Homeschool Science: Year in Review and What’s Coming Up
When I think about all we’ve done this past year in 2015 in science, I’m really pretty amazed! It’s been a fun, full year! This post has links to dozens of our science experiments, printables and hands-on activities. You’ll find direct links to the posts in the table below.
We managed to squeeze in various engineering (STEM) type activities here and there.
In January of 2015 we were in the middle of a big Earth Science Unit. We did a ton of hands-on activities with this unit. We studied everything from plate movement and volcanoes to earthquakes (made our own earthquake shake table) and more. This was a phenomenal unit for us! 🙂
From there we went on to our Human Body Unit. I decided that we should really do a unit on cells. We learned about the main organelles of the cell and how proteins are made. We talked about the difference between animal and plant cells and went on to talk about photosynthesis.
ED did her own unit on dinosaurs.
After our unit on cells, we went on to talk about how human body systems are organized. Different specialized cells that make up the human body. We talked about how those specialized cells form tissues. Tissues form organs. And the human body systems are comprised of different
This fall, we did a unit on chemistry. My older kids did a study of the periodic table. Meanwhile my younger daughter (grade 2) used Real Science-4-Kids Chemistry pre-Level I (affiliate link) and did a lot of science experiments to go along with that.
We then moved on to our Biosphere Unit. We started with a review of the basic characteristics about animals: the 5 vertebrate groups, common invertebrates (insects, arachnids, echinoderms, mollusks, etc.). I included some notebook pages about domesticated vs. wild animals and animal track activities and matching pages as well. The kids really enjoyed this unit. 🙂
This spring we are doing a Biology Unit on to talk about the major biomes, animal habitats, ecosystems, food chains, food webs and the energy pyramid, animal relationships (symbiosis, mutualism, etc.).
Then we’ll move on to our Ocean Unit.
If there’s any time, we’ll do one of the Human Body Units that we didn’t get to last spring (circulatory system or muscular system).
I thought I’d try to put together a table sharing some of the links to the posts I shared for each unit:
Engineering Activities
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Earth Science Activities
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Cell Unit |
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Dinosaurs |
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Human Body Systems
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Chemistry Unit
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My older kids did a study of the periodic table:
While my younger daughter used Real Science-4-Kids Chemistry pre-Level I (affiliate link) and did a lot of science experiments to go along with that.
Here are some of our other chemistry posts (from when we studied chemistry a couple of years ago):
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Biosphere Unit |
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This is the checklist of the various units I hope we cover K-8 or so. You’ll find it at this post here: Homeschool Science Unit Checklist for Elementary and Middle School
Disclosure: Please note that some of the links in this post are affiliate links, and at no additional cost to you, I will earn a commission if you decide to make a purchase. If you do click over, thanks for supporting our blog!
I’m sure I’ve left things out, but I really need to get going. So, that’s about it for today! See you again soon here or Homeschool Den Facebook page. Don’t forget to Subscribe to our Homeschool Den Newsletter! ~Liesl