The great germ experiment

With all the talk of Swine Flu swirling about, I thought it was a good day for a lesson about germs.

Materials needed: lotion, glitter, paper towels, soap, sink

Have child rub a drop of lotion onto both hands

Put a pinch of glitter (germs) on child's hand and have her make a fist and then press both hands together. Explain how easy it is to spread our germs (after sneezing, for instance).

Have children shake hands - again to illustrate how easy it is to pass germs. If your child accidentally wipes her eyes, nose or mouth DON'T stop her. This is a good way to illustrate how easily the germs can get into our bodies.

After a few shakes, have the child look at all the new germs on her hands!

Let her try wiping the germs off with a paper towel. Notice how difficult it is to get the germs off and how the germs don't "disappear" once they are wiped onto the towel.

Now have the child wash her hands with soap and water. Discuss how EASILY the germs are cleaned off the hands.

2009 Flower Garden - part 1

Sydney has been begging to have a flower garden since we first moved into this house in March 2007. We finally got started on it this week.

We are actually planting a little late by Florida standards, but even after being here for 3 years, we are still running on Indiana time. We decided to start from seeds because (1) we're homeschoolers who can't pass up a good learning opportunity and (2) seeds are 20 cents a package whereas a flat of flowers is more like $10. We can do the math.

We did have to splurge on the little Jiffy greenhouse for $6 at WalMart, but it is reusable so it was money well spent.

It was pretty easy. We just had to add water, aerate, plant the seeds, put the lid on and now we are waiting for some growth.

Adventures ~ Week 16

I should apologize for these brief weekly summaries. If I had written them a few months ago when we had actually done the work, they probably would be more interesting. Don't let my poor writing and descriptions discourage you from TOTALLY loving MFW. It is an awesome program and has been a lot of fun for the kids (and for me too!).

On to Week 16!

This week we learned about Jesus as Immanuel/Emmanuel. We studied and memoried the first verse of the hymn O Come, O Come Emmanuel. It's one of my faves and I had fun belting it out, though I think Sydney might have been mortified. Sadly, there's no video to convince you of my wicked awesome voice. Shucks. Anyway, our memory verse this week was Matthew 1:23 "...they will call him Immanuel" - which means, "God with us."

Rhode Island and Vermont were the states we studied this week. We also did some reading in American Pioneers and Patriots and learned about Daniel Boone in Exploring American History.

Our science lessons this week were about air - how it expands, contracts, and rises. we did a couple of experiments to see the effect of temperature on air. I think the girls' favorite was when they made the coin "jump" on top of the bottle.

Adventures ~ Week 15

This week we continued a lot of the things we were working on last week - reading Farmer Boy, learning America the Beautiful, memorizing and understanding John 14:6, studying birds and in social studies we learned about New Hampshire, Virginia, New York and North Carolina.

Our Bible lessons were pretty interesting this week. On Monday we talked about how God does not always lead us the way WE think we should go - but always in the best way. Too bad I often struggle with thinking His way can't possibly be the best way *sigh* Tuesday we went on to learn about the Most Holy Place and what it meant for us when it ripped. Good stuff.

The state study was a lot of fun this week. We reviewed the Jamestown settlement when we studied Virginia, learned about the Statue of Liberty and did some comparative measuring for New York, but I think Sydney enjoyed North Carolina most of all because she got to fly paper airplanes in school. We learned all about the Wright Brothers and then did experiments to see what we could do with paper airplanes.

The Wright Brothers made four flights the first day they got their plane in the air. The first one lasted 12 seconds. The longest flight made it 59 seconds. We've come a long way since then.

Adventures ~ Week 14

Week 13 was a Thanksgiving Unit. We did read the Thanksgiving Story, but skipped most of the planned activities and did things on our own.

This week, Week 14, included the study of four more states -- Connecticut, Massachussetts, Maryland and South Carolina. We continued our bird study in science, started reading Farmer Boy and began listening to and studying The Nutcracker ballet.

We also began learning the words and history behind America The Beautiful. Apparently I was a bad student because I never realized that the song was written by a teacher visiting Pikes Peak. A dear friend of mine actually posted pictures of that area so my girls could see what Katherine Lee Bates was looking at when she wrote the poem that eventually became the song. To me, there's nothing more awe inspiring that those Purple Mountain Majesty (even when Sydney insists that they are blue).

Our Bible lesson verse for the week was John 14:6 Jesus answered, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me."

Amen.

Adventures ~ Week 12

This is the week that we finally began our study of the states. MFW gave us a fact sheet about each state, along with flag stickers and little cards with the state bird and flower. Each time we look at a new state we:

1. Locate it on the big US map
2. Color the state on our personal maps
3. Read over the facts about the state (this includes some info about history of its statehood, famous people from the state, nicknames, state symbols, funny/outdated laws, etc)
4. Complete any listed activities
5. Read library books about the state during Book Basket time.

