Crazy School Days

School is fully underway and we are off to a productive start. I have the girls helping with the younger boys although Mini Monster is the most interested in do "projects".
Here he is with Chickie and Big Mac doing calendar.

Wildman is working hard on his writing, controlling his grip, and is finally beginning to get sounding out. His tendency toward being auditory has made it a tough road as he sounds out words WITHOUT staring at them like most kids do. One glance and then he has to pull his eyes away. Phonics Road 1 has been working for him very well!! We have a ton of vowel teams in our vault(ee,ai,aw,au,ow,ou,ay,oy,oi...) and he is beginning to pick up speed decoding. I use some laminated sentence strip pieces to create a word walk that he has to travel and read. In there I have included sight words that are useless in terms of phonics. Have, from, some, where, there, have, and others.

For Nature study I have opted to go with a Simply Charlotte Mason approach in addition to what Oak Meadow offers. He would do nature all day if he could. I LOVE these books but sadly our library only has 2 and I will be paying dearly to get more as most are out of print. Crinkleroot is the cutest character ever!

They are always interested in flowers and when Grandma's cactus did its once a year bloom we had to go over a look!

Frogs, frogs, and more frogs!~

We have frogs! Through some trial and error we have managed to get 3 of the 16 tadpoles to frogdom. It was a lesson in patience, especially for me. It requires daily water cleaning, boiling and freezing lettuce, and careful observation to catch them at the right time so they don't drown. Our first casualty was the one tadpole that appeared to be crazy and was swimming in circles non stop. Then we had the 3 that went belly up due to water conditions-sigh. Then we had the poor little guy who converted to lungs and didn't get up onto the rocks. He became a meal for his family-YUCK!Here is what they look like when they first get front legs. It is an odd thing to watch. It seems like the legs develop under the skin and kind of pop out, but not both at the same time. They spend a few hours as 3 legged frogpoles. We did realize that once the tail starts to wrinkle and get thin that it will be a matter of hours. That prompted us to put them in a holding tank where we also realized that they are both gill/lung at that point! We then move them into a more permanent tank with a little pond and less water around the edges. Here is our first froggie who is about the size of my pinkie finger nail! I bought some food and we are hoping they will begin eating soon(we now have 3 frogs complete).

Owls in the family....

No we did not add owls to our already crazy house, but we are reading a book by that name. I added the link to it over there on the right in my Amazon slideshow. Anyway, I decided there would be not better time to dissect owl pellets than now! They look really gross when they are unwrapped but they are quite light and really just a mass of dried fur and bone. We used a wooden stick and tweezers to pull them apart slowly and a chart to try and see what we were getting. That kit is also linked over there on the right.Big Mac found a skull and it was mostly intact, which was cool. Even Wildman got in on it with a careful hand!
Nature seemed to be on our side today as Chickie walked out the door and stumbled upon a bird egg sitting in the grass. Since it was cracked and obviously liquid in the middle we cracked it open to take a look.

Magic Schoolbus Kits-Going Green

I cannot say how much I love these kits! I am not a sciency person who just can't wait to do experiments. These very affordable kits are absolutely the best thing for a person like me. There is something in there for all of the kids to learn. This past week we ventured into the Going Green kit.
We started by setting up our compost tube that we need to observe for the next few months.

It will be interesting to see the process as we are unable to see into our large composter out back.

Then we moved on the paper making activity which wasn't as green as it should have been since we had to rip up perfectly good construction paper since they didn't want it to look like newspaper. Now that I think of it, I am not sure how that is even considered a green activity in the end since you use quite a bit of water and electric. Oh well.
 

Our little froggie wanna-be's!

We recently became owners of 16 amazingly cute tad poles. I have always been fascinated by these little critters and wanted to raise them. Not really sure if I bargained for 16...but here goes nothing!

It remains to be seen what we will do with the little guys once legs start to appear and we have to make their environment a bit more frog friendly. My biggest fear is that they will drown! Right now we are feeding them boiled lettuce that we chop down and they hang on it eating like nursing babies. Pretty funny to watch. The plan is to put them into a deeper tank of some sort once they are close to changing. The kids want to keep frogs but I really doubt I can keep up with feeding my own 6 kids plus 16 frogs!

I went online and grabbed this nature study unit in hopes of gleaning as much out of this as we can. I love Shining Dawn units!

Science is...well...fun!

When I would hear nature study I would cringe. I mean how do you measure and evaluate such an animal? You don't and that is the beauty of it. You look, listen, enjoy, and just revel. We took a hike through a local park and the things the kids notice now is just, well, a homeschool thing. Here is some of what we saw.

