Thursday, August 20, 2009 - Lift and Thrust
I always joke that I learn just as much as Cameron, if not more, as we go through our school work.
Today in science, we learned about lift and thrust. I have heard these terms before but never really understood them.
We did an experiment that shows what lift does for the flight of a bird. Because of the shape of its wings, the air on the top of the wing moves faster than that of the bottom. This creates different air pressures. The air on the bottom is pushing more than the air on the top.
When he blew, very hard, across the the top of the straw in the water, it created a lower air pressure. The air pressure on the rest of the water was stronger than that across the top of the straw and Cameron and I were surprised with a spray of water.
AMAZING! The things I never knew!
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Wednesday, February 25, 2009 - Iditarod: GO Smyth!
My town has a wonderful teacher's store. There are tons and tons of educational toys, games, supplies and teaching aids. They also have a wonderful thing called Silly Saturdays. Every second Saturday of the month they have activities for children to come and do. This year the lady that puts it on has been mostly focusing on science. She is so great. She is enthusiastic, pulls the kids right in and has fun things for them. She loves the Iditarod. This month she took a break from science and focused on this incredible race. She had each child look through her book that had all the mushers pictures and short bios. The children were to pick a musher and make a pinny for their musher. They did some other activities as well, all dealing with Alaska or the Iditarod. The race starts March 7. The next Silly Saturday will be 7 days into the race and she is going to see whose musher is where. But she also sent us home with our very own race map, check-in sheet to track our musher, as well as other information. Cameron and I chose #32 Ramey Smyth for our musher. It helped that he likes soccer. LOL (He was #33 when we picked him but he has moved up. I guess I will have to keep my eye on that.) I may chose someone else to follow as well. And, if our musher drops out or cannot complete the race, we should pick a new musher to follow to the end. I think this will be a great activity for us to enjoy. If you want to participate and chose your own musher check out the official Iditarod site and chose from the list of mushers and let us know who you chose.
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Monday, February 23, 2009 - In-Depth Picture Study
One blog that I really enjoy reading is One Child Policy Homeschool. I don't know if it is because she too has an only child that she is homeschooling. Maybe it is the fact that she is using the Charlote Mason method as we. Or it could be that I just find her style of writing very delightful and her ideas fun and something that appeals to me. It is probably all the of the above.
One of the things that she has done is to have her child recreate one of the paintings they study for a term. I wasn't sure if Cameron would like this or not. Drawing isn't one of his favorite things to do because he wants it to be EXACTLY right and a perfect copy. But surprisingly, he rather enjoyed making a copy.
Our artist last term was Caspar David Friedrich. I like him much better than Boticelli. Cameron chose the very first painting we studied for his recreation project: The Cross in the Mountains.
I thought he did a fabulous job. I am more concerned with him picking out certain details rather trying to make a perfect copy. Especially since this is something new we have started.
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Friday, January 30, 2009 - Floating Egg
We have a lot of resources for science at our house. But, sadly, I have been quite lazy about it. The day seems to go one of three ways: But I really want to change that. I want for us to do things that he looks forward to and enjoys. I want him to have something he likes to work towards. Today, it was a science experiment. My Dad always seems to buy Christmas gifts that have an education twist. A few years back, he bought us Pop Bottle Science. It is a kit that comes with a pop bottle with a removable top, a few extra tools you need for some experiments, and a book full of different things to do with your pop bottle. Tonight we did the "Magic Floating Egg" experiment. It also had a hidden fractions lesson in it. First we were to fill the bottom part of the pop bottle 1/4 with water. First we eye-balled where half was and then eye-balled where 1/4 would be. I think that this was the first time that he got that 1/4 is a half of a half. Then we cracked an egg into the water and watched what happened. That's right. It sunk straight to the bottom. Then we did it again but made a very high concentrated salt water solution. (This was almost as much fun to him as cracking the egg and seeing what happened) Then we added an egg again and voila! The egg floated to the top. We always enjoy doing experiments and we were able to discuss things like solution, dissolving, and density and got to do things like estimating, measuring and predicting.
