Monthly Archive: October 2009
A Hike at Standley Chasm
Before the weather becomes unbearably hot, I’ve beentrying to take the kids out a bit. We had an especiallyintense homeschooling day on Monday so I felt great aboutgetting out the next day. On Tuesday I took the kidshiking at Standley Chasm. The hike is gorgeous. The “fern”type plants you see are called cycads and have been aroundfor millions of years. They survive here in the Outbackin the cooler gaps and...
Homeschool Planners
Free Homeschool Planner (for daily/weekly planning) And, if you are looking for some printables to create your own Homeschool Planner, you might want to check out our free Homeschool Planner. This unique homeschool planning packet is currently FREE to download! It is nearly 100 pages! Not only does this packet include daily and weekly planning pages, checklists and record keeping pages, but it also includes various homeschool journaling pages… think...
Plate Movements on Earth Cause Earthquakes and Volcanoes
Our last experiment (demonstration perhaps is a better word) was on plate movements. We looked at a map of the world’s plates, then made our own out of clay. On each plate was a continent (raised) and ocean (lower parts). We talked about how plates move around. Under each plate we put some magma (corn syrup and red food dye). When the plates are moving nothing happens to the magma (picture 1) Sometimes plates...
Natural Disaster Book Complete!
Here’s the cover of LD’s Natural DisasterBook. His book is over 30 pages long!
Natural Disaster — Putting the Book Together
We’ve done a huge unit on natural disasters this term. LD has been asking and asking when we could finally finish up the lapbook (which we actually put together with a comb binder). I got things ready and figured we spend the week putting things together. LD decided he wanted to do it ALL on Monday. He barely even let me get a quick lunch together. He spent close to...
Natural Disaster Book
Here are some of the pages from LD’s book. The natural disaster picture cards are available atwww.currclick.com for $2.00 US. We used some of the lapbook materials fromhttp://www.homeschoolshare.com/volcanoes.php andhttp://www.homeschoolshare.com/earthquakes.php
The cute exploding volcano was fromhttp://printables.scholastic.com/printables/detail/?id=31815 All in all, LD learned a lot this term. He sure isproud of the final product! I was amazed at theenergy and focus he had to put everythingtogether. He’s been bringing it everywherewe go (including to Standley Chasm!) justin case there was someone there who mightwant to look at it.
Flower Book
We finally put together DD’s flower book. This is a bunchof activities that we put together in a booklet using acomb binder. Activities came from http://www.play2learnprintables.com/Theme%20Page.htmhttp://www.childcareland.com/free.htmlandhttp://kidssoup.com/ (and perhaps one more, but I can’t remember off the topof my head)
Flower Unit — 2
The cute flower counting clothes pin cards were fromhttp://www.play2learnprintables.com/flowers.htm For her booklet, I made a lot of pocket pages by staplingtwo pages together.
Language Arts — Spectrum Reading
We have a number of different ways we approach languagearts. LD is a pretty good reader, so he’s had “independentreading” time each day for the past four or five months. Hechooses a book to read and reads quietly on his own. Welet him choose whatever he wants (not even offering suggestionsor comments about how easy/hard a book is). We also don’t ask him anything about his reading except perhapswhat did...
Airways Exhibit
Today after ED’s dance class we went to our local culturalprecinct (with various museums). The kids really enjoyedthe new airline exhibit and especially liked going into theairplane and watching a bit of the video on how camelscame to be in the Outback. Camels were brought overby Afghan trainers for use in the desert here. Now thereare lots of wild camels and interestingly enough, camelsare exported to the Middle East because...
Science Museum
The kids always enjoy going into the little science museum.Each time they seem to find something else that piquestheir interest. The first picture is of a dingo, a feral cat eating a galaand a perrente. The second picture is a skeleton of one of the world’s largestducks. The fossils were uncovered north of here. The last two are of various snakes, birds and mammalscommon to Australia. I’ve had it in...
