Crafty Science + Games

On the last day of our week we have been being crafty in science, playing oceanography games and doing our nature notebooks. This first game was invented by Ellen McHenry the author of Professor Pigs Magic Math which we did when the boys were about 6 years old. I am a big fan of Ellen's Inventive games and crafts. You will see more from her in just a minute. Best thing is she is offering all of them for FREE!

Bites and Pieces is played very much like concentration, but instead of matching just to cars you are trying to find the info card plus the head, middle and tail of the shark. The boys learned many shark names and ways that God has made sharks unique one to another.

 Max putting his first shark together.

 Zak putting his first shark together.

TJ putting his first shark together.

Sting Ray hand puppets also invented by Ellen McHenry. We used some old food covering material and it worked beautifully and cost us nothing! Zak added some cool spots to his sting ray and it was so cool how he accidentally lined up the pattern to take advantage of the fake wood flooring pattern on the material. 

 Max is taking the pattern onto the fabric.

Now to cut it out.

Using a hot glue gun we put the pieces together and added some tin foil eyes. 

All three different, but all well done!

3D Ocean Bingo sorting animals of the ocean by Zones.

Her clam diagram is brillant!

And I am so impressed with this pop-up-barnacle page.

Check out what is inside the barnacle...

We have also been adding some more animals to our ocean board.

 And doing some nature notebook entries

Zak drew this clever little drawing of our dog, Diamond.

Thanks for dropping by!

 I hope you enjoyed our pictures. :)

Science Lesson

Much to Max's Sheer delight our science topic this year just happens to be Oceanography his FAVORITE thing in the whole world. What a pleasure to teach something you can see someone simply drinks in every little thing you do. His appetite for anything science is voracious but he has a special love for all things regarding the sea. The twins can take or leave this class loving all things weapon, and war but they get plenty of that in our history lessons. This lesson is where Max thrives.

We are using a book from the Young Explorers Series by Jeannie Albright: Swimming Creatures of the Fifth Day. For the first time since buying her books I am going to follow her straight through with only a few extra additions of living books where I have them and they fit in. Following can be boring and often the text in a given curricula just doesn't fit our plan but this year it does and I am not bored one bit I am enjoying the relaxation of letting another plan, research and deliver the lesson. She is by the way an excellent author and the text always gives glory to God which I appreciate. She includes so many fun and I must say simple experiments that the boys can do to understand more completely the sea creatures we are learning about.

I have laid out her chapters into individual lessons so I knew where the extra things I wanted to include could fit in and so I can know we will fit it all into the school year and at what pace we will be taking the readings and activities/experiments. Below is part of plan so you can get an idea how it works for us. We have a science lesson 5 days a week but the lessons vary so you will see.

Oceanography
105 lessons	Paddle to the Sea/map	book/map work	5
Chapter 1: Aquatic Animals	ECWZ Ch 1: Aquatic Animals Pg 1-7 narrate	spine	2
	Activity: Ocean currents Pg. 7	hands on	1
	ECWZ Ch. 1: Aquctic Animals Pg 8-15 narrate	spine	1
	Activity: air pressure in a bottle Pg. 15	hands on	1
	ECWZ Ch. 1: Aquctic Animals Pg 16-18 narrate	spine	1
	Activity: Ocean Box	hands on	1
	Experiment: cold and hot water	hands on	1
	BSBFC:  ch. 1 -3 narrate	book	1
Chapter 2: Whales	ECWZ Ch. 2 Whales pg. 19-28	spine	2
	Activity: megaphone pg. 28	hands on	1
	ECWZ Ch2.: Whales Pg. 29-32	spine	1
	Activity: freezing water pg. 32	hands on	1
	ECWZ Ch. 2 Whales pg. 33-39	spine	1
	Activity: sound through water pg. 39-40 / put a whale in your ocean box	hands on	1
	BSBFC:  ch. 3-6 narrate	spine	1
	Dolphin Adventure	book	1
	Dolphin Treasure	book	1
	Water Sky	book	6

In chapter one we began making our "ocean Boxes" but our idea was more of an "ocean board." We made wave shaped stamps from foam sheets and printed many waves onto a large cardboard board, then the boys added a cloud and a sun. Each chapter we select a sea animal and color it and place it onto the board. We just did the chapter on whales so that is all they have on their boards so far. By the end of the year it will be full of sea creatures they know.

I purchased Jacque Cousteau's DVD series to play on the weekends jut for fun.

On project day the boys still practice doing an entry in their nature notebooks. This year they can filling the scientific data portion in the upper left all by themselves by looking at past entries etc. to figure out how it goes.

...and that concludes our science lesson.

