Our science adventure has taken us deep inside of an animal cell.  Last week we used what we had studied to create a large scale model of a cell from clay.  The entire family worked together on this cooperative project that was sure to be a hit, although the 4yo struggled to stay focused and drifted off to wash her hands a few times as illustrated in this first photo where she is seemingly not present.

We started by making the individual parts of the cell and discussed what the job of each was as we made them.  I also required us all to call each part by it's rightful name rather than easy to identify names like "canoe piece" and "teddy bear looking thing."

mitochondrion

cell inclusion being added

The difficult part was building the organelles into the cytoplasm without losing their shape.  We tried to form it delicately around each organelle as we went along.

vacuole with a little white ribosome peeking over the edge

blurry picture of the rough endoplasmic reticulum

Once we had the nucleus and all the organelles in place dd and ds pieced on the cell membrane.

Now the fun really begins.  We clean up the work area, wash our hands because we can't stand the feel of the clay on them anymore even though we know we're just going to touch the clay all over again and begin slicing.  We used fishing wire to do the slicing as was suggested to me by a fellow KONOS user and it worked great.

Daddy makes the first cut.

We all hunt for the nucleus which is supposed to be in the middle but it is not there! From this view (and I know it's small) you can see the pink mitochondrion and the lime green centriole as well as a few white ribosomes but I don't think they are visable in this shot.

Another slice reveals 4yo dd's nucleus has somehow slipped off to the side.  Hmm mom, I wonder how that happened?  More evidence that God has every tiny detail figured out and does it right.

The kids take turns slicing it up in different directions to view various planes.  Even the little one is able to slice the cell with a helping hand.

This is a good view of the Golgi complex (red) that held its shape fairly well.  Above it the blue and yellow vacuole (or is that a lysosome?) and below it a whitish gray ribosome.

They really had fun cutting it up into many pieces and examining it to find the organelles they could recognize.

 I found this website helpful in preparing for this lesson, visit The Cell Project for more examples!

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Our family started back to school on Monday after a long Christmas break.  We are now in a new KONOS unit.  Hurray! I love starting a new unit.  This one is on the character trait cooperation.  Our first subunit is the study of the human body and how God has designed every detail to work together. 

First we all discussed the difference between systems, organs, tissue and cells.  In order to make sure the kids understood the diference, I made up slips of paper with a different item on each such as digestive, nervous, liver, bone etc.  The kids set out four containers and labeled each one seperately so we had one for system, one for organ, one for tissue and one for cell.  Each child took turns placing the slips of paper in the correctly labeled bin.  As you can imagine some items needed to go in more than one bin.  It was pretty cool hearing them rationalize how "muscle" could mean muscle tissue or a muscle cell.

After learning about the differences between these words we viewed how our many systems are all layered and intertwined inside of our bodies.  The clearview pictures in The Human Body A Fascinating See-Through View of How Our Bodies Work made a great visual for this!  I had also found another fabulous book at the library with very detailed illustrations called The Visual Dictionary of the Human Body an Eyewitness book.  I'm sure you can find many wonderful resources on the human body at your local library too.  

Our next KONOS activity involved the major organs of the body so I chose to have the older two kids cooperate on this activity.  On sticky white contact paper I wrote a list of several major parts of the body and cut them out.  Then I asked DD and DS to accurately place them on DS's body.

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Since we don't officially do school in December, anything I have left from our unfinished KONOS unit is considered "leftover school."  Finishing up our unit on Joy/Cheerfulness we are reading This is a Story About God by Ann Kiemel Anderson.  "The true account of two men, an impossible surgery, and the God of the universe."  I won't give the details away but let me at least tell you it is a beautifully written story that makes a perfect family read aloud about how amazing God is.  I highly recommend it for anytime of year!

We are also planning to have guests for dinner next week and I am letting the kids plan the whole thing.  With some guidance of course.  They have already planned the menu (no mac and cheese allowed!) keeping in mind presentation and flavor.  So we are planning to make cobb salad, roasted chicken stuffed with wild rice with golden raisins, almonds and herbs, 2 colorful veggie sides and mint ice cream squares for dessert.  This week we discussed creating a cheerful environment/welcoming home and what that entails.  DD#1 suggested we make sure everything is clean and tidy.  DS wants to light candles and DD 4yo says we should be nice.  Yes, absolutely.  They also think we should have some quiet Christmas music playing in the background so I suggested a piano Christmas cd we have.  So all that is left in the planning stage is to continue to work on our manners and topics for polits table conversation.  

Now while all this is going on my oldest dd and I are reading Dale Evans Rogers' book Angel Unaware.  This is a simple, yet heartfelt story of their daughter born with severe birth defects and how God drew them closer to Him through this beloved child.  Mrs. Rogers wrote it from the perspective of Robin, the baby as she would have spoken to God about her time on Earth.  The style took me by surprise at first, I kept looking for when I would hear from the author's point of view, but it was because of this style of writing that you are so drawn in.  I look forward to the discussion I will be able to have with my daughter when she is finished reading this true story of how God can send us through the fire only to bring us closer to His heart.

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The Museum of Science in Boston is an exciting place to spend a chilly December day and forget how cold it is outside.  Our homeschool group organized a field trip to that very spot yesterday and aside from my miserable cold, we had a great time.  I asked the kids what their favorite parts of the day were so that I could share with you here in case you ever get a chance to visit the museum yourself.

