Wednesday Feature ~ Homeschool Guests

I'm so excited to introduce a new Wednesday feature... Homeschool Guests.  Each Wednesday (for as long and often as I can keep it going!) I'd like to introduce you to a friend of mine whom I admire and learn from.   Hopefully these guests will give us a fresh perspective on homeschooling topics ~ maybe areas we aren't so strong in or need a little motivation for perhaps.

My sweet friend, Hope, is kicking off this feature.  Hope was one of my first homeschooling friends.  We are in the same co-op.  I got to know her very well when I was her teaching assistant! We also live just a mile from each other.  She just "gets" me... we both share a love of books, education, and our iPhones!  I'm blessed to have her in my support system. 


Hope's passion is NATURE.  I am in awe of how she shares this love with her children.   I think you'll see from this post that she is a  talented, creative, and caring mother.  I KNOW you'll learn some wonderful things, too.  

What small child doesn't have an interest in animals, the changing seasons, an interesting rock, a beautiful garden, the ecology of the ocean, a winding creek, the starry sky-simply all that makes up our natural world God so beautifully and carefully created?  

I am ever so thankful I ran across Charlotte Mason's philosophy early in our homeschooling journey. She places high value on Nature Study, the door it opens to all things scientific and its connection with our Creator. If you are not familiar with Charlotte Mason's ideas on Nature Study consider reading A Charlotte Mason Companion. Karen Andreola devotes three chapters to the subject.

Ms. Mason viewed consistency as an important aspect for exploring and observing changes like the seasons. So besides our own backyard, we regularly visit a nature area close by with trails, a rocky creek, granite outcroppings and a fishing pond. Of course, one must also visit other places for grand adventures and explorations, too!


We get outside whenever possible! Our traditional subjects are completed on the picnic table, hammock and sitting in the grass as weather permits. Additionally, I don't mind if we are in the middle of a lesson and a child finds a daddy bluebird going into the nesting box with a piece of food interesting. It's ok to stop for a moment and listen closely as the nestlings tweet noisily in excitement. It's ok if a lizard scurries by and an intrigued four year old must take a moment to try and catch it. As long as we complete our original lesson, this mommy does not mind!

However, not every outing has to be a formal lesson with nature journaling. 


We regularly explore and enjoy discovering and observing just for the pure joy of it.  Of equal importance to note is not everyone will be interested in the same things. Nevertheless, we should all try very hard to show appreciation for what is important to another - even if it's an 'ordinary' rock. In the picture below, our six year old is interested in leaves, our eight year old birds and four year old sticks. (Yes, sticks.)  Each has their own nature journal. For the older two it's a spiraled watercolor notebook and for the youngest it's a few index cards stapled together or printer paper or both.


We have our handy the Handbook of Nature Study and usually one more reference book. If we decide to journal, we take an art supply kit if we are going to be in our back yard or not hiking very far (it's bulky.) Otherwise, we pack watercolors or colored pencils. 

Below is an example of one of my eight year old daughter's nature entries. She has written about what she has personally observed, not just read out of a book for this particular entry. She has also included an original poem. 


A nature journal should be as unique as the child.

In this picture, my just turned six year old is showing off his leaf rubbing. I added a poem of his choosing to the top portion of his entry. 

Here's another example of an entry, done on the same day as the Bluebird because she wanted to.This one is about Chickadees. We are observing both Bluebird and Chickadee nestlings. She drew the mother and what she observed as the first baby hatched. She chose to copy a short paragraph from More Fun with Nature (Fun with Nature) and then composed an original poem.

Once home, we typically pull out a couple of living books and find a chapter about one of the day's exciting discoveries. For example, a few resources we often use are The Burgess Animal Book for Children, The Burgess Bird Book for Children (both by Thornton W. Burgess) or Jim Arnosky's Crinkleroot books. Most Crinkleroot Guides are out of print but can be found at the library. Both authors have given us great examples of living literature, which by the way were first introduced to us by our dear friend Mary, right here at Homegrown Learners!

As I conclude this glimpse into the way we enjoy Nature Study, Charlotte Mason style,  I will leave you with this quote from Ms. Mason, my nature study hero:

"It would be well if we all persons in authority, parents and all who act for parents, could make up our minds that there is no sort of knowledge to be got in these early years so valuable to children as that which they get for themselves of the world they live in. Let them once get touch with Nature, and a habit is formed which will be a source of delight through life. We were all meant to be naturalists, each in his degree, and it is inexcusable to live in a world so full of the marvels of plant and animal life and to care for none of these things."

