When a few of us decided we were going to start a homeschool co-op this year, I knew exactly what I would teach. I wanted something that would help draw in families, so I thought about dissections. So many families hate doing dissections labs. I have always loved doing hands-on science, didn't always do well on the textbook part, but I loved the labs.

The great thing about dissecting is that you can see just how wonderful Gods hand is in everything. Once you see how everything works together, how there had to be a plan, there is no way you can still believe that things just happened to collide into each other and formed life. There had to be a plan, Gods plan.

Basically, I'm just going to tell you where my resources are from for each lab we do. There really is alot online.

You can get your supplies: specimens, tools, tray, etc.. at HomeTrainingTools or Nebraska Scienctic .

One book I use often is "How to Dissect" by William Berman. It has 11 specimens, including a fetal pig, which I won't be doing.  

For Earthworm:

http://www.biologycorner.com/worksheets/earthwormdissection.htm

This was the worksheets I copied off for us to follow along with.  I made sure I knew what each of the bold words were, and I also made a volcabulary crossword puzzle out of these bold words. You can do this online for free at http://www.puzzle-maker.com/ . Then I printed off the one copy and made more copies somewhere for my students.

Other sites you can go to are:

http://www.middleschoolscience.com/earthworm2.htm

http://www.biologycorner.com/worksheets/earthworm.htm

http://sciencespot.net/Media/yuckywormwkst.pdf

http://www.hometrainingtools.com/articles/worm-dissection-project.html

http://kentsimmons.uwinnipeg.ca/16cm05/16labman05/lb6pg2.htm

http://www.gonzaga.org/teachers/dfreedbe/newweb/labEarthwrm.htm

Virtual Labs:

http://www.mhhe.com/biosci/genbio/virtual_labs/BL_14/BL_14.html

http://biog-101-104.bio.cornell.edu/BIOG101_104/tutorials/animals/earthworm.html

I told the kids that I wasn't an expert on dissections, which I'm sure I proved quite quickly, but that we were learning together. Have fun with it. Just explore and see what you can find. Also remember that this is not the time to necesarily (I know, bad spelling) understand each and every organ, but to find them and see where they lie, follow the digestive system, etc.... They can go into  more detail at home in their own biology studies.

Next.....Crayfish

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Today was the first day back to school, didn't follow the schedule exactly, but that was o.k. I did get up at 6am, started the coffee, did some computer and then did some weights. Started the dishes and woke dd up at 8am, she had a late night so wanted her to get a few more minutes. By the time we got chores done, breakfast, dh wanting me to play cards with him, we didn't get school started till 10am, but that was o.k.. Reading is still going along well, I can see that math isn't going to be her favorite subject. We played a math game and did some addition flash cards. I'm going to be ordering Singapore Math next week sometime, well start at the beginning, see how it goes. We also did some piano, we really haven't been doing much since the end of March when we stopped taking lessons. Right now I'm just reviewing with her what she had all ready done with the teacher.

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Last year I made up schedules according to what was going on in our days, I've taken and updated them. We basically have our home days, h.s meeting days (1 X/mo), and co-op days (2 X/mo).

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.....went really well. I wasn't sure if dd-7 was going to make it or not, she hadn't been feeling well most of the week. Annnnnndddddd, I didn't get any pictures. Got there and realized that the battery was dead. A friend of mine did take a picture of our project, but probably won't get anytime soon if she is like me.

We did: "What do roots, stems and leaves do?" . We drew out a plant on the board and she traced and colored it in. Then she wrote what each one does, and we put the explanation next to each part. We also found a verse to copy for our board. We had seeds in a glass that were starting to sprout, a jar full of blue water with celery in it to show how water gets up the stem. We also had a plant that we took out of the soil to show the roots. Then we had carrots and celery to snack on. I know, I used a lot of we, but she is only 7, so I did help alot.

Another project that someone else did that I think alot of you might appreciate: Diaper Comparison.  One of the girls took diapers from different companies and compared how much liquid they would hold. Pampers, Huggies, Roundys (store brand from Copps or Pick n' Save), and Aldi's brand.

