Deep Sea IMAX - Jelly Fish

This wasn't our favorite part, but its the only clip I found on youtube! I would have shown you the Great Pacific Octopus eating a crab...

IMAX Deep Sea Adventure

Day four of Octopus week was supposed to be an ocean outing - visiting an aquarium or a beach or something like that. But we don't have the means to go on a trip right now, so I went to the video store and got IMAX Deep Sea (which is 3D in the theater but not on the DVD) narrated by Johnny Depp and Kate Winslet and with music - and other sound effects - by Danny Elfman. We decided to make it a submarine voyage. SO, I made official crew name tags for us, telling what our job onboard the sub was to be. Huyler was the "engine runner" and he brought with him his wrench and a panel of buttons to push. Augie was our "diver" and he wore his goggles in preparation for leaving the sofa-like confines of our submarine to explore. Ardara was our "photo-scientist" so she had on her swimming suit and a camera to take pictures of all the underwater wonders. And I was the captain, because I've always wanted to look through a parascope. So, we made our lunch of hot dog octopi and PB&Js and we embarked. The video was really good. I'll add a clip off Youtube for you to check out! We learned a lot.

Involving Dads in Home Schooling

By Carolyn Morrison

Moms often ask how to include their husbands in the homeschooling process. Dad is doing his best to earn the living that makes homeschooling possible, but he also may feel like he is not directly involved with the children's education. There are many facets of education, and Dad can fit in during the free time he does have. Dad's time with the children may often be limited, but it is always worth waiting for.

Reading -- My husband did not read great quantities of books to our children, but he did read certain books over and over to them. Children know their favorite books by heart and instantly recognize anything added in or left out. His favorite trick was including a lizard that was never in the actual stories. He would be reading along and just say the word "lizard" while turning a page, change a character's name to Larry the Lizard, or add an entirely new sentence about how the lizard who lived next door came over to play. The children shrieked with delight at every lizard, and lovingly scolded Dad that there was not supposed to be a lizard in that book.

Dads add character voices and sound effects all their own, beyond the bounds of Mom's repertoire. It may be the deep resonance of Dad's voice that can be physically felt while snuggled against his chest, but there is something extra-special about sitting in Daddy's lap for a book.

Sports -- My non-sports-nut husband took our kids biking, hiking, sledding, swimming, skating (standard & inline), bowling, and fishing, usually after a long, tiring day at work. He drove them to soccer practice, attended every game, and even helped out as assistant coach for a season. He got down and dirty playing paintball with our teenaged son and other dads and lads. Meanwhile, Mom, whose idea of cutting-edge sports is doing the Sunday crossword puzzle in ink, was very glad to have Dad's enthusiastic partnership. No matter how hard I have tried, my athletic ability is moot. What I lack in talent and coordination I try to make up in enthusiasm. I would happily hold the family's accumulated belongings while my husband accompanied the children on every ride the amusement park offered, knowing there was not enough motion-sickness medicine on the planet to get me through the three minutes of torture from a single ride. Without my husband's participation, our children's lives would have been sadly idle.

Rough-housing -- Dads play horsey; Moms cuddle & kiss boo-boo's. Children know that Dad will wrestle and toss them into the air and swing them around and around. Dads make every event thrilling just by being Dad. Too many times to count, I have said, "No, you probably shouldn't do that -- it looks dangerous," only to have my husband grin and say, "Why not? Let's try it!" I gave in because my husband was there to supervise, participate, or control the situation from getting out of hand. Dad added an element of surprise, a thrill of adventure, and a safety net all at the same time.

Dads teach weekend home improvement and car maintenance, as much through letting Little Brother watch as through actually allowing Bigger Brother help. Our Christmas breaks were often a time for our son to be Dad's apprentice for painting, wiring the garage, removing wallpaper, or numerous small projects around the house. At age 18 my son readily stepped into the handyman roll at a friend's apartment, having practiced the basics with Dad and Grandpa from a very young age.

Some homeschooling families are able to share the teaching responsibilities -- we know a few Dads who like to teach their children upper level math and science. Other families have found that Dad's work schedule did not allow him to contribute very often to the actual teaching process, and Mom could adequately cover their academics. Whatever and whenever Dad can participate, his contribution will leave a lasting impact. Dads are exciting -- no matter what they do, it becomes an adventure, while Moms teach quietly unexciting homemaking skills. Dads use tools like drills and saws; Moms use rubber spatulas.

Include Dad in your homeschooling at every opportunity. It will be as much of an adventure for him as it is for Mom and the children. Remember, it does not have to involve books to be education.

