It is my short term goal (till Tahlia comes home) to make a homeschooling week re-cap post every weekend to highlight/journal/and document our previous week! This is mainly just for myself. I find it encouraging and motivating when I can visually see the fun and learning we’ve had. It keeps my homeschooling fires lit up and burning bright!
So, last week we started our Dophlin Tale Curriculum . It’s free and it’s been a wonderful unit study as we prepare to see the Movie:Dolphin Tale this Friday! It’s based on a true story and it has two children who are the main stars as homeschoolers! They are also homeschoolers in real life! Needless to say my “dolphin fanatics” are STOKED to see this movie, in 3D!!!
Our week was filled with buoyancy, water columns, jellyfish, density, sharks, shark teeth, deep sea water creatures, and bio-luminescence, and yellow lemonade geysers!
We also studies Abraham Lincoln in our History book! We learned about his childhood and his life that led up to leading the North in the Civil War. We decided we would try to make our own log cabins!!
First of all, we made a water column to demonstrate how different sea creatures live at different densities of water.
Ok, so just for fun. And, because I found this science kit in my HUGE homeschooling closet which is basically a collection of over 8 years of schooling and unfinished books and projects, we decided to set off a geyser!
Then, a few days in to our week we learned all about the jellyfish, which are fascinating creatures! The kids especially loved learning about this deadly creature
Then we made a jelly fresh!!
Then we went on to study sharks!!!!! We learned about shark teeth! Did you know that a shark can lose a whole set of teeth in 10 days? Also, each shark has a different shaped tooth. So, when you find a shark tooth, you can research easily what kind of shark it came from.
We learned of how the shark uses it’s senses. They have an amazing sense of smell, and can smell blood from miles away! (I’m having flashbacks of the 80’s movie:JAWS!!)LOL. We also learned that they can sense elctro-magnetic fields from miles away. We demonstrated electro-magnetic fields using a battery and foil. The kids were amazed that they foil got warm to their touch when electricity flowed through it to make the nail magnetic!
Finally, we learned about the amazing world of deep sea creatures!! Remember that crazy fish in NEMO who had the little “pretty light”? Well, it was called an angular fish, and it used its light by an amazing chemical reaction called bio-luminescence. The kids were amazed by this video!!! Check it out, its incredible the world of the DEEP DEEP ocean.
So, we used light sticks to demonstrate how these fish light up, and how hot and cold water affects the brightness of the sticks.
Then we made our OWN DEEP SEA CREATURE!!!!
WOOH! That was a lot of science in one week!! What a fabulous curriculum this has been, and its free!!! Next week we will focus on dolphins!! Wish we could swim with them, what an amazing field trip that would be!!
**DISCLAIMER**
All these activities did not take place on one day, as one might assume seeing that Ethan is ALWAYS wearing the same shirt! LOL
TRUTH: That is his favorite thing to wear to bed (WSFS shirts) and, thanks to daddy working there for years, he owns about 20! And, this momma does NOT make the kids get dressed for school!! 😉 We school in our jammies, till we take a walk….and, sometimes that’s in our jammies too!! Yes, the perks of homechooling! 😉
Looks like such a fun week!!