DD #1 - She actually had three fav's: 

The Cute little Tamarins hanging out near the Human evolution area.  Now I don't believe in evolution and I know going into this museum that I will disagree with some of their "facts" but in this area we were actually able to see a lot of cool displays about the human body, chicks hatching, child birth, 4D ultrasounds and more.  So it's really a matter of preparing yourself and only spending real time looking at the stuff you can learn from.

Goosebumps - This was an entire section devoted to conquering your fears, demonstrating how the brain works and how memory can help you avoid danger. 

The Weather Center was also pretty fabulous although we didn't have time to peruse the entire exhibit.  The kids each took a turn getting electrified so their hair would all stand on end.  Quite a spectacle for the dd whose hair goes to her waist!

DS - Had 3 fav's as well:

He also liked Goosebumps.  In this area they had an interactive display.  There was a huge computerized screen on which you could see your shadow.  You could probably have 4-5 kids in here at the same time.  Also on the screen was an apple tree (or some kind of tree dropping round balls) and a tiger walking around under it.  The kids would try to virtually catch the apples to keep them from falling to the ground.  If the apples fell to the ground it would capture the tiger's attention and make him look in that direction.  Once the tiger spotted you, he would eat you!

Chick incubator - He got to see several newly hatched chicks and two still trying to get out of their shells.  Several of the boys hung out and watched this for a long time.  I was impressed with their quiet interest in one of God's everyday miracles.

Virtual Aquarium - This room has a wall full of flat screens with different kinds of fish displayed there.  The kids each got to pretend to be one type of fish and control those fish ont he screen.  The purpose of the exhibit was to teach group behavior.  It was pretty cool.  One kid would be the shark chasing down the schools of fish and the other kids could make that school of fish do all different things to try to escape including swimming in another direction or scattering.  There were several other displays in this area teaching on group behavior such as birds flying in formation.

DD #2 - She had 2 favorite parts

She aslo liked the chickies hatching.

And she liked the "space ship."  They had a command module the kids could climb into.  You know the nose cone portion of the space shuttle that comes back to Earth with our astronauts?  I think she especially liked being able to climb in there with all of her friends!  There she is in the way back with the red jacket to match her red eyes.  Yeah, I'm not a phot genius by any stretch of the imagination.

 

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I love when I stumble upon a great book completely by accident.  My latest library find is 365 Penguins by Jean-Luc Fromental and Joelle Jolivet.  It's silly, fun, big and mathematical.  A combination that can't be beat. 

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Yesterday we started our new KONOS unit on Joy/Cheerfulness.  (Fitting given the disappointing outcome of the election.)  We began by reading several scripture verses on joy and then dd got out the exhaustive concordance and looked up the word joy/joyful/joyous... and counted approximately 155 references.  Hmmm, do you think being joyful is important to God?  

Today the children went out and found some nice sized rocks in our yard, cleaned them up and painted the fronts with a verse from Philippians 4.  I thought it was going to take days to get this done but they finished in one afternoon. 

They did such a nice job on their stones that I would like to display them outside.  If the weather is nice tomorrow I will take them outside and spray their paintings with a sealant and then leave them on the porch for winter.  Next spring they will be a nice addition to the front garden.  I hope they will plant seeds in and encourage those who pass by.

Tomorrow we will discuss colors and the emotions they promote before heading into some art history and examination next week. 

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One of the moms on the KONOS Yahoo group emailed us a link to this neat site called WordDuck today.  This site offers hangman (except you are actually dunking a duck in the river) and word searches.  Without registering on their site you can play any of their already uploaded word lists based on many different topics.  I found the elections one pretty neat since we are doing that in KONOS right now.  If you choose to register on the site you can upload your own word lists.  It's so easy to use, I've already entered my dd's spelling list for the week, and it only took me a couple minutes.

I have created a link in my sidebar for it that I'll keep up.  You can access other members' lists by doing a search on their user name and you are welcome to use my lists anytime by searching "Cheryl in ma."  I'll be adding my dd's spelling and vocabulary lists as they are assigned.

One thing of note.  You can add hints but the player will be able to see the hints regardless of which level they are playing on Dunk-A-Duck.  I thought maybe the hints only showed up on the easy level but I was mistaken.  So if the hints make it too easy for you, you may want to use only the word search feature with this first list I have up.

Have fun!

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There is nothing like hands on learning and I have a dear friend who is very good at getting people together to do just that.  About mid-September our family, along with several others gathered together to participate in a Prairie Party hosted by said dear friend.

She and her children made up invitations shaped like bonnets and barns and handed out authentic recipes for everyone to prepare for the event.  Most of us dressed in period style or at least tried.   My daughter loves her big white apron.

I love this one of the girls.  Many of us ended up bare foot within the first hour.  I think the bare feet were a lot more period then any other shoes we had.

My little Indian had a blast trying to keep his apple from falling.

We played several pioneer games like Fox and Geese, Here I Bake, Here I Brew and Cats in the Corner and then the kids tried dancing with apples between their heads.  We got all our playing done before it started to rain and then we all went up onto to covered porch for apple bobbing and crafting or inside the garage to make tin can lanterns.  A braided rug craft was set up inside and we finished with fellowship and our potluck of cornbread, beans, meat pasties, pies, desserts and baked apple dumplings.

The evening was to culminate with a taffy pull but unfortunately we took the taffy off the burner a bit too soon.  The kids didn't mind though.  They enjoyed eating spoonfuls of syrupy goo.

After it got dark we lit up the tin can lanterns that the kids made during craft time.  This photo is kind of dark but you can make out some of the patterns.

I'm going to close with one of my favorite photos of the day.  There were so many really great ones but this one is my littlest prairie princess in a still moment, just watching.  I don't get many of these.

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