This article was taken from
guiltfreehomeschooling.org

O is for Octopus

The last week of November we studied ocean life, and octopi in particular. We kicked off the week by learning online as much as we could about an octopus (including a video of an octopus playing with Mr. Potato Head, just like the one in the aquarium near Grammy Sally and Grampa Mark!). When we knew all we could retain, we made a report. We used 3x5 cards to write down everything we had learned. Then we arranged the cards in the order that made the most sense. Next, we listed the facts in order on a poster board and the kids drew relevant pictures of octopus life. We presented our project to Daddy and even developed a quiz for him to take afterwards, by turning each fact into a question.

We read in the Bible verses like Psalm 69:34 “Let heaven and earth praise him; the seas and all that move in them” and we discussed how amazing octopi and other sea creatures are, and that their amazing-ness actually is a praise to God. Our words to remember were “Even the octopus praises the Lord”.
Other fun activities we did were a sea mural, hot dog octopus treat, and watching the movie “Deep Sea 3-D” together. We talked a little about seahorses and how the daddies of lots of fish care for the eggs until they hatch. This lesson is a good lead-in for next week’s W is for water!

Here is a link to the directions for hotdog octopi (from Anika)

Here is the mural we made of ocean life. If you click it to enlarge you can look for 2 seahorses, a wolf eel, an octopus, a sea star eating scallops, 2 nudibronchs, sea urchins, sea anemones, a puffer fish, a moon jelly fish, a squid, a seal, a manta ray, a sting ray, a whale, a dolphin, a school of fish, a grouper, a sea turtle, coral, sea weed, real sand, a shark, a submarine and a very unlucky diver! Actual mural size is 17" x 44"

George and the Dragon

Here is an awesome stop motion video made by Catholic School kids for St. George's Day. We watched it after reading that dragon legends like this one may have originated from dinosaur encounters. What a concept!

Are Dinosaurs in the Bible?

Here is a funny little video that partly explains the Biblical belief that dinosaurs co-existed with man.

D is for Dinosaur

This is probably the lesson I was most excited about teaching so far. One of the main reasons I chose to home school was to be able to teach my children the truth of Biblical creation as a valid scientific approach. (Our words to remember were “Big and small, God made them all”.) In public schools, children are taught the theory of evolution as though it has been proven, and the concept of a million year old earth in spite of the very faulty dating processes used to come up with that idea. But the Bible’s teaching that the world is only about 6000 years old, combined with the account of Noah’s flood give a completely adequate explanation for dinosaurs, fossils, geological anomalies, etc. Obviously there isn’t room here, but check the CRI link at the end of this post if you are interested in more information.
We read a book from the Creation Research Institute called “What Really Happened to the Dinosaurs?” Then we checked out a book from the library called “Boy were we wrong about the dinosaurs!”, discussing how many of the theories once held about dinosaurs have been altered or completely thrown out as more clues surface. Then we looked at a picture book of dinosaurs and each child chose 2 dinosaurs to become “experts” on. They studied how big they were, what they ate, what their name meant and where their fossils have been found. We made models of dinosaurs from playdough as well as stuffed paper bag dinos. And Daddy surprised us by renting Jurassic Park for us to watch, just for fun!!! Even after that traumatic event, Ardara has decided she wants to be an archaeologist or an anthropologist when she grows up!

Click here for an article by Ken Ham of the Creation Research Institute. This article was turned into a really good kids book which we read for school. In it, he talks about a lot of evidence that dinosaurs lived at the same time as man. Legends of dragons are only the beginning. There were also glyphs found in Utah that look like dinosaurs. There were dinosaur bones found that are NOT fossilized. One account in the Amazon jungle is thought to be a dinosaur that is still living! Anyway, to that end, we also watched some funny little videos that will be posted after this.


Click here for a story about the petroglyph discovery - with photos like this one!

The Blend Ladder

The blend ladder is used to help the student read two and three-letter syllables. I begin by placing a textured letter on the ladder in front of a vowel we have learned. The child tells me the sound of that letter, then the sound of the vowel and then we blend the two sounds together. We climb the letter up and down the ladder to each vowel we have learned and see how the syllable changes. The next day, we add a letter after the vowel sound as well. And finally, we have a blend ladder worksheet to do. I tell the children a word and ask them to point to the vowel sound that is hiding in the middle of the word. For “sat” they will point to the /a/ at the top of the ladder. Then they have to figure out what letter is at the beginning and write it in and what letter is at the end and write it in. When the ladder is filled in, they practice writing the new words on lined writing paper.
The kids are using this new knowledge to read words all over the place—cereal boxes, seat belts and much more!

U is for Us

**** tactile learning with vanilla pudding****

This week we explored the human body. We focused mainly on the five senses, but we talked briefly about our anatomy and taking care of our bodies, too.
Since we do school five days a week, we spent one day on each of the senses. On Monday, we reached in a bag and tried to identify objects with our sense of touch. Then we tried the same thing with socks on our hands.
Tuesday, we made musical instruments with rubber bands, bean shakers and wax-paper and comb kazoos. Then we wore blindfolds and guessed different sounds like zippers, doors, crumpled paper etc. We also talked about how our ears help us balance. We spun around in circles and got our ear fluid churning and then tried to stay standing while our brains thought we were still spinning!

