Category: Science Units

Ocean Activities: Parts of a Fish, Parts of a Shark 0

Ocean Activities: Parts of a Fish, Parts of a Shark

While ED has some basic ocean matching out, DD and LD are working on slightly more challenging work. They’re learning the parts of the fish, parts of the shark and the zones of the ocean and the animals that live there.  (More about the zones tomorrow.) The kids can check their work by folding down the answer key under the picture. I got the parts of the fish page from...

3

Preschool Routine, Tuesdays

ED’s Tuesday Routine: So you heard yesterday that I’m planning to use biome/habitat themes with ED this fall. This is what I have planned in a general way for Tuesdays: Arts and Crafts (based on the theme) Montessori Math Beads; Math Activities Science Sorts (Long post and link to my 30-pages of notes, etc.!) Arts and Crafts The girls painted boxes to make a diorama. Now all this needs is...

0

Preschool Routine, Mondays

ED’s Monday Routine: The idea of planning all this is so that I can change up ED’s activities, keep them fresh, interesting with the minimum of thought on my part.  I expect to skip days, but then I’ll just pick up on the appropriate day and continue on.  The routine is (hopefully) to make it easier on me to keep things engaging for ED. Mailbox Letters and Scavenger Hunt Montessori...

Middle School Chemistry Curriculum 0

Middle School Chemistry Curriculum

We’re still not doing any formal work.. though believe me our days are full. Sometime I’ll get around to posting new pictures! Meanwhile, I continue to read and get inspired for the coming semester.  Someone mentioned that they had used this chemistry curriculum:  http://www.middleschoolchemistry.com/and that they were very impressed with it.  Since my kids love science I had to check it out.  It seems wonderful and I suspect we will...

Science Sorts —  Our Montessori Science Work, Fall 2011 4

Science Sorts — Our Montessori Science Work, Fall 2011

Over the past few years, we have done a lot of Montessori science work.  This year I compiled a review notebook and will let DD and LD work on this as they are interested (ED will be introduced to these for the first time this year).  Mostly I expect the older ones to cut out pictures from magazines and write on these sheets (pages 5 and beyond in the pack). ...

Animal Notebook Pages 0

Animal Notebook Pages

This year I hope to introduce my older kids to researching things on their own.  We’ll be going over a lot of the Montessori zoology curriculum again, so I thought I’d create a page to help guide them. For what it’s worth, I’ll share that with you all too.Animal Notebook Page (for the kids to do research on their own about animals they are interested in). Animal Discovery Notebook page...

Let’s Learn about the World 2

Let’s Learn about the World

When we start back into our school year LD and DD are going to learn some basic facts about the world in which we live — the largest continent-Asia the largest country-Russia the largest ocean-Pacific the largest desert-Sahara the tallest mountain-Mt. Everest the longest river-the Nile has been long thought to be the longest river, but an expedition in 2000 found the Amazon River to be 64 miles longer. world...

2

Plant Experiments–Garden Science

Plants, plants, plants!! That’s still the main focus of our homeschooling life. The kids are enthralled by the growing process this year. The kids tenderly attend to their plots in the garden. We watch each strawberry ripen eagerly. They rush to inspect the blueberries and peas forming! They help bring in the lettuce for our supper each evening.And, they/we are loving the Junior Master Gardener handbook — and are enjoying...

My Special Day 2

My Special Day

Today’s my birthday, so this post is about… well me! I am so happy! Not that I wasn’t happy in Australia, but I was ready for a change and boy is life wonderful here! I’ve managed to find a musical outlet here (I played the oboe in a wind ensemble for 10 years in Australia).  Here I’m singing in my church choir and have had the opportunity to play the...

0

I Don’t Know Whether to Be Grossed Our or Proud

LD pulled out his microscope this week and has been using all the science slides and rushing outside to bring things to look at. “MOM!!” he shouted at one point. “You’ve gotta check this out.” “Wow.  What is it honey?” “My booger.  I never knew it would look like this.” “Umm… yeah. Neat.” Glad to know he’s so inquisitive, but yucko.  (I made HIM wash the slide and slip cover!)...

4

Garden Science: Studying Plants

We continue to love the activities in the Junior Master Gardener Curriculum. I love that all three of the kids can be fully involved in these activities!  This week we continued to look at monocot and dicots, studied plant roots and looked at the age of trees. In our first activity the kids gathered flowers from our yard.  Then they had to determine whether the plants were monocots or dicots...

2

Garden Science Activities – Where Does Food Come From?

One of our activities before our holiday had us thinking about the ingredients of a hamburger and where each ingredient originated (and how everything, even the hamburger itself, tied back to plants).  It was time to use some of our Montessori sorting cards again since they helped the kids contemplate where their food comes from. Where Does Food Come From? From Plant to Food (Montessori for Everyone): This set had...

0

Hamburger Plant Activity– Garden Science Unit

Knowing we’d be doing the hamburger plant activity and to get us into the proper mood, we had hamburgers for dinner the night before! This activity came from the instructor’s manual of the Junior Master Gardener program. The next morning we drew pictures of an imaginary hamburger plant.  The purpose of this activity was to discuss the origins of many of the ingredients in a hamburger. When you trace things...

6

Gardening and our new gardening science curriculum

Gardening continues to be a rewarding part of our home life.  We all have an incredible enthusiasm for our new gardening adventures! Here’s a glimpse at our veggie garden. I put in planks to keep ED and the others from wandering all over the garden. They enjoy balancing along them and have claimed certain sections for themselves! We already have quite a large number of lettuce plants (since that’s one...