(Vol 1, II, Out-Of-Door Life For The Children, p.61)

Hope is the mother of three elementary aged children.  Prior to becoming a mother she was an RN.  She now spends her days exposing her children to God's wonderful creation!  She blogs at Homeschooling 3.  

* The button image for Homeschool Guests is courtesy Your Secret Admiral.

Unburnable Money and other Amazing Science Experiments!

I love the thought of doing science experiments, but sometimes pulling everything together and actually getting to the execution stage wears me out (I'm just being honest.).   

Last week I put a DVD in for my children to watch and told them to preview it and choose some experiments they would like to do.   Lo and behold, we all wound up watching the DVD and completing several of the experiments.

Amazing Science! - Volume 1 is a 2 DVD set of  23 SIMPLE experiments using materials that your probably already have at home. 

While I helped with several of the experiments (Unburnable money was our favorite!), some could be done without me.   Take, for instance, Reversing an Image With Water.   This was simple enough for my 10 and 7 year to do unassisted.   The arrows they had drawn on a piece of paper appeared to reverse when they viewed them through a glass of water.   It's such a simple scientific principle - but very intriguing at the same time.  

The experiments are demonstrated clearly step-by-step.   Each explanation is just a few minutes long and includes not only the how-to instructions, but also the WHY behind each concept.    

My kids have wanted to watch the DVD multiple times!   Several nights this week my husband was bombarded the minute he walked in the door with the cool "science tricks" the children learned that day.    This is how I KNOW something is good.  


Here's a little freebie for you... you can try this easily.  You will just need a piece of copper pipe (I purchased ours for $1.50 at the local hardware store), a candle, and of course some money to "burn".  

Next week we will be making lemon batteries - fun!

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW:

Amazing Science - Volume 1 :  $19.95

Get free science (and math) videos delivered to you via email. 

Watch this video about the DVD.  
This gets a five star ranking from my children and I!  




Please visit the Crew Blog to see what other reviewers thought of this product.  

I received this product as a member of The Old Schoolhouse Homeschool Review Crew.  No other compensation was received.  The opinions expressed in this review are mine alone.  

I'm also linking to Science Sunday, at Adventures in Mommydom.   I love this meme because you can find so many wonderful science activities.

Shaking It Up With Science

My daughter loves Always Ice Cream (it was a TOS review earlier in the year)!  (If you are looking for a safe, fun, and educational online community for your girls, Always Ice Cream is it!)  One of the things I love best about her time spent on Always Ice Cream is she comes up with great ideas after watching videos on the site.    Last week it was how to make freezer bag ice cream.

This was a very fun activity, with neat science concepts involved.    I found a "formal" activity at Teachnet that guided me through the lesson with the kids.

Who knew that the Emperor Nero invented ice cream?  Those Romans were responsible for SO MANY things we have today.  

 We mixed milk, sugar, and vanilla in a quart size freezer bag.   Then, we added crushed ice and salt in a gallon size bag and put the quart sized bag inside of that.

Since the weather was great we did this activity outside... it was pretty messy, so being on the deck was convenient.     

The kids had to SHAKE their bags for at least 10 minutes -- even then the ice cream was a little slushy, but they loved it.   

We learned (thanks to Teachnet):

Just like we use salt on icy roads in the winter, salt mixed with ice in this case also causes the ice to melt. When salt comes into contact with ice, the freezing point of the ice is lowered. Water will normally freeze at 32 degrees F. A 10% salt solution freezes at 20 degrees F, and a 20% solution freezes at 2 degrees F. By lowering the temperature at which ice is frozen, we are able to create an environment in which the milk mixture can freeze at a temperature below 32 degrees F into ice cream.

We made some hypotheses about how we could make the ice cream thicker next time, and how we could also add cocoa powder or different types of extracts (peppermint, almond, etc...) to get different flavors. 


Next week I'm going to revisit this experiment and let the kids design their own ice cream flavor.  I also found some additional teaching resources here to delve further into the science of salt and water.   

All in all - a fun science activity that doubled as snack time!