Category Archives: Science

Homeschooling On Earth Day

Genesis 2:15^“The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it.”

That’s the verse we will be concentrating on for our devotion/discussion and lead in for our other Earth Day lessons

Huge List of Earth Day related vocabulary words and several word puzzles https://myvocabulary.com/word-game-puzzles/earth-day-vocabulary/

Earth Day Related Quotes http://www.dgreetings.com/earth/quotes.html

Earth Day Related Math Activities https://www.yummymath.com/2018/earth-day-2018-12-activities/

Water Life Interactive Game and Educator Resources https://games.noaa.gov/oscar/welcome.html

Earth Day Projects, Activities, and Ideas http://www.blessedbeyondadoubt.com/27-earth-day-projects-for-kids-and-more/

https://www.weareteachers.com/5-earth-day-math-and-science-activities/

http://lessonplanspage.com/earthday-htm/

Make a Difference – Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

REDUCE: Since there is always room for improvement for energy conservation at our house, we’ll be brainstorming ways to cut back on our usages. (I sure hope someone will feel motivated to fix the toilet that flushes on it’s own what seems like hundreds time a day for the past week.) Here’s some tips and resource for energy conservation for kids http://www.homeadvisor.com/r/home-energy-conservation-for-kids/#.Vxo8_0dezIU

REUSE: We keep a large box of paper towel rollers, scrap paper, small boxes, plastic containers, rags, and various jars and bottles to use when we want to work on crafts, building model projects, or to make games. However, the box is just a big mess presently. Earth Day is a great excuse to dump and reorganize that box. And, make some plans to use those items. Fran (our family’s favorite “substitute teacher”) is our first go-to source for using recyclables! http://www.franw.com/2017/04/earth-day-activities.html

RECYCLE: Our town has a recycling center. We’ve visited several times to drop off “trash”. And, we toured and worked there a few years ago with our local homeschool group. I think I’ll check into scheduling another group visit. If you’re not able to visit a recycling center, you can watch a video or two.

Reading Rainbow – How Trash is Recycled https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1l8HXa3HLk

What might it look like is we didn’t reduce, reuse, and recycle https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QWsl5wn6x0Q

Have a happy Earth Day,

betty jo

Our Homeschooling Week, April 15-19

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This homeschooling week started off with an unplanned study on poison ivy remedies. My daughter brought the itchy rash home with her from last week’s mission trip.

We learned that placing potato slices over the rash sites was an effective treatment.

Also this week, we the added an anemometer and a barometer to our homemade weather forecasting center.

Z7 updated the current conditions chart and practiced weather related jokes. His favorite this week is, “What does a cloud wear under it’s raincoat? Thunderwear!”

For “Poem In Your Pocket” day we not only kept poems in our pockets, but also studied poetic devices. Instead of notebooking or lapbooking our printable mini posters, we put them on our current (art in progress) chalkboard wall. I think it looks nice having some of the blank spaces filled in.

And, SALT (saved, anointed, loved, transformed) practice for our homeschool group’s creative ministries troop.

And, Silver Lining, homeschool color guard practice.

We will be ending our homeschooling week with our monthly homeschool support group’s family game night and potluck.

How was your week?

betty jo

Leaves of Three

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E17 and B15 took some days off last week from homeschooling. They went on a mission trip with some other homeschool friends to Camp Joy (near Mammoth Cave) to get it ready for the summer camp season. They worked hard, Bible studied, explored the camp, and had a wonderful time with their friends.

E17 came home with a souvenir, too. A rash on her legs from Poison Ivy! I gave her the bottle of Calamine Lotion to dry out the rash and to relieve the itching. It did not work for her. The rash continued to spread and itch like crazy over the weekend. By Sunday night she gave up on the Calamine Lotion and set out to find an alternative to that “yucky pink stuff”.

The first remedy she tried was cucumber slices over the worst of the rash sites.

E17 says this decreased the inflammation of the rash and as long as the cucumber stayed on it, the itch was tolerable. But, this wasn’t quite the relief and healing she was hoping for.

She tried a mix of vinegar and alcohol, but that did not work either. After another day and a few more failed attempts with other remedies, she tried potato slices.

Folks, this is working great! The potato seems to be drying up that nasty rash and is stopping the itching! She had to change the potato slices often for the first hour of the treatment. because they turned dark blue and got hot.

I realize now that we should have known to try this sooner. We have used potatoes before to draw poison from insect stings and spider bites. It makes sense for it to work as well for drawing poison from her rash.