It appears to be an egg sack we think? Cool to say the least. A great variety of fungi and stuff went well with our recent discussions.

Okay so maybe that cute thing holding the leaf was not found out in the woods....but an awesome example of nature anyway! Much to Chickie's dismay, these were not just seeds that she touched, but fox scat. The big eeeewww for the day but educational to say the least. We also encountered a frog, lots of water spots, geese flying overhead in the classic V formation, and showers of falling leaves. Wonderful time spent in the woods!

Wildlife pastry? Not quite!

Here are some pretty peculiar nature finds. Since they grew in the leaves under a cherry tree it was safe to assume that they were some form of fungi. But which one? Thank goodness for Google. After searching online and in the Handbook of Nature Study we concluded that there delicate looking things were earthstar mushrooms! The ones shown at left are the miniscule variety. The ones we have are about twice that size.
The small top pouch contains spores that puff out as it dries out. Looks like we will be stopping for some unscheduled nature study tomorrow as we sketch and research fungi! Oh the boundless freedom of homeschooling!

AHHHHH spiders

Quite in line with the current nature theme and the fact that we are nearing Halloween, spiders abound! We have a big, ugly, orb weaver on a bush on the side of our house. I guess to his mom he is pretty-lol. His beautiful web is about 2 feet across. Later in the day we went out to check on him and he was not alone!







He had a meal with him! Stink bug roast to be exact! EEEWWW.
The girls did their own drawings of Mr. Spider in their nature journals and we will keep checking on his progress!

Another peek at nature!

So this past spring Chickie found a bird's nest with some ummm...remains in it. She wanted to examine it and I suggested letting nature take its course and wait until it was just bones. Well last week she decided to dig the nest out of hiding. What we found was pretty amazing. Yes those little tiny things, compared to Big Mac's thumb, are bones!!!

Nature Study

Science......yuck. I really don't like science which stinks as a homeschool mom. I am trying my best to get in touch with my inner nature girl. Nature study is the best way to just stop and see what is about you. There are several WONDERFUL blogs that can direct you. Here are a few:
Handbook of Nature Study
Backyard Nature

This book is a bit daunting but has everything a person might need to know about nature:







Another great one is this which is much less intimidating

















Sometime the best nature interactions are the unplanned ones. For instance, the other gray and foggy morning I noticed the many spider webs visible on the bushes out front. That's all it took to send them flying out the door in their PJ's. An orb weaver in all its glory has left a real treasure! Another creepy treat is the funnel spider webs which make me shiver...but not in delight!















Ahhhh...there's our sinister little friend! EEEEWWWW.
At any rate they proceeded to draw white spider webs on black paper and now notice every web they get near. Mission accomplished-they got into it.

Spring Break 2011

Well last week consisted of a lot of this! Sand, sun, surf, pool!
Easy living on Hilton Head Island at our Marriott timeshare, Surf Watch. We fell in love with it years ago and are sure to get there at least once per year. I tried really hard to bring educational books with me that pertained to the beach but I found that I was enjoying some downtime and didn't get in all I wanted. We did do a nature walk and wrote down trees, flowers, and bushes that were marked. We had a lovely family of ducks in the resort pond that entertained us as well. An Earth Day trash pick-up proved to be a great morning of finding ocean wonders, although this excellent find happened completely by accident when the tide was waaaaaay out. We have another fall beach trip planned that I will be more prepared for so I hope some of the books I got will be of use then. All in all it was a great week and I brought home some tan and happy kids! Now back to work-ugh!

Science abounds!

We are studying Earth science and have recently talked about earthquakes and volcanoes. No by no means did I need the Pacific Plate to cooperate for demonstration!
The girls made a homemade salt dough volcano.
We shaped it around a water bottle on a cookie sheet, then let it dry and painted it.



When it came time for it to explode we made sure that all the kids were home to enjoy. Red food coloring added a great touch and the salt dough, which had dried for 3 days, really held up against the liquid. On a second attempt we had a worm-like thing erupt which created more laughing than science!

Next we will be ordering some ladybug eggs to hatch in our habitat for a spring activity. Right now we continue with rocks and fossils as our study.

Homeschool science!

Okay admittedly I am NOT a science activity person, BUT I am trying to embrace my inner Janice Van Cleave! The first we did was to use bleach in water to bend light to capture the rainbow. Did manage to see all of the colors on paper we held up.
The second we did was the dry ice bubble blowing. Here is a pic of what was going on in the sink! Very cool I have to admit!