Guess which one held the most?

                                                             Aldi's Brand

And which one held the least?

                                                             Pampers

Anyways, all the kids got participation certificates, with jugdes comments, and a bag full of goodies from surrounding companies and resturants. We also had lunch at the end. Lots of fun.

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We have 6 weeks till our science fair. So I'm trying to plan each week what we need to do to be prepared. Our topic is: What do roots, stems, and leaves do? This week we have to:

• order and pick up books from library
• gather any books that we have at home
• make a collection of internet sites
• Come up with our Hypothesis
• skim through books, writing down pages for each area: roots, stem, leaves.

Here are some sites I found, I still need to go through them and see what applies to our needs:

http://www.libsci.sc.edu/miller/plants.htm

http://www.sciencebuddies.org/mentoring/project_ideas/PlantBio_p015.shtml?from=Home

http://www.lessonplanspage.com/SciencePlantPartsFunctionDiagramAndMobileK2.htm

http://www.quacked.net/freestuff/plants/

http://www.ed.uri.edu/smartprojects/plants.html

http://content.scholastic.com/browse/article.jsp?id=1659

http://www.lessonplanspage.com/ScienceExCanWaterTravelThroughPlantStemsMO68.htm

http://www.lessonplanspage.com/ScienceExDoPlantsLoseWaterThroughLeavesMO68.htm

If anyone has any other suggested sites, I would really appriciate them.

Is anyone else doing science fair projects this year?

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It's that time of year when our homeschool group does a science fair. This is our groups 4th year and each year there is so much learning, even for those who are not doing a project. My older daughter participated the 1st year, I can't remember the exact title, but it had to do with our eyes seeing color. She even made a model of an eye with a basketball, really cool. This year is our youngest first year. We are doing: What do roots, stems and leaves do? This works out great because its something we would be covering in our studies this year anyways. This is my one big tip: always pick a project that you will be working on that year anyways, you may have to do it earlier than planned, but at least your not giving yourself extra work for the year.

So here are some sites that have to do with science fairs. Maybe some of you will be doing one this year, or maybe you might like to put together a science fair for your group, even if its just a few families getting together.

If you have any questions on how our group goes about it, just ask me.

http://web.mac.com/terrellshaw/iWeb/ScienceFair/

http://www.hometrainingtools.com/misc/science-fair-guide.pdf

 http://www.eduplace.com/science/profdev/science_fair/

http://school.discoveryeducation.com/sciencefaircentral/scifairstudio/teachers.html

http://www.wright.edu/cosm/sciencefair/SFweb1.htm

http://eho.org/homeschool_prep/article.asp?articleid=50&resourceid=107

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I havent' given an update on homeschooling lately, probably time. For those who don't know, we are using My Fathers World First Grade this year.

