I have to admit that the Charlotte-Mason style nature study has always interested me. We haven't done much with it, though. I'm not sure if it's because I didn't really know where to begin or because it seemed like we didn't have the time. Today's day out, though, has reminded me how great it could be.
Family Fun Magazine had a good article in this past month's issue which got us started. (I don't think this month's activities are on their website yet. I'll try to link to the specific ideas when Family Fun updates their site.)
1. We did some digging in the yard to look for worms and we tested Family Fun's idea of how to get worms to come up to the surface.
2. We used materials that we had around the house to study the underwater critters at our nearby lake. We also tested the pH levels.
3. We had a picnic and made Family Fun's Sweet Seedlings (very cute!)
In addition, we did a nature walk and journaling, and the kids also took some photographs. They took along our bird-identification book and also tried to identify the birds by their calls. One of the highlights of the day was finding a killdeer nest with four eggs in it. The momma bird treated us to her "broken wing" imitation so that we could see what she does when she feels her nest is threatened. We didn't stay long but snapped a few pictures before leaving momma to her work.
Since we had recently read "Sign of the Beaver" for history, we also tried to leave "signs" to show ourselves the way back (even though we already knew the way).
The kids and I really enjoyed our time!
We spent part of today enjoying each other's Valentine's Day company. We also continued our discoveries about detectives.
1. We did the detective graduated book from homeschool share.
2. We continued reading mystery books.
3. We read a non-fiction book about the job of a real police detective.
4. We did a few more activities from the Detective Science book below. We looked at how different witnesses can give different perspectives of the same event. We also took our lip-prints and learned how they've been used to solve real cases (who knew)! We took our fingerprints and studied them to see what shapes they were. The detectives-in-training also tailed me during lunch to see if I was doing anything suspicious. (I, of course, did, since I was being "secretly" tailed.)
5. My sleuths also practiced their cryptanalysis (code-breaking) skills--I used several different types of codes to write clues to the location of their Valentines.
6. Some of today's new vocabulary: surveillance, stakeout, tail, impartial, contact-trace theory, cheiloscopy.
Ds8 said that his favorite part of the day was tailing me. Dd6 said that she liked so many of them it was hard to choose.
I wanted to share a couple of resources that worked really well for us these past few weeks during our science unit about weather.
The Magic School Bus books and videos have always been a big hit around here. A few weeks ago, we used The Magic School Bus Wet All Over to introduce the water cycle. The Magic School Bus Kicks Up a Storm was a good introduction to different weather vocabulary.
This week we watched a video to review wild weather. Stormchasers narrated by Hal Holbrook was a very informative 38 minute video (we watched it on Amazon Instant Video).
Why I liked it:
*The factual information was great, and many things that we had learned were reinforced with pictures and diagrams. I also liked the emphasis on actual work of scientists.
What I didn't like:
*The vast majority of the movie was appropriate even for my 5 year-old. I did fast forward through a 3-minute segment in the middle when a couple tornado survivors described their experiences. (It was a little intense.)
I always try to preview these types of things beforehand for language or violence. After some hit-or-miss experiences while teaching at home and in school, it just makes me most comfortable this way.
One way to connect Spanish (or another foreign language) with science is to learn various words from your current topic in that foreign language.
For instance, during our unit on space we learn words such as these:
star-estrella
sun-sol
moon-luna
Earth-Tierra
planet-planeta
rocket-cohete
comet-cometa