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Monday, January 19, 2009 - Numismatics
I don't know about you but I love words. I love learning new words. I love using new words.
Today, I introduced Cameron to numismatics. I had forgotten that my mom had given me a book. It was for Cameron to collect the state quarters in. I had worked on it for awhile but then put it on the shelf and promptly forgot all about it. Until she reminded me.
So today, I got the book back out and showed it to Cameron. He was pretty excited about it. Right away, my dad, who is a numismatist (such a mouth full), pulled out his pocket change and helped Cameron right away with three coins.
Cameron then went through his plethora of change and found a few more to add to his collection.
I hope this will become like a treasure hunt for Cameron.
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Monday, September 22, 2008 - How I Made the Change
I was reading over at One Child Policy Homeschool and was "jealous" of her new look. But it also started my wheels turning. I checked out the website she suggested for background paper and embellishments that can be downloaded for free over at Shabby Princess. I ended up using Spontaneous Delight.
I have tried to fiddle with my blog a little here and there. I've kept the old look so long because I have quite a few dial-up readers and I thought that it would be hard for them if I changed it. I decided to go ahead and see if I could make the changes and if it didn't work out for my dial-up friends, go back. As it turns out, they all say that now the page loads faster for them.
I set up a test blog so that I could make changes without fear of messing up what I already had. It was mostly trial and error. I would change things to a HUGE number and see what it changed. It was basically trial and error. I still can't figure out what a few things are but over all I'm very pleased with the new look.
Another thing I did was I copied the whole template code and printed out a copy. Once I started understanding what the different items were other things started making more sense.
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Wednesday, May 21, 2008 - Whale Lapbook
The last lapbook we did took us several weeks. We didn't work on it constantly or we could have finished sooner. Whales was a subject that Cameron choose.
Cover:
Cameron like the blue paper with circles. It came out of one his presents that he got for his birthday and said that it would go great in his Whale lapbook. LOL
Back cover:
It has
- "Books We Read About Whales" (I checked out every last book the library had about whales, or so it seemed.)
- "Words to Know" a vocabulary list of words pertaining to whales.
- Baleen Whale "parts" that we got from Enchanted learning (Thanks Grandma!)
This is a double lapbook which means we took two file folders and glued them together for extra space.
On the inside flap:
We took a week to read through the book of Jonah and do this mini lesson. We got the printouts from Homeschool Helper. There were enough printouts here that we could have done an entire lapbook on just Jonah.
When you open the Jonah flap:
Along the right side are whale behavoirs. He drew a picture of each, wrote what it was on the inside flap and we also glued a short description of each behavoir.
In the middle is "Whale sizes" a neat little booklet that we put together. I cut out a bunch of paper blocks. They were equivelant to 5 feet.
Under that is our "Verses" game. Did you know that a whale is not a fish? Here is a game to help us understand the difference between the two and some characteristics that they share:
I got this from Enchanted Learning as well. It was a worksheet that you were supposed to take the list of characteristics and write them in proper spot. Instead, I glued that paper to heavier card stock, cut them out, made a ittle matchbook, and voila, instant game.
To the left of Whale Sizes and Verses we find our "Extreme Whales"
We cut out little circles and folded them into triangles. Each lip has the "question" and on the inside, Cameron write the answer. We had things like, the biggest animal God ever made: Blue whale, the longest tooth: narwhal, deepest diver: sperm.
When you open up extreme whales, you find the whales that we studied a little more closely.
He colored each whale and the map of where they can be found in the ocean. We got the pictures of the whales as well as the map from Enchanted Learning (thanks again Grandma!)
The coloring on the map to the right is very faint and is only areound the coast areas in the artic.
Beside our nine whales, we learned that there are two different types of whales. Toothed whales and baleen whales. Baleen whales do not have teeth but baleen that they use to strain their food. All the baleen whales are BIG and eat very small food.
He wrote the different names of the whales on the "teeth" or "baleen"
Here, also, is a video of our lapbook.
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Friday, April 25, 2008 - Homemade Nature Journal
The other day, I was reading what was next over at Barb's Green Hour Challenge and saw that we were starting to incorporrate drawing. I have started my own nature journal and am loving it but wanted Cameron to have something special for his own.