• For Bible: we are learning Prov. 12:22 "The Lord detests lying lips, but he delights in men who are truthful. " She was able to sound it all out and read it with very little help. We discussed the meaning of the verse, and read other verses on this subject. Then when daddy got home she explained it all to him.
• Reading: We are just now getting into the Bible Reader. She was so excited about it that during quiet time she took it to her room and looked through it for about an hour. I could hear her trying to sound out words, working ahead. She wants me to let her color the pictures in it, haven't decided yes or no yet. We also have been using Bob Books(level 2) and Abeka Reader(1:2). The Abeka Readers go along real well with MFW, and they only cost me $5 at a book sale last year.    I was alittle worried with the phonics for a moment, mainly just how confusing our language is. Can you believe how many ways you can use one letter for so many sounds? No wonder kids are so confused at times. But she seems to be catching on, thank God.
• Science: we have kind of put this off for the moment.. I LOST MISPLACED THE BOOK!!  I'm sure I will find it, just need some time.
• History: were starting in the beginning. We did a map of the Bible Lands using a story about a man fishing. I love this story. I've used it in my Wednesday Night Bible class with 2/3 graders. If I want them to remember where the Nile River is, I just tell them where the fishermans tangled lines are. We also talked about how the Bible was written in Greek and Hebrew and she copied the Greek Alphabet. We still need to put together our timeline, maybe tomorrow.
• Art: We are using Drawing with Children. I really do love this book. I know there are some who have not enjoyed it as much, but so far we like it. I'm not always able to get to it according to plan, but when we do, it's real fun. We did a few exercises, the one where everyone follows the same instruction and comes out with completely different picture. This last week we did our FIRST REAL DRAWING. Here is the bird that my 6 year old daughter did. Note: Had to take the picture out because it was interferring with the look of my blog. I will try and resize it and put it back later.
• Math: we are just using an inexpensive workbook from Walmart this year. The past week or two she has been working on one's and ten's. They teach this by using money. So now she knows how to add up dimes and pennies. And she can write her numbers to 100. Next she will be working on Time-Hours.
• Crafts: she is working on those potholders that you weave with loops. They are to be Christmas gifts for the grandmas and aunts. We will start working on winter crafts this week.
• Piano: I think she is doing really well. We added piano practice to her chore chart, she just loves to put on stickers, so this works out really well. We were having some problems with her fiddling around at lessons, I had to ask the teacher to be alittle more firm with her. One week I had to cut her lessons short because she was being disrepectful. She has done much better the last two weeks. We love our teacher, my older daughter has been going to her for 6 years.

I think thats everything. I'm sure I forgot something though. Last time I forgot about our verse study, but this time I didn't. That's just the way life is for me, always forgetting something.

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It's snowing!!! I think we have 3 or 4 inches so far and should be getting another 3 or 4 inches. Here is a song I found at this site. This is what I think of snow.

                                         I Love Snow
(Tune: Three Blind Mice)

I love snow.
I love snow.
Soft, white snow;
Soft, white snow.
It falls on the ground so soft and white.
Sometime it falls all through the night.
Did you ever see such a beautiful sight
As soft white snow?

That site has all kinds of stuff for snow. You could make yourself a unit study out of it if you wanted to.

Happy Snow Day!

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.......can you guess what they all have in common?

PLAYS!!!! They were all plays that we have been to in the last few weeks.

pig and spiders??? Charlottes Web of course. This was so fun. The characters really interacted with the kids. Wilbur was my favorite, he had such curly hair and great expressions.

merchants??? Merchant of Venice. My dd-18 loves shakespear and every year this really known and expensive group (they charge $50 or more for an outdoor show) comes and gives a performance for the schools in the area. We took my dd-6 also, she just loved all the costumes.

hyper bunny??? Max and Ruby. This was about a pair of bunnies, sister and brother. The brother is younger and is always getting into trouble. It really reminds me of a couple of sibblings, in a comical way that kids understand. Its a lot of work taking care of a younger sibbling. I think this is a show on cable, but we don't have cable.

tradition??? The Fiddler on the Roof. Our local highschool put this on last week, they did a great job. It really was like watching the movie. The fiddler was our piano teachers daughter, the tailor and innkeeper are from our congregation. The tailor was homeschooled till 9th grade. It was so funny watching the Papa do the "If I were a rich man...", my dd-18 and her friend and I were laughing so hard (quitely of course). We kept picturing my dh doing this, which he does quite often. So funny.....

The first three plays we saw at a city 45 minutes away(we live in the boonies) at the cities performing art center. Every year they send out a guide of what they are offering in the educational department, for schools only and they include homeschoolers. There prices are really nice, usually $5 a ticket, $7 for the shakespears. If you haven't looked into one in your area, check it out. Sometimes its only been one family going, so they don't have a minimum required, it's real easy to fit a handful in somewhere.

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I am involved in a support group, I'm actually the coordinator since spring of 2006. At that time our group was smaller, we had an average of somewhere around 50, adults and kids that attend. Now we are averaging 110 adults and kids. Anyways, it was brought up that maybe we should have a statement of faith, due to a problem with an outside class that our group hired a teacher for. I'm not sure at this time if the group is want ing all families to sign, or just those outside the group teaching.