Wednesday we used our sense of smell and a blindfold to see if we could identify all kinds of odors—some good and some stinky—without looking. (If anything will inspire you to quit wetting the bed…)
Thursday we tried out several optical illusions we found in a book and then we played a game where we had to remember a set of objects after they are covered with a blanket. We also tried to identify which object had been taken away while our eyes were shut.
Friday it was time for the taste test. First we tasted all the different flavors: bitter, sweet, salty and sour. Then we used a blindfold and identified tastes with and without plugging our noses. Maraschino cherries are just as easy to identify with your nose plugged. I think texture played a part there.
So, in learning all about our bodies, we confirmed our words to remember, as taught in the Bible: God made us wonderful!
“I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made:
marvellous are thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well..”
- Psalm 139:14

Puppet Show - Tortoise and the Hare

T is for Turtle

November started off with my favorite animal—the turtle! We studied the anatomy of a turtle, and made our own out of paper plates. We drew ribs on the inside of the carapace and guts on the inside of the plastron. One gross thing we learned about turtles is that, since their ribs aren’t flexible enough to pump air through their lungs, they use their mouth AND their anus to breathe! We will never look at our little Earlya the same again.

The lesson we learned from the turtle was perseverance. Besides several Bible passages about perseverance, such as Phil. 3:13-14; Heb. 12:1; and Gal. 6:9, we also read the Little Engine that Could, Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel and two different versions of the Tortoise and the Hare fable. We video taped Huyler and Ardara presenting the puppet show of the Tortoise and the Hare for everyone to see. See our theatrical presentation in the next post, entitled "Puppet Show"

Our tactile learning exercise this week was forming the letter T out of twigs.
Also new this week was the Blend Ladder! Read about it in a following post entitled Blend Ladder. The blend ladder enabled us to easily sound out words so at the end of the week, we each got a book written entirely with the 6 letters we had learned so far. It was an edge-of-the-seat thriller! “Sam. Sam’s a man. Tam. Tam’s mat. Tam sat. A mast. Mast slants!”

By the end of the week, we had made our motto “I don’t quit, I persevere!” Huyler even recognized the word later in a Veggie Tales movie he had watched a hundred times before — Sumo of the Opera!

Tactile Learning

Our tactile activities work together with phonetic lessons to help the children remember the shapes of the letters, and to connect, through multi-sensory experiences, the image of the letter with a sound. Before starting this technique, Huyler could sing the alphabet but could hardly identify any of the letters of the alphabet if they were out of sequence. Now he can identify all the letters and tell you what sound most of them make - and we have only actually learned 5 letters! But once he realized that each letter had its own sound, he quickly picked them all up! It really works - plus its fun!

Here we are slurping up our Jell-O Jigglers after making letter A with them!

What is A Teacher? by Karen Braun

A teacher is someone who can…

--Give a hug without getting arrested.

--Bandage a knee without calling the school nurse.

--Change a light bulb without calling the custodian.

--Make the children wash the bathrooms.

--Have a relationship with the principal without getting fired.

--Teach a child's mind while capturing their heart.

--Teach what they believe in and believe in what they teach.

--Meet the child's need and not worry about meeting the state guidelines.

--Commit to a lifetime of work without pay.

--Pray! in class, out loud, with the children and the ACLU can't say a word.

There is only one that can fill that job description…A teacher is a mom!

"Hear, my son, your father's instruction, and do not forsake your mother's teaching."
Proverbs 1:8

Taken from
spunkyhomeschool.blogspot.com

The 100 Chart

I promised last month to explain our 100 chart. I’m really excited about it, because I can see it teaching the kids so much in a way I never would have thought of. We have a chart with 100 squares in 10 rows and 10 columns. Every day we start off with our Calendar—learning the days of the week, Months of the year, etc –and then our 100 chart. We write a number on the chart every day and for every number we write we put a neon straw in a special cup. When there are 10 straws in the cup (at the end of each row) we bundle them up with a rubber band and put them in a pencil box. So, every day we count, write the next number and then count our straws. But the bundled straws we count in 10’s instead of individually. So, the kids are learning addition, place value, counting and fractions all at the same time. When we get to 100 we are going to have a 100 party. Ardara remembers hearing about cousin Rachel’s 100 party at school and plans on getting 100 puppies by the end of the chart!

