Category: Science Units

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Sewing Ocean Animals

We haven’t done that much sewing here at the Homeschool Den, so when I saw these cute projects over at future girl‘s blog I thought they’d be perfect. The kids each chose their own project. I thought they turned out pretty cute! DD made the octopus. LD made the jellyfish. ED made the fish. DD and LD did the sewing completely on their own, although I threaded the embroidery thread...

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Ocean Activities: School of Fish

Why do fish swim in schools? We cut up little pieces of tin foil and paper to be our fish. First we dropped in one.  It was easy to spot. Then we dropped in a whole lot of fish and tried to follow just one with our eyes. It was much harder to follow one in the midst of many others.  We talked about how there was safety in numbers....

Ocean Animals Math Game for Preschoolers 4

Ocean Animals Math Game for Preschoolers

I made a preschool math game for ED.  ED worked hard to cut out all the pictures.  In the picture to the left, she rolled a 10 and I rolled a 1.  We each chose that many ocean animals to put on our gameboard. Then ED spun the spinner and it came out “even.” I showed her how to make partners and that she had all partners, so she had...

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Ocean Activities: The Ocean Zones

The ocean is divided into different layers. The zones differ in temperature, water pressure and available nutrients.  Marine organisms live in different zones according to the amount of sunlight that reaches there. Sunlight Zone: More than 90% of marine life lives in the Sunlight Zone. Twilight Zone: Animals that live in the twilight zone must be able to survive cold temperatures, an increase in water pressure and dark waters. There are no plants in...

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...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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!)...