Tag Archives: science

Homeschooling

Microbes & Cells

07/20/2017 Danielle Huddleston Leave a comment

We started our study with Microbes and cells.

Magic School Bus “In a pickle” introduces microbes.

“Goes Cellular” is about human cells and there are a couple that teach about plants that touch on plant cells.

“Inside Ralphie” covers how bacteria makes you sick.

The Magic school bus was really helpful with my three youngest.

It is currently on Netflix also.

The Reading Rainbow has a really good episode called “Germ Make Me Sick” that all of my kids enjoyed.

I found really amazing coloring pages for free on the biolegend site, here.

I read my kids “The Basics of Cell Life with Max Axiom” while they colored a cell.

I put the above books in the girls science box for them to look at during our study.

The Max Axiom books on Bacteria and Viruses

The Magic School Bus “The Giant Germ” and “Meets the Rot Squad“

“A Value Tales Treasury“

Usborne’s “Around the World in 80 Days” (we were reading Jules Verne for the time period we were studying)

I also bought these plant and animal cell models for them to take apart.

“Microscopic Life” was another good overview book.

Again, the “You wouldn’t want to” books were a big hit 🙂

“You Wouldn’t Want to Live Without Soap!”

“You Wouldn’t Want to Live Without Bacteria!”

“The Surprising World of Bacteria with Max Axiom” we also really enjoy the Max Axiom books.

At the same time men were dying of gangrene on Civil War battlefields, men like Louis Pasture, Joseph Lister, and Ferdinand Cohn were changing the face of surgery.

I like an overview book like “The Germ Detectives” to make sure we don’t miss anyone.

More biolegend coloring pages to go with our bacteria study.

Drawing bacteria.

We made pickles to see how bacteria can change things.

The Value Tales story about Louis Pasteur was really good for young kids.

My older two(9&10) read these other books on Louis Pasteur.

I also used these other resources for my boys;

Cells Worsheets

Bacteria Worsheet

The Wonder of Cells (video on Answers in Genesis)

How a Virus Works (really good video on youtube)

Inner Life of the Cell (another really interesting youtube video)

Gutsy: The card game (a really cool FREE card game about microbes)

Also our Microscope was so useful during our study!

Homeschooling, My Family

Tulsa Waterworks & A Serendipitous Educational Moment

05/10/2017 Danielle Huddleston Leave a comment

A friend of mine was watching one of my girls for me so I had only 4 kids!

I wanted to go for a walk and was looking around for a good place when we found a pretty big city waterworks and reservoir.

This was perfect!

We had just watched the Magic School Bus waterworks show on the way their!

It was great to talk about what we had just watched while walking on the walking path around the reservoir.

The cleaning process was a lot more interesting after seeing a dead fish in the water people drink…

Thanks dead fish for an easy teachable moment.

Pretty sure they will remember this one.

It would be so much fun to tour the actual waterworks!

It was right next to us and so impressive looking!

Homeschooling

Our Study of Birds and Audubon ~Homeschool

02/24/2017 Danielle Huddleston Leave a comment

I am still working on how to tie lessons together for the girls and boys.

The boys do 5th grade work and the girls are in 1st grade but need a very simplified version.

So it has not been until recently that I have really been trying to include them in the history or science that the boys are studying.

Birds seemed like a perfect subject for them all to learn though.

For one of the boys studies the past couple weeks they were learning about John Audubon and birds.

I give the girls a science shelf for their independent learning and made it all about birds.

Here are some of the things I included:

Bird Bingo(one of my favorite educational games)

Bird Guides like Birds of Oklahoma

The Magic School Bus Flies the Nest

Backyard Birds Toob (I had them try to find the matching bird on the Backyard Birds of North America guide)

Bird Flash Cards

Binoculars

Owl Puke the Book

We also finally refilled our bird feeder and would identify the birds that came.

I got a pbs documentary on Audubon called John James Audubon: Drawn from Nature from the library and was having the kids all watch in the vehicle.

I had no clue that Audubon killed the birds he drew!

He posed them by sticking wires through them!

I asked my oldest if they were showing that and he said “yep.”

My kids eyes were huge.

Oops…

We did not finish the documentary.

My youngest boy(9) loves learning about animals and is like a walking encyclopedia about them so he really liked reading about birds for school.

He also told me that Audubon met Daniel Boone!

I love it when our studies intersect like that.

Just another benefit of learning History, Science, and Literature via timeline.

Audubon: Painter of Birds in the Wild Frontier was such a pretty looking picture book.

I don’t get to read many of these books anymore since my boys are independent readers.

We also got John Audubon Young Naturalist but I forgot to take a picture of it.

Bird Watching

I really liked tying their studies together!

Now I just need to figure out how to make the science shelf fun and interesting for the next study.

Microbes…

I have a feeling it will not be as pretty as birds.