Showing posts with label Science Sunday. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Science Sunday. Show all posts

Sunday, August 26, 2012

Science Sunday: Canines and their relatives

 

Bring your notebook to the zoo

 

We finished up our study of the canine family with a field trip to our local nature center.  I will take any excuse to go there, and this was a perfect one: observe and write down about the animals from the canine family.

nature study at the zoo

We first sat outside the coyote enclosure.  This coyote was raised as a pet, so cannot be released back into the wild, it’s too acclimated.

Notebook your field trip

For the two animals we observed they had to write one sentence, and draw a picture that used at least 3 colors.

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Superman’s says: Coyote has pointy ears.  Tail is pointing down.

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Batman wrote both on the same page, so the coyote one says: He has a black nose.

Side note: They need to work on understanding how to write on the page.  They do better at home, but for some reason every lesson I’d taught them flew out the window when we were there.

studying the red fox

From the coyote we headed over to the Fox enclosure and spent some time observing her.  Again she was a pet that can’t be released back to the wild because of acclimation issues.  She wasn’t exciting to observe because she was asleep in the back of the cage.

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Superman’s says: Red fox has red fur and they like the shade.

Side note: Notice there are still lots of letter reversals, and capital letters.  Not what I was working on for this lesson, so no corrections.

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Princess: She has pointy red ears.

Batman’s said: He has red fur.

 

I was going to have them work on writing more, but I could see I was starting to lose them, so I released them to play in the water, which they happily did until I dragged them home again.

 

Let’s see what others did this week:

Each week I’m spotlighting a few posts that were shared previously.  Many posts get linked up later in the week and they don’t always get as many clicks as they deserve, so I’m trying to spotlight a few every week.

 

This particular week, I’m going to play hooky and send you to my land animals pinterest board, because I’m going to sneak away and go cuddle with my hubby………

land animals

 

 

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Sunday, August 19, 2012

Science Sunday: The Canine family

 

 

So I had this great idea to get us back into the swing of things and do some geography and science and I was going to do a lesson on grinding teeth and the manatee, and compare it to dogs.  I presented it to the kids, and they said “No Mom, we want to read more about dogs since we’re taking care of Aunt Tara’s dog.”

 

notebooking Apologia Land animals

 

Ummmm…….  Okay……  Only problem is we already did the project I had planned related to that, so we just worked on notebooking for this week.  It’s not exciting, but they enjoyed it and worked hard.

Which is a good thing.

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Can you see the comparison between this dog and a wolf?  My kids did.  They figured out wolves and miniature schnauzers both have multiple babies, they both eat meat and have the same teeth.

 

Wolves are different because they don’t dig, and we do not have wolves as pets.

 

It was a fun week.

 

Let’s see what others did this week:

Each week I’m spotlighting a few posts that were shared previously.  Many posts get linked up later in the week and they don’t always get as many clicks as they deserve, so I’m trying to spotlight a few every week.

 

Creekside Learning shared their Frog and Toad study, literature and science at the same time?  Yes please.

Frugal Fun for Boys shared her snowshoes experiment from Apologia Land Animals.  I was excited to realize someone else is doing land animals, and thinks of experiments as she’s teaching the lesson……..

 

The Olympics may be past, but Enchanted Homeschooling Mom has a great experiment with friction, that is easy to do with stuff you probably have at home.

 

 

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Sunday, August 12, 2012

Science Sunday: herbivore or carnivore teeth

 

 

We’re attempting to get a head start on our land animals science for the year, and this week we learned about teeth.

 

Teeth you say?  That’s right, how can you tell whether an animal is an herbivore or a carnivore from it’s teeth.

Short answer:  Herbivores have flat teeth for grinding, and carnivores have sharp pointy teeth for ripping and tearing.

 

What about omnivores, you say?

 

They have a combination of both teeth.  Another interesting point, most carnivores don’t chew their meat, but swallow it in bite size pieces.

 

classifying animal teeth

After learning all of that I printed off several pictures of “funny animal teeth” (that got the best search results).  I made sure to print off some of each type and only print a close-up of the mouth.

classifying animal teeth carnivore or herbivoreclassifying animal teeth carnivore or herbivore

Then came the sorting, more sorting, and the final analysis:

Science Sunday classifying animal teeth

Can you tell what animals I chose?

After all of this wrangling and deciding we had to see for sure what type of teeth our dog had.

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And pose for pictures, you can’t forget that.  Doesn’t he look so happy to wear the Rapunzel wig?  And what do you know, he does have carnivore teeth.

 

I’m behind on commenting, I’ve spent the week enjoying our last few days before we “officially” start school.  We’ve had a playdate each day of the week, so look for your comments someday today or tomorrow.  Sorry guys.

 

 

 

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Sunday, August 5, 2012

Science Sunday: Review Apologia Junior Journal

My co-op buddy and I had been using the same science and would get together from time to time and have science lessons together, then she switched on me from Swimming Creatures to Anatomy.  Why?  So she could use the junior journal, but I was already committed having bought the  Swimming Creatures lapbook (which is on sale right now, and I do still recommend), and really liking it.

