All That's Goood: field trip

Showing posts with label field trip. Show all posts

December 12, 2013

Nature Study on an Island

Bong Tree

Hoche Cave once inhabited by Portuguese Sailors

What is this?

Desert flowers are small but beautiful.

Moringa trees grow naturally here.

The infamous bottle tree.

hunh?

Can you see our vehicle?

a fish my dh caught for breakfast.

Egyptian Vulture..very pesky.

By for now....

September 27, 2013

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.

July 15, 2013

On Their Own

Via Flicker

This spring we were not at home, so homeschool took on an 'on-the-road,' loose sort of a look. I loved it! We did spontaneous things and less seat work. We were in the outdoors more (when it wasn't raining) which was therapeutic for us all. This kind of change in schedule satisfied the fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants longings I have when I do execute a well planned day. Well this spring I got my freedom, for a time, and actually some good things came out of it.

I am posting today about one activity that I initiated but became kid driven as we went along. It began with a bird book and time to look outside. I purchased this beginning bird watchers book with stickers. I know it isn't a "real" nature journal like we usually try to accomplish at home, but it did accomplish something our 'real' nature journal making has not yet done....my boys asked to do it and got out their books on their own to do it.

My guess is that they felt confident that they could wield this tool of observation and the 'real' nature journal entries we have been doing are still beyond them skill wise. The skill they have not yet acquired with ease is drawing and handwriting. Just about the entire 'real' nature journal entry activity is either drawing or handwriting. They will most likely catch on later as their fine motor skills develop but for now the sticker book was just within their grasp so they used it. You know something is working because your children will use again and again. They will drain it to the dregs if it is the right tool for them.

They were not allowed to simply put the stickers onto the birds as they liked it was a unsaid rule that they must have seen the bird and had someone witness that they saw it. SO they began a sort of guy like competition to see who can spot more birds than the other. Typical. I love it when their 'boyness' really accelerates their learning because there are so many times when the 'schoolish' type things simply do not appeal to boys and thus make it seem they are just not so bright. But now in the wild they can hunt down birds and add a sticker and they could do it faster than the next guy. Enthralling.

They would often beg for help to fill out the info about the birds because THEY WANTED TO KNOW more about the bird they had found. They had developed a connection or relation to the birds. It was fun for them to add in the sticker, learn more about the bird they saw and of course be first. I know this is not to be encouraged in a CM approach but I have yet found it detrimental to learning. There needs to be obvious sportsmanship rules but all in all I have found that good competition is healthy for boys. Also my boys are all within 1 1/2 years of each other with the oldest being 9 and the twins being 7 so there is room to spur one another on and it is truly a fair fight to the finish.

One activity that we did near the beginning turned out well indeed. I purchased a high quality molding clay in lots of fun bright colors. It is the kind of clay that never dries so you can reuse it again and again. It just gets better with time. However looking back maybe it would have worked better had we used an oven bake clay like FIMO because then they could have kept each bird they made.

We created several clay models of our birds but these are the only pics that survived some how. RATS! At first we tried going 3-D but that wasn't happening so the boys ended up making 2-D relief like images of the blue jays they saw in the park. The colors were very rewarding to work with and the way the clay moves in your hands makes working with it for beginners simple and successful. We still have the bags of clay at my mom's house which we can use again for another project. I love it how a simple resource like clay can become so many things over time.

Via Tumbler

We don't aways do education on the road or away from home and in the way we did this Spring but it worked for us for that season of the year. I have many happy memories of the lessons we did and the things we learned. It was truly relaxing. Maybe we can learn something from it too and let our children wiled appropriate tools so they can really do the learning for themselves without us grown ups always telling them how to do it.

June 28, 2012

Seashore Diagram

After long walk on the beach and bringing back several buckets full of treasure such as these I sat down with the boys and to them a bit about the strand line and the intertidal zone from our One Small Square: Seashore book. The strand line is the area on the beach where certain things are commonly found. For example, the crabs were almost always found at the strand line. The strand line is where the water comes up to the shore and leaves new things from the sea. You usually can find eel grass and other sea weeds there as well as kelp. It is easy to spot on any beach. After reading and looking at the beach itself to see just what the book meant, we made a cardboard diagram of it.

This is Max's diagram of the tidal zones.

T.J.'s diagram

Zak's diagram.

How to make one:

First select a nice piece of cardboard for the diagram.
Next paint on the sea portion using up about 1/3 of the cardboard surface. This breaks the composition into thirds.
Let dry completely before going onto the next step.
Then paint some white glue onto the rest of the cardboard and sprinkle sand on it. Make sure the sand covers all of the surface.
Let dry completely before going onto the next step.
The glue on articles from the beach from each of the tidal zones.
Label the tidal zones if you want to.

Have a look at the process in our slide show below:

November 21, 2011

Field Trip to Sri Lanka

My husband had a business meeting in Sri Lanka and the whole family was invited. The meetings only lasted few days so we tacked on a few more and spent two fun filled weeks exploring this wonderful country. To make it even more fun my parents were planning a trip to Thailand and decided to add Sri Lanka onto to that trip, so they spent a week in Sri Lanka with us.

We stayed at Mount Lavinia which was an old British fort years ago, and has recently been remodeled into a five star hotel it was delightful! While there we happened to catch the old movie "Bridge Over the River Quai" on the TV and this hotel was in the movie as a Mount Lavinia hospital. How cool is that!

We spent many hours in the hotel pool from sun up to sun down some days. The boys had a blast meeting other children and getting better at their swimming skills.

In Sri Lanka they drive on the 'wrong' side of the street. It took a few days to feel safe in a tuktuk the local cheap taxis.

Here is a pretty red tuktuk. Like riding in a motor cycle car. One driver told us you can buy a used one for around 2,500 USD. All five of us can fit into one and once we crammed all seven of us in plus the driver. Glad that was a short ride.

One of the best things about Sri Lanka was how close you can get to many of the 'wild' animals. In this picture Max and Zak and TJ are at the bathing river near the elephant orphanage. These elephants all have been orphaned and are taken care of here. We were allowed to go right out into the river with the elephants, touch them watch them bathe. There were over 30 of them.

In this picture a girl is feeding one of the baby elephants.

My dad getting personal with a mama elephant.

When traveling between cities we took the train. It is about $1.50 for a four hour ride. Less for shorter distances. Unfortunately while we were there it was the Buddhist moon festival so everyone in Sri Lanka was traveling and the trains were packed. Our second class tickets ment nothing as we were pushed into third class just to get a place to stand up. Luckily we discovered where people were traveling to and avoided those towns. Having seats on a bouncy, old train is nice.

This picture is taken by one of the boys. They are learning to use the camera. The people we met were so gentle and kind. I could really get used to living there.