We are following the order of statehood, so this week we studied Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Georgia. Our activity for Pennsylvania was to make a model of the Liberty Bell and for Georgia we were supposed to make a peach cobbler -- but we didn't because we were overloaded with desserts at the time. We'll probably do it this summer when we can use fresh peaches.

This week's science lessons were all about birds. We spent some time discussing mammals, reptiles and birds and learned about warm-blooded and cold-blooded animals. We then Googled all the state birds that we studied this week so we could see them "live" and hear their calls. Both Sydney and Delaney love to find birds in the yard, so we also got out the binoculars and wandered around the yard to see what we could find.

Ous Bible lessons this week also related to birds.

Outdoor Hour Challenge

Imagine walking down your driveway, looking up and seeing this over your head.

This little critter is a spiny orbweaver. It kind of looks like a crab and a spider had a baby :) They make their webs between the trees - at least in our yard. I've never seen them before we moved into this house, but I guess they are pretty common.

This is not the same one, but it's a better picture. We found this one in the yard a few months after we moved in. Since then we've found red and green ones as well. They are quite colorful little critters. See what I mean about looking like a spider crab?

This is some sort of river birch. We got out our Florida tree field guide and try to narrow it down, but that's as close as we got. We have a few trees like it in our yard and none of them are the same.


Sydney's journal. She drew the birch tree and added some leaf rubbings for good measure.

Delaney's journal

My journal

Adventures in MFW ~ Week 11

I am so ridiculously far behind in blogging our weekly lessons. I apologiz to those of you on the MFW blogroll who have been visiting!!! I'm going to attempt to catch up in separate posts - hopefully I don't confuse you or leave out too many details since everything happened so long ago.

Anyway...

Week 11
Bible ~ We continued learning about Jesus as the Giver of Water. It really difficult to explain to a 9 year old how a person can have his spiritual thirst satisfied. She nodded her head a lot and seemed to understand, but I felt like I could never explain it well enough. Perhaps the difference is in her innocence. There's something to the idea of coming to the Lord like a child!

Social Studies ~ Last week we studied the birth of our nation and the Declaration of Independence. This week we gained a new appreciation for George Washington. What an amazing man! We also read about and tried to make our own Johnny Cakes.

Ingredients: water, butter, cornmeal, sugar and salt. Easy peasey.

I think we did something wrong because ours fell apart in the pan....

But the girls seemed to like them anyway. They tried dipping them in maple syrup and melted butter. I'm sure you will understand how surprised I was when they declared maple syrup their favorite topping *gasp*

Read Aloud ~ We're still working on Sarah Witcher's Story which is supposed to be the true story of a little girl (4ish maybe) who wandered away from the family homestead and got lost in the woods for several days. She was taken care of by a bear whom she had mistaken for the family dog. It's been a good insight into faith, family life, and the culture of the time period and my girls are hanging on every word.

Music ~ We are singing and learning all about Yankee Doodle Dandy! The girls think it's funny that macaroni (as in "Stuck a feather in his cap and called it macaroni") referred to a stylish way of dressing and not their favorite lunch. They seem put off that the British would be making fun of the early Americans like they did. But, go USA! We all love that the early Americans took it in stride and adopted the song as their own - despite it's original cruel intentions.

Adventures in MFW ~ Week 10 science

This week we decided to have one science day instead of trying to fit the week 10 experiments into our already busy days. So on Wednesday we did fairly quick math and language arts lessons and then devoted the rest of the day to "Science in the Kitchen".

The first couple of experiments were from the 'Soaked Through' lessons and dealt with absorption. Since Sydney is a 4th grader, we took some time talking about the scientific method and made sure to take good notes about our experiments. We aren't using the correct vocabulary for the method at this point. I'm more concerned with her learning the steps of scientific observation and testing and then later we'll go back and learn how to take "proper" notes for our experiments. We talked about ways to set up charts to record our results and how to form a hypothesis and write a conclusion.

In our first experiment, we tested to see how well various objects soaked up a set amount of water. We discussed how to make the test "fair" - by using the same-sized materials, the same amount of water and drying the wet surface after each trial. We went over our procedure several times to make certain that we would not make any mistakes. Then we recorded our
guesses, performed the experiment, recorded the test results, discussed and then reached our conclusion: Thicker, porous materials will soak up more water than thinner, porous products because there is more area for the water to "stick" too.

Our second experiment was to see what would happen to dots of ink when soaked in water. The girls thought the first trial was uber cool....

Unfortunately Mommy forgot that we were using washable markers so the only result was that the ink washed right off the cut strips of coffee filters. Pretty? Yes. Informative? Not so much.

