We have really enjoyed our Exploring Creation with Botany. Since we all love flowers and plants it has turned out to be perfect for us right now.
A few weeks ago we were to make clay models of flowers. I was not sure how well this would work but the flowers turned out great.
Rebekah is patiently forming her parts for her flower. She has made her stem and leaf with the calyx on top. On the table she has cut out her petals and is now forming her carpel and stamen.
Rebekah and her finished product.
Here is Rebekah's flower from a different angle. I think it turned out very nice.
Sarah is working on her flower. She is working on the last few pieces before we put it all together.
This is Sarah's finished product.
* * * * * Flower Dissection * * * * *
We also dissected a flower. The girls had to find three flowers so that we could all do the activity together. They had fun finding the perfect flower for dissection.
This is the flower that the girls picked for the project. Below the flower had discolored a bit but this is what it looked like the day we taped them to their books.
This is Rebekah's dissection page.
This is Sarah's dissected flower.
We have also done some other activities such as seed collecting, seed dissection and activities with leaves and now we are on to the roots. As we have more interesting activities I will share them with you.
Happy Homeschooling
I can't believe that I have not blogged in a whole month. I will try to do better :)
This month has been good We have chosen an area of study for our Nature Challenge. Since we are studying botany for science it is just natural for us to study plants.
Our family, minus Rachel, went to minister in a rural community about 2 1/2 hours from here. The people were wonderful and the time was great. We took school books and Rebekah and Sarah got a good bit done. I can't complain.
The first day we went on a walk to the River and we turned that into a nature hike. Here are some pictures that we took on that walk
These are just a couple of the amazing plants that we saw.
Just before we left the River we saw a beautiful sunset.
We did not take our nature journals with us but we each came back and wrote about our walk and sketched some of the plants that we saw.
We are so far behind where I wanted to be in our Nature challenges but I am happy that we are getting back to it. We have had a good time relaxing since the kids have been out of school. This week we started some light work using the Work Box System. But that is for another post. I have a lot to say about a few changes in our homeschool and so I will have several post this weekend.
Rebekah and Sarah did a little nature investigation on their own yesterday. Sarah found a high perch to over see all the nature in our yard.
Challenge #3 was to continue to focus on using your sense as you observe nature. The challenge also encouraged drawing. This was great because my kids really like this part of their nature journals. They both choose to do a leaf rubbing. Even though we have many leaves in the yard I think they chose a leaf from the same tree.
Here is Rebekah sitting in the corner of the yard shaded by a cocoa tree.
(below) Here is Rebekah view of the yard from her position under the tree.
Here is Rebekah's journal page. She had decided to use a binder with sleeves for her journal pages so she included her leaf for future viewing.
Here is Joshua having fun in the yard with his sisters.
Joshua is just monkeying around!!
We had fun with this challenge but I don't know if we will be able to do much in July. We have meetings and other ministry activities planned so we will just have to see. We will at least be back to schooling full time in August and I have scheduled Nature study as a weekly activity.
On May 15 I took some pictures of Joshua outside in our yard. I took this picture of one of our Banana trees. Well Friday afternoon while I was outside taking pictures of Joshua and Abigail playing in the yard I noticed that same tree full of green bananas.
Here is the Picture from May 15
Here is the picture taken on May 29th.
Can't wait to eat these sweet bananas.
I came out the back door on Friday to see Miss Abigail sitting in a puddle of water in the yard. I thought she was outside chasing kitties (that is her usual interest) but no. Here is what I caught on film when I quietly ran back into the house and came out again.
They had such a great time playing in the water!
I wish I had a video recording so you could hear her talking and having such a great time.
I think they enjoy living in the rainforest during the rainy season !!
They are enjoying nature!! This was a fun afternoon!!
For the last few weeks we have had at least one or two sick children. So we have not been outside to do our nature study. An additional challenge is that this is at the end of our rainy season and some days we have rain all day.