I asked E17 if she remembered studying poison ivy in our homeschool science last summer. She said she did. She even quoted the rhyme we learned, “Leaves of three, let them be!” She said she didn’t see any at the camp.

After a quick Google search, we learned that in the spring, Poison Ivy is not green, it’s red.

I’m sorry this has happened to her, but I’m also quite the proud momma. She has demonstrated a responsibility for her own health. She has a faith that proclaims that God has provided whatever we need and allows us to use what we have on hand. She proved that she understands the scientific method and can proficiently research. She’ll be getting an “A” in science this week even though this study was not on the lesson plan.

E17’s science lesson has been a good one for the rest of us, too. We needed a review on identifying poisonous plants. This site was helpful for our review http://poisonivy.aesir.com/view/

No itching is such a good thing!

betty jo

A Science Lesson From A Friend

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“…Cursed is the ground because of you;
    through painful toil you will eat food from it
    all the days of your life.
¹⁸It will produce thorns and thistles for you,
    and you will eat the plants of the field.
¹⁹By the sweat of your brow
    you will eat your food…” (Gensis 3)

I was chatting about homeschooling and getting some gardening advice from my friend Bobbi, from Provident Living Homestead. She thought the movie, Back to Eden, could help us with our gardening unit study. So, she sent it to me.

How awesome is that? Another homeschooling mom sending me a science lesson. She probably has no idea how much easier this will make my homeschooling day. I won’t have to research, print out anything, or design a lesson plan . The kids are going to appreciate this too. They have a BUSY week ahead. Watching a movie for our unit study one day this week is going to please them as well.

You should visit Bobbi’s blog and see the adorable baby goats and much more http://providentlivinghomestead.com/

And “like” Provident Homesteading on Facebook. You’ll pick up a lot of good ideas. https://www.facebook.com/ProvidentLivingHomestead?fref=ts

Here’s the movie link to Back to Eden so you can have the day off from teaching science, too. http://www.backtoedenfilm.com/

And here’s the link to another gardening post https://stilllearningsomethingnew.com/2013/04/14/homeschool-gardening/

betty jo

Homeschool Gardening

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^{Genesis 1:11}And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so.

¹²And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good.

¹³And the evening and the morning were the third day.

We did not plant a garden last year. However, we attempted to grow some flowers , bushes, and a few vegetables, but nothing succeeded in our clay and rock soil. This year we are trying again, but we won’t be planting directly into the yard.

This past week, my husband and B15 dug out a 10ft diameter circle and lined it with bricks, (my husband is a brick layer so we always have a pile of bricks around), with a path designed going into the center. Do you think it looks like Pacman? E17 and a friend of mine think it does.

Z7 helped his dad and B15 add a ton and a half of good soil.

Now we have a garden spot. My husband must be anxious to get this project finished, because he went to the nursery as soon as the new soil was spread out and bought some tomato plants.

That burlap basket is for our compost. This idea, as well as the garden shape, comes from So. Africa’s “key-hole” gardens. Brilliant plan! There is no bottom to the basket, just rocks so the rain water can drain. And as the water drains, it washes the nutrients from the compost into the soil. When we water it during the dry spells, we’ll do so through that basket. We won’t have to dirty up our feet when we take out our compost. That’s what that path to the center is for. Also, most of the picking can be done from the outside of the garden.

E17 went back to the nursery with her dad yesterday. She decided on several different pepper plants and some mint. Maybe next weekend we’ll add beans, calliflower, and broccoli.

With all this gardening going on, we will be adding some garden studies to our homeschool science lessons.

We will be working on this free Gardening Unit Study from http://www.inallyoudo.net/2013/03/26/gardening-unit-study-prek-5/

We’ll also be using some of the garden connections for unit studies and lapbooking from http://www.homeschoolshare.com/connections__plants.php

And, I found gardening journaling pages and interactive games here http://www.nourishinteractive.com/nutrition-education-printables/category/9-kids-gardening-growing-healthy-food (By the way, this site is very cool! I’ve got it bookmarked for later studies.)

You can view the Keyhole Garden tutorial here http://www.se7en.org.za/2009/04/26/saturday-spot-our-virtual-keyhole-garden (This site is awesome, plan on staying here to explore for a while!)

For another post about our gardening science unit study, click here https://stilllearningsomethingnew.com/2013/04/16/a-science-lesson-from-a-friend/

Are you gardening with your children? And, is your garden shaped like Pacman, too?

betty jo