I'm really pleased with the way this turned out! And it was so simple.
You could make these any size. You can use poster board, heavy card stock, or file folder. I used a file folder. I cut the front 9.5 x 6 and decorated it with scrapbook paper. The back I cut 11 x 6. The back needs to be 1/2 inch longer than the front. Your paper for the inside of your book should be 1/4 inch shorter all around. (I actually had the paper first and made my covers 1/4-inch bigger all around)
Then fasten it together. I used brads.
How simple was that? Cameron LOVES his book.
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Friday, March 28, 2008 - Wordless Lapbook
This week we did something different for Bible because we are finished with our scheduled reading. I saw this Wordless Lapbook over at Just Call Me Jammin! and we did one of our own! Cameron worked on cutting things out while we read our missionary story for the week and then we worked on a color a day.
I think he did a great job of tracing and cutting out the letters!
I took construction paper and cut out squares to make each color a booklet. I put the pages for each booklet in and stapled it together.
He wrote what each color stood for on the first page:
Page 2 had a corresponding Bible verse and then I drew a visual reminder. He was excited about finding out what each days picture was. LOL I'm glad he's impressed with my drawing.
Each day he copied part of a poem/song about the colors. I would have had him copy it on his own but to make sure it all fit on the one paper, I typed it up on Word and put the font color as lightest gray so that he could trace. I figured it was good practice and reminder of how to shape each of his letters.
Then across the bottom we put the ABC's of Salvation
We took a lot of our ideas from Jammin' but one of the great things about lapbooking, you can change things around and make it your very own.
But like Jammin' I will list what all we used.
Black
- Page 1: BLACK sin
- Page 2: Romans 3:23 For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God;
- picture: little stick figure standing on cliff. God on opposite cliff. This equals the great gulf that we cannot get over.
- Page 3: Text taken from this site
Red
- Page 1: RED (in red font) blood
- Page 2: I John 1:7 ...the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin.
- picture: Jesus on the cross with red crayon for blood.
- Page 3
White
- Page 1: WHITE (in outlined font) clean heart
- Page 2: Psalm 51:7 ...wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow
- picture: Stick-figure kneeling at the cross with a black heart over head. Second frame has stick figure one other side of the cross with big smile and heart that has "Jesus" written on.
- Page 3
Gold (or yellow)
- Page 1: GOLD (in yellow font) Heaven
- Page 2: John 14:2 ...I go to prepare a place for you.
- picture: cliffs with stick figure and God again but added cross spanning the great wide gulf.
- Page 3
Green
- Page 1: GREEN (in green font) growing
- Page 2: II Peter 3:18 But grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.
- picture: Stickfigure reading Bible and praying
- Page 3
"A" booklet
- Page 1: A: ADMIT
- Page 2: Admit you are a sinner
- Page 3: Romans 3:10 As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one.
"B" booklet
- Page 1: B: BELIEVE
- Page 2: Believe in Jesus. Put your trust in Him as your oly hope of salvation
- Page 3: John 1:12 But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name:
"C" booklet
- Page 1: C: Confess
- Page 2: Confess with your mouth that Jesus is your Lord.
- Page 3: Romans 10:9, 10 That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.
Poem: (It's also a song!)
My heart was black with sin,
Until the Savior came in.
His precious blood, I know
Will wash me whiter than snow.
And in God's Word I'm told,
I'll walk the streets of gold.
I'll read my Bible and pray,
And grow in him every day!
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Saturday, March 22, 2008 - Goofy Golf
In our area, Lowe's has a kid's clinic twice a month. Today's project, goofy golf.
Reading the blue prints.
His hammering has improved greatly over the past year. I barely have to help him any more.
Finished product.
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Wednesday, February 27, 2008 - Blue Whale Experiment
We are studying whales for our current lapbook. It was a topic that Cameron chose himself and he has been very interested in the things we are studying. Today we read two books about blue whales. It talked about how long a blue whale is.
A baby blue whale is about 22 feet in length. Here Cameron and I are 22 feet apart.
