We took a virtual tour of several museums in a Google Expeditions lesson about the Impressionists. We only have one VR viewer, which came with our MEL Science kit, so we had to share. It was a lot of fun, and there are a ton of other Expedition “tours.” Poppy said it was nice to feel a little bit like she was somewhere in the outside world for a minute, which was a little bit funny and a little bit sad. What strange days we’re living in!
We had a return to our long-lost 30 Minutes of Free Reading, and it was a delight. Pete started reading “Something Wicked This Way Comes,” and Poppy picked up “Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets” for a re-read. I’m working through a young adult biography of Vincent Van Gogh and his brother — aptly titled “Vincent and Theo” — as part of the Read Harder 2020 Challenge.
The kids’ schools start their “Virtual Days” tomorrow,” so they’ll be occupied with that from here on out. I’m hoping to keep our reading time in the schedule, though.
That’s entertainment
Poppy spent a good bit of time playing Minecraft with a friend, and Pete started making a movie. I don’t know what it was about, but he hauled a lot of NERF stuff out with him. We also watched an episode (or two) of “The Good Place.” I loved it the first time I watched the show, and it’s more poignant watching it this time around. It’s also the first time Poppy and Rockford have seen it, and hearing their reactions has been fun.
Quarantine eats
Dinner tonight was Thai Peanut Chicken from the crockpot. It was pretty good.
Good things
Stumbling around Pete’s room on our museum field trip
I’m trying to do a little bit of journaling every day during these weird, anxiety-laden times, and I thought perhaps I’d share a little of that with you.
Back to homeschooling, sort of
The kids’ schools are closed for the next two weeks at least, and today was our first day of pandemic homeschooling. The schools are planning “Virtual Days.” They aren’t starting that until Wednesday, though — in part because not all of the students had taken their school-issued laptops home with them on Friday — so today we just winged it.
Poppy had an essay to finish on “Lord of the Flies” for English class, so she worked on that for part of the morning. Pete and I, meanwhile, read an article in Scholastic magazine about Jordan Reeves, a young lady who made a confetti-shooting prosthetic arm with a 3D printer. He also watched an episode of “Marvel’s Hero Project” about Jordan, and then he made a short comic about another hero, Chef Jose Andres, who seems to fly in to every natural disaster to provide food and encouragement. Later we all did a chemistry experiment (three cheers for MEL Chemistry!) and watched an art video on Google Arts & Culture.
Adventures in e-Learning
I’ve been volunteering as an ESL tutor since November, and yesterday the organization I work with announced that they were canceling all in-person tutoring for the time being. I only have one student, and she suggested we try to continue our lessons over WhatsApp. So I downloaded it and we gave it a try this morning. We had a few hiccups — all technical difficulties on my part — but I think it’ll be a fine way for us to continue for a few weeks. (Although I am, of course, not convinced this will be over in just a few weeks. I’m consistently pessimistic, at least.)
The bright side
Everything is just worlds of anxiety, and I’ve been struggling with small, daily panic attacks for the last few days. I’m trying to be optimistic, though, so let’s talk about some things I was grateful for today.
Our chemistry experiment was a lot of fun.
Dinner was delicious. I made mini Korean meatloaves with roasted broccoli and mashed sweet potatoes. The meatloaves and broccoli were from an eMeals menu a few months ago.
The kittens were all stretched out and sleeping peacefully on my bed this afternoon when I went back to spend a little time in a quiet, dark room trying not to panic.
I talked to my dad for a bit this afternoon, and he’s doing well.
Disclaimer: MEL Chemistry sent Nichole a starter kit to review here at Butterscotch Sundae. All opinions are Nichole’s own, and Nichole is paying for subsequent kits.
“Can we blow stuff up?”
This is, naturally, a question one frequently fields when teaching a middle school chemistry class, and I anticipated that when I started planning our semester. So I started scouring Pinterest for experiments that walk that fine line between safe and exciting, and we started the class.
Things were going pretty well. The experiments were probably closer to the “safe” end of the spectrum than the kids had hoped for, but I felt OK about it.
And then one evening as I was browsing Pinterest, and a post about MEL Chemistry caught my eye. “Exciting experiments delivered to your door every month”? I clicked and looked around, and I was sold.
They were equal parts thrilled and nervous to wield the fire in the carbon snake experiment.I contacted the company and explained that I was interested but wasn’t sure it would work in a class setting, and they said they’d send me the first kit to try out. A couple days later it arrived, and I was and am so impressed with it. The starter kit includes a flask and a beaker; a VR viewer; a solid-fuel stove; safety glasses; and a macro lens for your cell phone camera. They also send you two kits with the starter set, and each kit includes two experiments.
The kits include full, clear instructions and most everything you need to perform the experiments. MEL Chemistry sends enough of the reagents to be able to do each experiment twice. With 7 kids in our class, though, that’s not quite enough for everyone to do every experiment. It’s working well for us to run the experiments as Lab Demonstrations, with two kids doing the work and the others either observing or working as photographers and videographers.
The included camera phone lenses have proven to be popular.
So far we’ve made fiery little carbon snakes and a foam eruption from the Chemistry of Monsters kit and a wee little hedgehog from the Tin kit. The kids enjoyed the carbon snake and the foam eruption a bit more than the tin and zinc “hedgehog” — because of the fire and movement — but I thought the formation of the spikes on a little ball of zinc was pretty incredible.
The carbon snake was very cool and somewhat creepy, though.
MEL Chemistry has made 80 virtual reality lessons, and the ones I was able to check out were phenomenal. The atom structure and electron orbital lessons were particularly great for helping the kids visualize a pretty esoteric concept. With the kits and the virtual reality lessons, I think this could be a complete chemistry curriculum. Unfortunately, the cost of the full VR license — $499 for 10 devices for a year — is far out of my price range. Some of the VR content is available just by downloading the MEL Science app, though, and the lessons available are well worth the download.
A MEL Chemistry kit subscription is $35 per month for a single set of experiments or $50 per month for two sets each month. I don’t think the kits alone would be sufficient for a full year of middle school science on their own, but they sure are a fun complement to whatever chemistry curriculum you’re using. The glassware and other hardware is excellent quality, and I love that they include all of the chemical materials you need as well.
The only thing on my MEL wishlist (other than $500 for a VR license) is that it would be nice to be able to choose the order in which the experiments arrive so I could make sure they correspond to what the kids are learning that week. I’m going to subscribe even without that option, though, and I’m looking forward to seeing what lab demos MEL Chemistry drops on my porch over the coming year!
