A Slice of Sky

This is an activity that enables you and your child to observe the life-cycle of fruitflies.

Put some fruit in a bowl and simply, wait for fruit flies to land on ’em !

While the flies are feasting on the fruit, discuss what the flies may have done. “What are they doing?” ”What kind of changes do you see on the fruit?”

Whip out your magnifying glass and look at the fruit. Do you see any eggs there?

Cover the platter of fruit with a cloth and fasten it with a band. You could lift the cloth off

at various intervals in the day and look for changes in the fruit. In the span of a week, you

and your child can view the changes as the eggs hatch into larvae, the larvae grow into

pupae and watch as the the pupae emerge as adult flies.

When Joy was littler, we used to watch storms together from the balcony door of our flat. The balcony overlooked a large pond, which made lightning streaking across the dark evening sky look more spectacular than ever. We would sing that rhyme-song, “I hear thunder” or sometimes we’d just stand and watch. I taught Joy not to be afraid of thunder, “It’s only the sound of clumsy clouds knocking into each other,” I’d explain.
Today, she knows it’s a bit more than that. But that ‘kiddy’ explanation helped then.

“While thunder roars and rages in a storm, it really is the silent, magical silver lightning that is dangerous,” I tell her.
“But it’s beautiful,” she says, “ like a night-rainbow.”

I should be more factual than I have been in our discussions about storms. But then again, there’ll be loads of time for facts later. We bask in the wonder of the present .

This experiment to ‘make lightning’ adds fun to the facts.
1. Stick a piece of plastic sheet on the table.
2. Put a metal tray or big metal plate on the cloth. Push a ball of plastiscine on the tray.
3. Put on a pair of gloves.
4. Using the plascticine as a handle, rub the tray against the plastic sheet for 2-3 minutes.
5. Turn off the lights (the room has to be dark).
6. Bring a screwdriver close to the edge of the /plate. Watch sparks fly.

When you rub the tray against the plastic sheet, electric charges are built up. When you bring the screwdriver near, the energy is released onto the screwdriver. That’s what causes the crackle and the lightning spark.

This is one dirty thing to make! Smog , particularly ground-level ozone and airborne particles, is harmful to living things. Making this experiment is  a handy way to kickstart a discussion about pollution and

conservation.

Smog is a concoction of tiny water droplets in air and carbon dioxide. This results in a foul

atmosphere.

This is how you can make smog:

-Cut a strip of paper, fold it, then twist it.

-With  some foil, make a jar cover. Then put that aside.

Now you need to make the foil really cold. You can do that by placing some ice cubes on it.

-Wet the jar so that its walls are damp.

-Light one end of the paper strip, drop it into the jar.

-Seal the mouth of the jar with the cold foil. Keep the ice cubes on top of the foil.

Ask your child what she can see in the jar.

Ask her what happened. You could ask questions like:

-What happened to the water on the sides of the jar ? You could ask leading questions like:

“What happens to water when it is heated up?

(  turns to vapour.)

- What happens to vapour when it is cold? ( It condenses and becomes water/ droplets) So ,

what happened to the water vapour in the jar when it met the cold air ( from the foil)?

-Can you think of times when you have seen this?

Mist actually forms in the jar. It forms when warm air meets cold air. In the absence of moving

air, fog is formed.

A chameleon is able to see in different directions at the same time. This enables it to ‘multitask’- watch for predators and look for food. As a mom, I can think of times when I wish I had eyes like that – watch the toddler and keep an eye on the frying pan, watch the kids and read a book, look out for danger as we walk as well as look at the sky.

Well, this experiment won’t enable you to do that, but it does give you an idea of what it’s like to see in two different directions.

Get an egg carton. Cut two egg holders from it. Make a hole in the bottom of each carton of

about 0.5 cm across. The holes should be a slightly off-centre. Put the egg holder over each of your eyes ( the holes pointing in different directions).

What do you see? Or rather, how do you see?

Our eyes are placed in front, enabling us to perceive depth and to have binocular vision.

Observe where horses’ eyes are placed. Horses’ eyes are placed at the sides of their heads and

they are placed high up. This gives them a 360 degree vision, enabling them to see far above

their heads as well. Amazing.

Before you decide to throw out your old stockings, restrain yourself. They come in handy for this simple ‘gardening’ activity.

Fill an old nylon stocking with compost ( soil-lest). Make a knot at the opening. Now you’ve got a head, somewhat. Use some markers and draw in a face. Plant grass seed on top of the head. Wait for the ‘green hair’ to grow on your stocking head.

You might want to make little ones as well so you eventually get a family of grass heads.

When we had our first baby, we were living in a cramped apartment in the inner-city. There were no playgrounds no parks nearby; directly below our flat was a sprawling carpark, lined with tarred roads and hemmed by wired fences. The year before, someone living a floor below us got busted by the police for possessing firearms. That year itself, two shootings had occured just a block away , one at a cafe and the other at neighourhood mechanic’s garage. Not exactly an ideal place to explore wildlife right? Yet, explore we did, though not in the conventional way.

Part of the blessings of living in those quarters was that we’d have ’wildlife’ right inside of our apartment. There were lizards creeping on our walls. The occasional roach scuttered across our kitchen floor at night.This we steered clear of.  Bugs paid us daily visits. Best of all, we had spiders in our bathrooms and webs along the walls of the stairs leading up to our place.

These creepy crawlies made our home into a mini zoo. Joy and I would spend hours talking about them and observing their habits. She gave them names,said goodbye to them when they were gone and bade them ’hello’ when they returned.  When we found a dead one, we’d whip out our magnifying glass , and then Joy would wonder where its life had gone.

We’d take out torches at night and go on a night hunt in our apartment itself. I’d turn off the lights and showtime started. We’d squat under bathroom sinks and peek at the spiders snug in their gossamer webs and then try to beat each other at spotting the first lizard. Sometimes we’d tell stories under covers -with our torches on- espeecially on rainy nights.  At other times, we’d do shadow puppets with a table lamp beaming its light against the wall. Sometimes a lizard or two might join in and feast on the perpetual supply of mosquitoes.

Once I found a centipede creeping steadily across our bedroom floor. Twice I found them in our bathrooms in the middle of the night. These I kept Joy away from.

I suppose that’s how it began for us. Looking at what there was, and then looking again to see

things differently. Is that science? I don’t know. But it sure makes living fun and meaningful.