On Mother's Day we had a nice sunny afternoon and I got outside and took pictures of the kids in the yard. I realized that I had said in an earlier post that I would post a picture of this plant when it was in full bloom. This is my favorite plant in the yard. I love it when it is in full bloom.
We have plans on Friday to do Challenge number 3 so I will post that when we finish it.
We have really enjoyed our spring break this week. We did not go to the beach like we had planned but we did our second Nature Challenge in our back yard. This weeks nature challenge was to listen and observe nature more closely. I was very excited that my oldest daughter decided to join us on this one. Here are the plants that we focused on in our backyard.
Rebekah focused on the elephant ears that we have in a pot in our backyard. Because there are so many varieties of elephant ears we just looked up the family name Alocasia.
Sarah focused on the cocoa plant. The scientific name is Theobroma cacoa. We saw on a video about how to make chocolate from the Cocoa seeds so Sarah and Joshua have been eating the fleshy pulp so that we can try our hand at making homemade chocolate. In Portuguese it is called the Cacau (kuh-kow) plant.
Abigail had fun with the kitties.
Rachel drew a picture of a cone flower. We had fun looking this one up on the internet. It was difficult to find this one because all we had was a description we had no idea of the name. The scientific name is Zingiber zerumbet. This is one of my favorite plants in our yard.
I focused on a coconut palm in our back yard. We have several different types of palms in our yard. This is a Cocosnucifera
We had a fun time observing. Then we came in and talked about what we heard and saw while we were outside. Because we had just had a nice rain there were a lot of bird chirping and the wind was blowing and they noticed the rustleing of leaves in the trees. In addition to that we heard a lot of sounds of the city. I will bring this discussion up again I enjoyed having them tell me what they saw and heard verbally.
For more information on the Nature Hour Challenge see my previous post about Nature study.
In 2004 we started to do Nature Journaling as a part of our Nature studies. We did not journal every week or even ever month. We were very inconsistent. In 2006, I read Karen Andreola's Pocketful of Pinecones and I got motivated again to begin and we did a little. But that was the school year we started to pack up and move. So I put the nature journaling on a back burner. Now that we are homeschooling I really wanted to get started again but I did not really know where to begin.
A few weeks back I heard about this website http://www.handbookofnaturestudy.blogspot.com on one of my Yahoo groups.I read the One hour challenges and decided to start this week.I saved it until Friday so that Sarah could join in with us since she gets out of school at noon on Friday..
This has been a VERY rainy week.Joel took this picture of Joshua on Tuesday in our backyard. But today we have not had any rain at all. So it turned out to be the perfect day for doing nature study. Since we have so many unfamiliar plants in our yard I decided to start there.
Here is Rebekah and her work! The name of her plant is named Alpinia.
This is Sarah and her art work!
Joshua even got in on the fun. He enjoyed the bugs and ants best.
After we went in we looked on line to find out the names of our discoveries. Since these are tropical plants that we are not familiar with(with the exception of the petunia and periwinkle) and we did not know their names. Even my horticultural husband did not even know the names of these two plants. It was a challenge finding the name of my plant because so many people classify it as a bird of paradise based on the description. It is one of my favorite plants in our yard. We also have a variety of this plant that has a longer stem and hangs. Right now the bloom is very small so when it is full grown I will take a picture and post it. So we all learned something today.
Here is my plant that I focused on. It is called HeliconiaI know I am not an artist but I really enjoy recording our outings in my journal.
I hope that you find Journaling as fun as we have.
Note: I did not get this post like I had planned. When I woke up this Saturday morning it was raining. It has rained all day. I am so Thankful to God that he gave us such a nice beautiful day yesterday to enjoy his creation. He blessed us so much yesterday exploring His creation and making memories with my kids.
This is Sarah's dissected flower. 
Abigail had fun with the kitties.
Here is my plant that I focused on. It is called Heliconia
I know I am not an artist but I really enjoy recording our outings in my journal.