. Has the student done enough research?
2. Is the topic of the project clearly understood and communicated?
3. Are the scientific principles on which the project is based clear to the student?
4. Is the student aware of the real world application of the project?
5. Has the student done enough iteration of his/her experiment to get a reliable data?
6. Has the student adhered to scientific method if he/she has experimented and made sure that there is only one variable at a time?
7. In case of demonstration projects, has the student created a proper model to demonstrate the scientific principle?
8. Has the student given thought to/is aware of alternatives in his/ her project (For ex. if a project uses microwave radiation, how does it compare with the UV radiation)?
9. Has the student put enough efforts on his/her board, do they have pictures that support their efforts if they don't have a model or experiment?
10. Is the student confident?

Following are some of the projects that I got to judge:

• UV rays and bacteria
• How does the caffeine affect the blood pressure
• Making breads
• Plants and the distance between them
• Microwave and plants (how microwave can affect the germination)
• Cloning
• Do plants store excess glucose as starch?
• What shape of the car causes less wind resistance?
• Water purification
• Can handsoap and dishwashing soaps be used instead of detergent
• Testing hardening of plants
• What angle of the windmill blade generates is optimum for generation of electricity
• Magnetic field to generate electricity
• Diabetes

The general trend that I observed was that the lower grade kids (5th and 6th) had taken up complicated topics and most of them were demonstrations. Having done an experiment project last year and a demonstration project this year with my daughter, I figured out that latter is slightly difficult since you need to come up with ideas to present the model. On the contrary the higher grades(7th and 8th) mostly chose experiment projects. Most of these were not as complicated for their level.

Recently I had read an article about the plight of science in the schools and that made me think that parents really need to take initiative to get their kids interested in science. It is an interest that can be cultivated!

Math Science Nucleus event: Heart

Math Science Nucleus organizes many science related programs in the libraries. Previous ones that we had attended were on Light and Dinosaur. The nature of the programs is that first the instructor reads a book or two explaining about the topic. Then there are various art and craft activities related to the topic.

This event started with a slide of internal body parts and kids had to match the names. After that the instructor read a very touching story about Rita Anselmo, "The damaged heart". All the stories that they read are available on their website under "Storybooks". A video was then played which showed what are the different parts of the heart and how the blood flows. It is very informational and also available on MS nucleus website.

Then the kids were shown the activities, one table had sthethescopes where kids could hear the lub-dub of the heart, the other table had papers which contained pieces of heart puzzle that the kids had to color and cut, yet another table had materials to make a heart book. There was a model of heart that the kids could explore, there was a heart mat where the kids could trace the flow of the blood in the heart.



Although the program was for 45 min., however it did provide us with wealth of information. And oh yes! we did read the story 2-3 times that night from the website! Both the kids loved the story and it triggered many more questions in their minds.