variety in homeschooling

dominoes and physics. this led of course to our own experiments, and learning about energy. :)

The lad worked on math reflex while I got the dishes all caught up.

then we laughed at some pandas

then since the lad was having a difficult day (tonsils are swollen and sore again) we decided to pursue a passion.

we studied spiders by playing around on the web.

we learned that they have three sub-orders

• Araneomorphae - most spiders

• Mesothelae - primitive spiders

• Mygalomorphae - tarantulas 

Then we looked a whole ton of pictures and selected a few to find out where they come from giving us a chance to use our mapping skills.  

 We watched some you tube videos.

this is one with a bunch of pictures of mygalomorphs.

 

and then we headed off to do some reading.  :)   Always good to read.  

"Mommy!   Can we learn about a snake today?" was the plea.

"Sure" I replied.. so we learned about the ring-necked snake. 

 See here for the source.

We started off our story reading from 50 magical stories.  The story today was called The half-chick.   It was a funny story and "explains" why chickens are used as weather vanes.  It just made us laugh.

From there we moved on to Classical animal stories"   The Death of Gellert was a very sad story that immediately had my son thinking up a different ending to it.





From our world history book we have started to learn about the different types of weapons people have used throughout history.   Today we learned about how weapons can be made from stone.. especially from Flint which is a hard stone that is easily chipped away at to make a pointed stone.  

 

 

Cats are not easy homeschoolers :)

 while doing our "imagine a place"

 Everyone involved had a different interpretation

 and some well....imagined while ON someone else's work

and caused grins and distractions

impromptu learning

one of the reasons I choose to homeschool is I simply enjoy having my boy around.  :)   I like sharing his excitement in what he learns.

Yesterday while I was out doing some gardening I kept being interrupted by "mommy, come see this!"   So I'd trundle over to see what the lad had learned, done, accomplished, discovered and such forth.  Mind, I'd interrupt his play with "lad, can you come help me with...." and he'd come and help.  So turn about is fair play.

He was busy with a tub he's put together that is half water, and part sand and dirt.   He worked quite hard at dividing it up so that water stayed on one side, and the dirt on another.

First he discovered what a water table is. 

he dug down into various parts of his dirt section and learned that in most areas the dirt was damp but there was no water, but the closer he got to the water the more water there would be in the bottom of his hole.

Second he learned that doodle bugs (pill bugs) can float on a boat!     This made for marvellous story telling and laughter as we guessed what the pill bug thought of it all.

Then came the experiments with the pill bugs themselves.  

If he made an island would they stay on it?

Can they swim?

What happens if you roll them into a ball and drop them in?

What happens if they land on their backs?

We discovered they can swim for short sections of time.

They float really well.

They can not climb when they are in the water.

The big ones are smarter than the little ones, and the middle sized ones just bolt without looking and land up in the water ALL THE TIME (the little ones moved more slowly and the big ones tested things out first).   It was actually quite interesting watching the big ones.  They'd move to various parts of the island and lean WAY down and take a good look at the water, and then come back up and trundle to a different section and test it out to.   BUT once they fell in, they would do it all the time so I"m not sure what was up with that.

The small ones and big ones stayed on the island the longest, and only the small ones would stay on the boat for any length of time.

 this picture came from this site.

no pill bugs were harmed in these experiments.  :)