The average adult blue whale is around 85 feet. They can grow up to 110 feet but it was freezing cold outside and we skipped the 110 feet. Here we are 85 feet apart.
Can you see him WAY down there?
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Friday, February 1, 2008 - "All About Me" Lapbook
Our second lapbook did not take anywhere near as long as this one. I think it helped that it was a kit.
We had fun working on the cover. We did feet and handprints.
He was caught "red-handed"
Then we had a "foot washing ceremony"
We cut these out and pasted on his painted cover. The title was made with fingerprints.
Front:
Back:
The inside:
Time Line:
My Family:
As an only child he doesn't have brothers and sisters so we did his uncle Adrian and then his two cousins.
Three Things About Me:
- #1: "I like to play soccer"
- #2: "Pinky Dinky Do is my Guinea pig"
- #3: "I have school at home" (with a picture of our house)
Importan Information:
My Body:
He was to decorate the paper doll to look like him.
The four flap books:
- Things I can do with my head: "I can think"
- Things I can do with my hands and arms: "I can grab stuff"
- Things I like to feed my tummy: "Pizza, tomatoes, rice, and chocolate ice cream"
- Things I can do with my feet and legs: "I can walk, run and play soccer."
I have...
This was a little booklet for him to fill out about himself.
Favorite Things:
This little booklet had a few pages for him to fill out about his favorite foods, places, people, toys, games, books and movies. I LOVED his picture for the movies. His drawing is of Yoda and Darth Vadar from Star Wars!
We have not finished the poem. I'm going to do this later.
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Saturday, January 19, 2008 - Happy Thanksgiving
We did it. We finally finished our first lapbook. Yes, it was about Thanksgiving but I was NOT going to give up and throw it by the way side. Cameron was very excited to get it done.
The front cover:
The back cover:
All opened up:
On the left hand side there are two booklets: The Pilgrims, and The First Thanksgiving.
In the middle section there is a booklet of all the books we read, "I Am Thankful for.." booklet, pictures of the Mayflower and verses that talk about giving thanks.
On the left side is our Thanksgiving time line:
We've already started our next one but this one is a kit. Which I think I need.
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Monday, December 17, 2007 - Our Science Journal
A good friend of mine just passed on a science book to us. We started it today. The first chapter is about being a scientist and what they do. The book has things for us to do and record in a science journal.
Today we had so much fun. We were to take measurements of ourselves and record our data in our journal. We took measurements of our height, arm span, and our feet. Then we worked together to convert the inches to feet and inches. After that we discussed our observations.
Our very interesting observation was that our arm spans were both an inch longer than our height! The other interesting observation is that Cameron's foot is only 2 inches shorter than my foot! That just doesn't seem to make sense that I am a 10 and he is a 13. I guess width has a lot to do with it too?
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Wednesday, June 6, 2007 - Chemical Reaction
This summer, we are planning on doing different projects and fun things. Today we did one that I've been waiting a while to do.
In February, for his birthday, Babymakers and family gave Cameron two 2-liter bottles of Diet Coke and a box of Mentos. Now if you know this family at, even from reading her blog, this is not a normal thing that they would even have in their house. But they gave it to him so that we could perform an experiment. Their family had fun doing this and thought we would enjoy it as well.
I have waited so long because things like this must be photo documented. And I couldn't set up the experiment AND take the pictures. So, I have waited until I had the wonderful assistance of 12-year-old brother-in-law. I thought he would enjoy things like this too.
To do this experiment yourself you only need the following ingredients:
- Diet Coke in a 2 liter bottle
- Any flavor of Mentos
- Young minds (or young at heart) to enjoy the violent chemical reaction.
To set up the experiment, you may need to fashion a contraption of sorts to help you in dropping the Mentos in all and once and quickly. This is just a piece of paper rolled up and taped. We used a card like a credit card to come between the open bottle and stack of four Mentos.
Slip the card out and get away! Fast! Unless you don't mind being covered with sticky soda. The chemical reaction is violent and immediate!
It went higher than this.
Check out the cool display of people that had way too much time on their hands at Eepy Bird.
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