Uranus, Neptune, Pluto and making a cloud

Uranus and Neptune are also gas giants like Saturn and Jupiter. They are blue because of the methane gas in their atmospheres so we made our background paper color two shades of blue. One shade for Neptune the other for Uranus.

The next chapter and the last one for us this year is on Pluto and the Kuiper belt. We have been using Jennie Fulbright's text Exploring Creation through Astronomy.

There has been a big debate whether of not Pluto is a comet or a planet. Officially it is now a comet, but we looked at the evidence and I gave the boys a chance to vote for themselves...they voted that Pluto is a planet, I think it is a comet. What do you think?

How to make a cloud in a jar

1. add warm/hot water to a jar.
2. light a match and top it in.
3. place a ziplock bag with ice in it over the opening of the jar and seal the opening closed.
4. watch the cloud form.

This T.J's final map drill of the planets. Great job Guys!!

And that is all for our astronomy studies this year....we are already onto looking at birds and insects.

Metamorphosis

To begin our investigations of insects this summer we read Children of the Summer about Jean Henri Fabre and are reading now Fabre's Book of Insects aaannnndddd we ordered these caterpillars from Home Science Tools. Inside the cup were five painted lady caterpillars and food for them to eat to grow up big and strong. We set them out of the sun for several days until they began to grow.

After about three days the caterpillars had tripled in size.

Then, they each made themselves a chrysalis.

We placed a Chrysalis or two in each of our butterfly gardens and waited for them to emerge.

Once they emerged from their chrysalises we fed them for a few days with sugar water sprinkled on a flower at the bottom of the butterfly garden.

Then we let them go.

Astronomy Catch Up

Well I am about three chapters behind in chronicling our events in Astronomy. We have had a lot going in our neck of the woods and we also plan to do some traveling soon, so here is a very short nut shell version of our recent pages and project.

Space Rocks Title page by Max 

Each time we begin a new set of pages we try to think of a color or in this case a way to decorate the page so it reminds us of the planet we are studying. We had alot of fun splattering paint to make these pages.

Space Rocks Title Page by Zak

Two page Spread by Zak

Space Rocks Title Page T.J.

Two Page Spread of Jupiter by Max

Jupiter Fact Pocket by T.J.

 Saturn Two Page spread by Zak

 Because Jupiter and Saturn both rotate so quickly they have strong winds, or hurricanes. We made this hurricane in a bottle to see how this happens.

All of our lapbook mini books came from these two sources:

Exploring Creation With Astronomy Black and white lapbook

Exploring Creation With Astronomy Lapbook - Lessons 7-14

And the solar system map drill which we do at the end of each chater is found here.

To The Moon!

Zak's coloring of an Astronaut on the Moon.

We have had a wonderful exploration of the moon. We found out we weigh less there. The boys were so impressed by the fact that a man has actually set foot upon that far away place, not to mention the amazing fact that the footprints that were made back in 1969 are still there!

Most of our lapbook mini books are from A journey Through Learning Exploring Creation with Astronomy BW version and from Knowledgebox Centrals's Exploring Creation with Astronomy lapbook kit.

The top book is simply a blank mini book to write facts we had learned about the moon, it has craters, it is white etc.

The Moon Poem by Robert Louis Stevenson is from The Moon Lapbook. On the back of the poem there is a blank sheet for copywork. I could not find the lapbook again so I could link to it. Sorry. :(

The boys all weigh about 46 pounds here on earth....that is about 6-8 pounds on the moon. Wild.

This little flip book is simple to make. We just cut it out and them put the pages in order. When you flip it the moon travels around it's orbit of the Earth.

• The cool velum pocket on the left has me thinking. It looks great, and the velum folds so nice and clean. You will see us using this medium more in future pocket features. I love them!
• The phases of the moon worksheet can be found here.
• The best advantage to this book format for our lapbook base is that we can add notebooking pages whenever we like. I love the freedom this allows.
• We attampted to track the moon for a month with the card inside the envelope, but several of the days it wasn't visible excpet in the middle of the night, and on other days it was cloudy, so we could n't see then moon then either. So, we packed it in and went on to investigate mars.

We also read the following short picture books about the exploration of the moon to top off our look at this part of creation.

Footprints on the Moon by Alexandra Siy

One Giant Leap: The Story of Neil Armstrong by Don Brown

Can You hear a Shout In Space? by melvin and Gilda Berger

We made a rickety homemade telescope out of two magnifying glasses and a mailer tube. It worked ok for looking but it wasn't all that strudy to last for more than a day. Plus the boys had already discovered that if you aim your magnifying glass at a blank wall at just the right distance you can see and upside down picture of the window or doorway. Pretty cool!

And last but not least, we completed yet another solar system map adding on the moon orbiting around the earth.