Take 2. This time we used permanent markers, but not all that much happened. However the girls did notice that the yellow was seeping out of the green dot. We'll try this experiment again. After I get better markers!

Our final experiment dealt with evaporation. We discussed the water cycle, how and why water forms on the bathroom mirror during a shower and talked about how dew forms on the grass. Then we took two dish towels and got them equally damp. We sealed one in a plastic bag and left the other out to air dry. The girls guessed which would dry the most and why and then we put them on the dryer until this afternoon.

Both girls correctly guessed that the towel left out of the bag would by the dryer of the two and even Delaney understood that the other one was still wet because the water had no where to go once it evaporated off the towel.

Ahhhhh. An excellent day of science.

Clearly....

So you've seen the spider living in one of our dining room windows, right? Well this guy has taken residence in the other window. Clearly our house has really bad screens! The kids looooove him, but so far he doesn't have a name.

Outdoor Hour ~ Challenge #5 (more like a repeat of #4)

After all our drama, and after I came to my nature study senses, I sat the girls down yesterday with the Handbook of Nature Study and told them that we needed to pick ONE are to focus on for the first few challenges. They had a hard time choosing, but in the end, and after quite a bit of dizzying back and forth-ness (like my new word?), we finally decided to study trees.

At church on Sunday, our homeowner asked if we had found any pecans in the yard or if the squirrels were eating them. Pecans? We are pretty clueless about these things and never bothered to look for the pecan tree the last time Mr. M mentioned it. So the girls and I decided that that the first order of business for our tree study would be to find the pecan tree.

We went online and Googled pecan leaves so we knew what we would be looking for. You just have to love Google, don't you? Up popped hundreds of pictures of pecan trees/leaves and my oldest daughter says, "I know where those are!" So out we stumbled into the yard. Imagine my surprise when I found that the mysterious pecan tree is only about 20 feet from the back door. Doh!


We checked out the tree, gathered some sample leaves and nuts and then headed back into the house as the crazy mosquitoes swarmed.


The girls were pretty eager to check out the inside of the nut. We got out some screwdrivers and pliers and went to work.

We didn't find much on the inside...I guess that's why the squirrels left these behind.


In our study we learned the scientific name for the pecan tree (Carya illinoinensis) and that it is a deciduous tree related to the hickory. Next week we are planning to see if we have any hickory trees in our yard. We did some leaf rubbings and in the next few days I'd like to do some bark rubbings since e have some smooth and rough-barked trees in our yard.

We did not make a list as the challenge suggested, but our goal for this study is to identify as many of the trees on our property as we possibly can. We live in the woods so I don't think we'll run out of material.

The girls did a great job with their journals.

Sydney (9yrs)

Delaney (6yrs)

Sadey (3yrs)

Mom (not 9, 6 or 3)

Outdoor Hour Challenge #4

For this Outdoor Hour Challenge, we were supposed to pick an area of nature to focus on for the next 6-8 weeks, take a nature walk, discuss/research what we saw that related to our area of focus and make a journal entry. But here's the problem...my children can't agree on a focus area!

This doesn't surprise me as they seem to take great delight in being opposite of each other, but it can be frustrating when we're trying to do group projects. Sydney wants to study birds because she is trying to write a movie script about birds. Delaney wants to do trees. I'm not really sure WHY she is so insistant on trees (aside form the aforementioned desire to be opposite of her big sister) but she is not willing to budge.

Needless to say, we took this week's nature walk without a focus area, but a good time was had by all.

We went back to the park that we visited on our last walk - only this time we went down to the beach area and walked along the shore.

This isn't a great picture, but we saw a crane standing in the bay.

The girls found lots of rocks...

snails....

and butterfly wings.

I think what I'll do to settle the big "area of focus" debate is just let Sydney work on birds, Delaney can learn about trees and Sadey and I will do our best to keep up with them both. It would be easier if they were doing the same thing, but I think we can handle both topics - at least in a basic way.

It'll work.

Meet Buddy

Buddy is the spider that has taken residence in the little space between the screen and window pane of our dining room window. It has been there for a couple of weeks now and the kids have adopted him/her as their new pet *yuck* We have to keep the blinds up every day so they can periodically check on Buddy and talk and "play" with him/her each day.

I'm not sure what kind of spider this is - I'm just glad it's OUTSIDE!

Feel free to be grossed out. I am! But I'm also trying to be a good homeschool mom about it all because....

It's been a good science lesson for the kids. Delaney tried to convince me to "catch" some flies so she could feed Buddy. I told her that Buddy would be better at catching food than I would :) I'm not sure how long Buddy is planning to stay in the window, but the kids have had a great time watching him/her every day. I can't complain really. This pet is much better than the Strawberry Root Weevils that Delaney used to have when we lived in Indiana!