/N/ is for Nest

We took one week off in October to do some much-needed fall cleaning. So, the final week we studied the last part of the tree series. N is for Nest. During this week, we focused on nests and other animal homes. We talked about hives, webs, caves, barns, burrows and more. Seeing how all nature has a place to live really drove home our words to remember “God takes good care of me.” Using a flannel board, the kids took turns telling the story of a mommy bird who builds a nest, lays her eggs, hatches them, feeds the babies and then teaches them to fly away. The kids had to figure out for themselves what order the pictures belonged in. There were some variations on the story from one child to the next, but they remembered to include the seasons that were evident from the changing leaves and fruit in the bird’s tree. Anika sent us a really fun idea from a magazine that we decided to do. We gathered all kinds of materials for birds to build nests with and put it all in a mesh onion bag. We went out to our land again and hung it from a tree branch. Hopefully we will see some brightly colored nests in the next few weeks! We also got to make our own nest from twigs, grass and mud. And while we were at it, we drew the letter N in the mud with our fingers. A very fun tactile exercize.

A is for Apple

Our next lesson expanded on the tree theme for the month by moving on to fruit. We read about the purpose and process of fruit growth (which I saw was sort of an intro to the reproductive system). We wanted to visit an orchard, but had missed the hand picking season by a week. We got several different kinds of apples at the store and compared their texture, color, and flavor. We cut one in half across the middle, discussing fractions as we did so, and saw a star shape in the middle! Then we counted how many seeds it contained. Then we used all the cut up apples to make our own apple sauce! It was so yummy, we wished we had made more. We watched the Disney cartoon about Johnny Appleseed (in two parts)on YouTube. We traced our hand and fore-arm to make a tree shape and glued on leaves, red fingerprints for fruit, and some grass for a nest. For our tactile learning (where we learn to write the letters by feeling something textured, like salt or play dough) we used Jell-O Jigglers and tried to make the letter A in capital and lowercase. Then we got to slurp up the Jell-O through a straw. It was such a funny, noisy experience that we had to video tape it. Check out the "Tactile Learning" post for the video!

At the beginning of the week we read in John that if we abide in Jesus we will bear much fruit. We wondered what kind of fruit grows on people. Then we turned to Galatians 5 and read the fruit of the Spirit. We made a tree covered in these fruits to remind us of the work God is doing in us, and our words to remember all week were “If I stay in Jesus, I will have much fruit”.

L is for Leaf

For the second week of October, we moved on to a new topic, which will last several weeks—trees! It started off with L is for leaf, learning about how trees grow and the functions of a leaf. We examined the anatomy of a leaf and learned about chlorophyll and photosynthesis. Then we took a trip to the mountains and gathered as many different kinds of leaves as we could find. We brought them back home and drew them and tried to identify them. The ones we couldn’t identify, we just labeled the leaf shape (rhomboid, ovate, etc.) Then we used the leaves to make leaf rubbings, stencils, and other fun art projects. From Huyler’s Click magazine, we got a card matching game with different kinds of leaves that fit in just perfectly.
As an object lesson, we looked at a plant and saw one leaf that felt it wanted to be on its own and go see the world apart from the plant. He sat in the window all week, getting more yellow and shriveled. When we watered the plant, the separate leaf didn’t get any nourishment, and although he was in the sunlight, his photosynthesis didn’t work at all. We read several Bible passages about those who trust in the Lord being like a tree planted by the water, and then read that those who have Jesus have life, and our words to remember that week were “I will live and grow in Jesus”.
An extra activity we did that week was a classical music exercise. Although unrelated to the L is for Leaf category, it sort of followed up on the M is for Moon week. We listened to Ludwig von Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata and pretended we were float-walking on the moon. We found a good web page for kids to learn about composers, so we read what it said about Beethoven. Anyone interested can click here and check it out!

M is for Moon

The first week of October found us studying the Moon. Besides making our own flashcards to learn the phases of the moon, and reading all about the moon’s surface, atmosphere, distance from the Earth and orbit around the Earth, we also learned about the first people who ever walked on the moon. We watched a video online of Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong exiting the Eagle and stepping into the unknown. It was so impacting! After that, we watched “The Astronaut Farmer”, which was a really good movie. It got us all revved up for the next part of our study—a trip to the moon! We took our tent out to our 9 acres of land and the kids decorated the inside with all kinds of spaceship controls. We made it as authentic as we could and with the help of “ground control”—also known as Daddy—we blasted off into outer space. We floated around in the shuttle, catching weightless cereal in our mouths and then landed on the Moon and went exploring. We gathered moon dust, moon rocks and even a moon cactus (?). The neighbors on the next hill must have been amused to see us clomping around in moon boots with aluminum foil on our heads! It was a lot of fun. For more pictures, visit our webpage.
The other important lesson the moon taught us was the reflection of light. Using a globe, a flashlight and a mirror, we demonstrated how the moon reflects the light of the Sun. Then, we discussed how Jesus told us that WE are the light of the world. Well, in our first lesson about the Sun it was Jesus who was the light of the world. So, we learned that we reflect the light of Jesus when we demonstrate his love to those around us.

For more cool sketches from our moon trip, click here!