My questions are:

• could someone please send me some examples of a statement of faith?
• has anyone ever had a problem with signing one? why?
• did it prevent problems?
• anything else you would like to tell me concerning a statement of faith?

Thanks for your help....

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We have been using My Fathers World First Grade for school this year. We are really enjoying it, very easy to follow. We were able to finish up to Day 26, plus or minus an activity that we may do later.

• Bible -  we worked on Proverbs 16:24. Pleasant words are a honeycomb, sweet to the soul and healing to the bones. One of the things we did to emphasize this, she had to choose if she wanted to eat a spoonful of honey or garbage. Hmm, which did she choose? Well honey of course. Then she let me know the rest of the week if her much older sister was using honey words or garbage words. Hee Hee. She also wrote this out on her nice paper for handwriting.
• Reading/Phonics- we worked on long vowel u spelled ue and u_e, long vowel a spelled ay, long vowels spelled a, e, i, o, u (these vowels don't follow the rules, bad vowels). She also started keeping track of her reading out loud. We are doing the Book It Program, where if she reads so much (we decided 15 minutes 5 days/week) , then she will get a free pizza from Pizza Hut.
• Math- we worked on addition and subtraction up to the number 10. We also read books from the library: Count on Pablo and Lights Out.
• Science- we are working on Rain. We read books from the library: Rain, Sun Up, Red Rubber Boot Day, Rain and Hail, Down Comes the Rain. We still need to work on some experiments, today would have been a great day to do that, IT"S RAINING!!
• Art- we use Drawing with Children. We did some warm-up pages, I drew some wierd shapes and she had to copy them 5 times each. Then we pick which one is the closest to the original.
• Charlotte's Web- we went to see this performance with some other homeschoolers this week. The performers did an excellent job. Some of the bigger cities have performance centers where big ticket plays come and will perform for school at a discounted price. Most plays we pay $5 each, that includes parents. I think our next one is going to be a Shakespere play, when performing for the public, they want up to $70 per person, we will pay only $7. If you have a performing center near you, check this out for your family....
• Piano- she is doing very well, going ahead of what the teacher has assigned her. While her aunt and uncle were in town, she gave them a performance, they were quite impressed.

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WARNING!!!!  THIS IS LONG.....

Well I have been inspired by Our Journey...at Home to get some sort of schedule together. The problem is I have different schedules for the day depending on whats going on. We have gym and piano everyweek, homeschool meeting and art classes once a month, so I had to make a separate schedule for each of those days. Hopefully this will help me keep on track, doing what I am suppose to be doing. We shall see...

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......just can't wait to get on the road again. Yes, I am leaving for vacation again. This time it is only dd-6 and I. We are going to a christian homeschool camp with about 250 other people. We only know two families, but are looking forward to meeting lots of new folks. Every night there will be singing and two days will have bible classes. So I'll talk to ya all in two weeks.

Donna

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We didn't get as far as I would have liked. Life just seemed to be happening this week.

• Monday- daddy was off, so we spent the day with him.
• Tuesday- we did a full day. Worked on words with the vowel "i" and silent "e", went out and did some tree rubbings, learned the names of the trees in our yard, math, reading. Started reading Charlotte's Web, were going to a play in October. Worked on new memory verse.
• Wednesday- woke up with a migrain, didn't do to much. She did read to me and i read to her.
• Thursday- I got up at 6am incase I had another migrain, I did, took some medicine. At 8 we went to a friends house to help clean, her daughter has some major alergie problems. Then we went to Piano lessons. I've been takin them off and on for a couple months, dd-6 had her first lesson, this will be weekly. Then went to the library.
• Friday- woke up at 6am again to take meds if needed, didn't need to. We went to our first homeschool meeting this year, I'm the coordinator. DD-6 went into her class for story time and activities. We had over 30 families (110 people) there, two years ago we only had maybe 12-15 families show up each month. We have really grown. We also went and picked green beans in the afternoon.

