Author: Liesl - Homeschool Den
This morning LD and I decorated skulls. I got this ideafrom artprojectsforkids.org. First, he traced the outlineof a skull from a skeleton puzzle we have. Then he drewthe eyes, nose and mouth. We decorated it symmetricallyand cut it out. Then we put it up on our front door. Ourback-drop paintings are from the paint popping activity we dida few weeks ago.
Another project from artprojectsforkids.org wasthe pasta skeleton . All the kids really enjoyed thisincluding ED who carefully used all of her pastaand beans!
Today we were very fortunate to have the opportunityto visit a scientist who works for our local museum. Hehas been working lately on cleaning up some fossils, thoughhe also does taxidermy as well. When we arrived, the kids showed him some of the fossilswe found a couple of months ago. (I’ll post a quick pictureof that below this.) Then Mr. I showed us around hislab. In the second picture below...
These are the fossils we took over to show the scientistthis morning. LD and DD selected their favorites andwere excited to be able to show him their finds. Theyhad a large tray of fossils just like these on one of thecounters in the science lab! I also posted a pictureof where we were when we found the fossils– againthese pictures were from June (not from today!)
Mr. I let us take a look in the “container,” a sealed roomthat was VERY VERY smelly. These are some of theanimals and critters he has preserved. Some of his specimensare on display in the museum. He and some otherscientists worked hard for 7 weeks (8am-midnight) to setup the display at our local museum (which we went to lastweek if you want to scroll down aways). He said he’d liketo...
A parrot skeleton and some lizards that have beenpreserved.
When birds are nearly done he wraps them in wool orbatting to help keep the feathers down, otherwise thefeathers stick up in all different directions. Below are the freezers where he has lots of specimansready to be worked on. In there were birds, lizards,snakes and all kinds of various animals.
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...
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...
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...
Here’s the cover of LD’s Natural DisasterBook. His book is over 30 pages long!
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...
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