Monthly Archive: April 2011

Other Things We Did While on Holiday 0

Other Things We Did While on Holiday

Lots and lots and lots of rides… including “It’s a Small World” (left) Checking out the alligators.   A bit of mini golf. A wonderful children’s science museum type place called Wonder Works. The kids LOVED the ropes course at Wonder Works. Kennedy Space Center — we were SO sad not to see the launch (which was postponed to four days after our visit instead of while we were in...

Check out the garden now! 0

Check out the garden now!

DD checks out the gardens… but sadly it’s not ours. Any guesses as to where we are? Here are a couple of other hints. Yes, the past 10 days or so we’ve been down in Florida with Grams and Gramps. (Posts were set to go off automatically during that time.)   We had such a wonderful time! We were all healthy and enjoyed getting away. Best of all I feel...

LD found a turtle 0

LD found a turtle

Today LD found a turtle out in the yard. We think it is an Eastern Box Turtle. We learned quite a bit about these critters: *Turtles can live 50-100 years.*Turtles as a species have been around for 250 million years.*Turtles eat insects, earthworms, millipedes, beetles, caterpillars, fruit, mushrooms, berries and vegetables.*The plastron or lower shell of the turtle can help identify its sex. Male turtles’ lower shells are concave (goes...

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The Human Body (Preschool Unit) — bones/the skeleton

ED has been doing a new unit on the human body.  I’m using Everybody Has a Body: Science from Head to Toe (affiliate link). It has such a wonderful array of hands-on activities for preschoolers.  DD has been enjoying them as well. ED has been putting this skeleton puzzle together for several days now. This puzzle was called Look Into Your Body All About You From the Inside Out with Floor Puzzle...

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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...

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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...

What to Know When You Buy Salmon… 0

What to Know When You Buy Salmon…

There is so much to consider about buying salmon. I sure didn’t realize any of this so thought I’d share. 1) Salmon are carnivores. In the wild they start eating microscopic plants and animals. As they get bigger they eat tiny crustaceans (krill) which gives them their pink color and then larger fish. 2) Farmed salmon is a nice gray color.  Hmmm… but salmon farmers resort to cosmetics to change...

Another book series LD is enjoying 8

Another book series LD is enjoying

We found another book series that has LD really engaged.  The books are called Andrew Lost and they follow the adventures of a young boy who builds a shrinking machine.  He, his cousin and their robot get lost on the neighbor’s dog — in the midst of blood-sucking monsters (fleas).  They continue on to other adventures 2) in the bathroom 3) in the kitchen 4) in the garden etc.  This...

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Ancient Mayan Indian Unit: Wood Animalitos – Oaxacan (Mexican) Folk Art

We continued to read The Corn Grows Ripe (about a Mayan boy and his family) this week and talked about life Mexico. We read about these imaginative creatures called Alebrijes at this art lesson plan website. In Mexico these are carved from one piece. Since we had lots of woodscraps (I bought lots of wood craft kits of cars, bird houses etc. for 50cents back in December), this seemed like...

I Like this Raisin Bread Recipe (Yum!) 4

I Like this Raisin Bread Recipe (Yum!)

We eat a lot of raisin bread in our household. In the past six months the price of raisin bread has gone up 50 cents. Plus, the ingredients in the loaves at our local grocery store make me shutter a bit.  So, the past few months I’ve been baking my own raisin bread.  I’ve been experimenting with different recipes. Last night I came across one (here) and modified it just...

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Ancient Mayan Indian Unit: Rugs

We looked at the brilliant colors of Mayan rugs visiting these sites: here, here, and at the Mayan Culture websites. We talked about the patterns they saw. Then the kids spent a lot of time while listening to our novel coloring their own Mayan rugs.  They worked really quite hard over several days: They used oil pastels for this project.    

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Ancient Mayan Indian Unit: God’s Eye — Yarn Craft

The Huichol Indians of Mexico and Aymara Indians of Bolivia make “eye of God” yarn crafts. Originally they were placed on alters, but now they are often sold in markets. I thought this was a perfect craft for the kids to go along with our talks about the ancient Mayan Indians. I used to make these in Girl Scouts, but came across this website which has details on how to...

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Ancient Mayan Civilization

In our slow, but steady move through history we have talked about nomads, ancient Egypt, ancient China, ancient Greece and Rome and then up into the Middle Ages. From here we’re going to turn to the Americas. Our next history unit study will be on Native Americans. I hope to incorporate some good literature books into our studies over the next few months (let me know if you have good...

Reorganizing The Homeschool Den’s Links 3

Reorganizing The Homeschool Den’s Links

I developed this blog in large part for me.  It helps me keep a record of what we’ve done and it also helps me stay organized and keep track of websites where I’ve gotten activity ideas and printables.  You should see my drafts!!  Whenever I’m cruising around trying to find information and activities for new units I create a “draft” and link lots of the websites I come across. I...