Got to do better this next week. Well be taking the following week and half off for camping.

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......and saw the kids across the street getting onto the bus. We live in a small community, so this is all kids K-12th. Our alarm clocks don't go off till 7:30, my husband leaves for work about 8:45. Do you know what time these kids will get home? 4:20. Thats 9 hours away from home under the influence of others. 9hours. If they're in extra curriculum activities, more. I remember in hightschool leaving catcihing the bus about 6:30 and not getting home 3 nights a week till 6:30. Then I had homework because I would get motion sick on the bus, so I couldn't do it then. I am so glad that my babies (actually only have one left to school) are homeschooled.

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I'm getting ready to start another year with the local homeschool support group. I am the coordinator again this year, I have done it for the last 1 1/2 years, so this will be my last. Which is fine, because I would really like to start working with the kids again.

Anyways.....I was wondering what kind of discussion questions have gone on in support groups that you have been apart of? I need some new and fresh ideas. Also, have you ever done any "get aquianted" activities during your first meeting of the year? if yes, could you share. We did one last year where we teamed up with someone we didn't know, found out enough about them and then introduced them to the rest of the group.

Thanks

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We got as far as Lesson 18 in MFW-1 this week. I really like this curriculum.

• Phonics/Reading- we finished reviewing the short vowels and started with the long vowel a today. It was alittle confusing at first, you get 5 or 6 lines of words, but by the time she was half through line 2, she figured it  out. I just love the giggle she does when she get a word right. Everytime she said a word, we would make up a sentence with it, we had a lot of laughs.
• Science- we were a little behind so we did two days worth. One day we drew in our notebooks the different seasons. We just divided our paper into four, wrote a season at the top of each sqaure and drew a tree showing the season. The last two days we have been working on flowers. We went out and picked different colored flowers (we don't have many because we live in the woods, but we discovered a new plant with orange flowers), then brought them inside and put most of them in a flower press. Some we put in plastic bags with a few drops of water, tried to squeeze the color out and used a paper towel to pick up the liquid. The purple worked really well. We also took some beans and put them in a jar with papertowel to see how long it takes for them to start growing.
• Math- she has been having trouble with her subtractions, so I made a number line, what a difference that made. We were done with no crying and in record time.
• Drawing with Children- we worked on identifying circles, dots, curved lines, straight lines, and angled lines. I drew examples from the book onto the white board (every family should have one of these), then we went looking for them in objects thoughout the house and outside.

All in all, a very productive first week. I know that last week was suppose to be our first week, but sometimes things don't go as planned.

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For those of you who know of the Estes Family, due to medical needs of there youngest child, they are having a big financial burden. Some fellow homeschoolers, on there own doing, are having a benefit for the Estes Family. Check out the below site. Not only will you be helping one of our fellow homeschoolers, but you will benefit also. So go check it out.....

http://www.chirotoons.com/benefit/

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Some Moms and I from our homeschool group were trying to come up with something for our group to do this fall. We thought we would host a culture festival and invite homeschooler groups from surrounding areas. We would have passports for each child so that they would get a stamp from each country they visited. We are hoping also that we could get at least 5 countries to give some kind of demonstration. It could be a game that everyone could participate in, a song, a dance, any kind of tradition from that country.  We would try to plan them thoughtout a two hour period.

What do you think? any suggestions on what to add?

Minimum of 10 countries- booths (no more than two families per booth)

1. Information board

• map
• key interests
• flag
• famous people
• landmarks
• holidays & traditions
• government & rulers
• imports & exports
• native animals & plants
• currency

        2.  display table

• books about that country
• books in native language
• crafts from that country
• souvenirs you’ve collected

        3.  give away items

• native food
• native recipes
• toothpick flags
• coloring page

Stamp for passport and ink pad

Will need several countries to give a performance about their country.

• a game
• song
• something that is part of their tradition.

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