This year I gave my kids the choice of doing the lapbook again or using the Junior journal.  I brought one of their lapbooks and we sat on the floor of the local Christian bookstore and compared the two.  Thus ensued a long discussion about the pros and cons, here they are as my children decided:

 

PROS according to my kids

Apologia Junior Journal coloring pages

 

1.  coloring pages, this was Superman’s big thing, he loves to color and actually wants more pages to color

2.  Places to draw pictures of what we’re learning about.

3.  Fun looking experiments.

 

PROS according to me

Apologia Junior Journal writing page4.  Perfect amount of space for young writers.  My kids struggle to write on their own, they want me to spell EVERYTHING.  I’m working on building their confidence writing on their own and helping afterwards.

 

5.  Copywork for working on handwriting.  The copywork is either definitions or Bible verses, and there is an option for print or cursive.  Along with space to draw.

 

Apologia junior journal additional resources

 

6.  Additional resources and ideas.  Each lesson has about two pages of itty bitty print of extra resources, if you did everything you would easily take a month or more for each lesson.  Obviously we’re not going to do it all, but many of these videos are on Netflix or youtube and it’s a fun way to pass an evening.

 

7.  Lesson plans- it does a great job of breaking down how to use the textbook and journal together.  I partially based my lesson plans on their layout.  Slightly different, but same idea.

 

8.  Additional experiments, you know my kids are all about those experiments.  ALL ABOUT.  They actually are in the process of creating their own experiments right now.

 

CONS

1.  Since it’s not a download I have to buy one for each kid, but the plus side of that is I don’t have to print it out myself.

 

 

Let’s see what others did this week:

Each week I’m spotlighting a few posts that were shared previously.  Many posts get linked up later in the week and they don’t always get as many clicks as they deserve, so I’m trying to spotlight a few every week.

Books 4 Learning shared about a new picture book series showing animal life cycles.  Isn’t that mole picture amazing?

Little Wonder Days has a wonderful experiment that leads to making homemade bread.  Anything leading to homemade bread is a good thing in my mind.

 

Creekside Learning shared her science curriculum for this year.  I have to say it looks intriguing.

 

 

 

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Sunday, July 29, 2012

Science Sunday: Identifying footprints in the mud

how to identify the footprint in the mud

A few weeks ago when the kids were playing in the mud we found some footprints, or something odd in the mud.

Which led to the discussion of who could have left that.  That’s when I came up with my brilliant idea, which might or might not of ruined one of my plastic bowls.  I made a small batch of plaster of paris and poured it over the print.

plaster of paris footprint mold

But, I’d made too much, so I wandered around the yard pouring it into anything that vaguely looked like a footprint.  About 10 minutes later, thanks to the Texas heat, they were all dried up.

identifying plaster foot prints

After much discussion about the different molds we had, we decided one was Mac’s footprint, that mystery was solved.  Another was from a child’s tennis shoe, next one solved.  A third was the impression from digging in the mud with fingers.  The others we could never successfully identify.

Do you ever find unidentified footprints in your yard?  Later I found an alphabet animal footprint chart which would have been helpful at the time.

 

 

 

Let’s see what others did this week:

Each week I’m spotlighting a few posts that were shared previously.  Many posts get linked up later in the week and they don’t always get as many clicks as they deserve, so I’m trying to spotlight a few posts every week.

 

I love Homegrown Learners incorporation of music and science into one to make a water xylophone

All Things Beautiful shared part 3 of their homemade terrarium, I’m storing this away for when we study botany.

My Joy Filled Life shared their homemade rockets to go with their astronomy studies.

 

Kathy’s Cluttered Mind shared their bug specimen board (no bugs were harmed in the making of it).

 

 

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Sunday, July 22, 2012

Science Sunday: making a dam

 

As I mentioned earlier this week, we had a lot of rain, and our backyard flooded.  Jeff and I took that as an opportunity to teach the boys some engineering.  We challenged them to create a dam to stop some of the water.
045white waters in the flood
Some of the challenges were the white waters in the stream, and the water flow was rapid enough to take away many of the building materials they could create.

problem solving how to build a dam
They started by weighing down the big bucket with some rocks, then they remembered the huge pile of bricks in our backyard, but transporting them one by one is tedious and boring.

problem solving how to move heavy things
But a wagon……..  That’s easy and you get the amusement of pulling it through the water.
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Eventually this is what they came up with.  It’s an odd combination of bricks, buckets, watering cans, and what have you, but it raised the water level on the upstream side about 6 inches, and the downstream side was significantly lower.

All in all a good spur of the moment engineering lesson.
Let’s see what others did this week:
Each week I’m spotlighting a few posts that were shared previously.  Many posts get linked up later in the week and they don’t always get as many clicks as they deserve, so I’m trying to spotlight a few every week.
Over at All Things Beautiful Phyllis shared how to make a terrarium.  I can’t wait to see updates on it and what happened to it.
Homeschool Discoveries shared why sodas explode in the freezer, it was a fun read and I know I’ve left a soda or two in too long while trying to instantly freeze it, and SUPER kudos for using Dr Pepper.

I loved how Teaching Stars used bubbles to explain nuclear fusion.  BRILLIANT

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