Nature Exploration

Hi everyone! Jordyn reporting here...

I LOVE being outside and enjoy escaping out into the sunshine. Why be indoors?, ugh! So in our first week of official school, we've done a lot out of doors. Listening to Mom read, writing, just playing or looking for treasures for our nature table.

This week I found a cicada shell and had SO much fun scaring my sister with it!! It was the best! Which, of course, is not it's purpose as Mom pointed out. Along with learning that my sister does not like bug-looking things, Mom showed me pictures of how cicadas shed their shell. I learned a new vocabulary word (molting) and found out that other animals like birds and snakes molt too!

Hmmm, I wonder if I can find a snake skin to use on my dear sister....

Time to Plant!

Both children are SO excited to get these into pots! We'll keep updating.

Spring Science

Since the talk around our home is about gardening, we thought it would be a good idea to post some of our favorite books on the topic! These have been checked out of the library, so hint, hint grandparents--we don't own them and would love to! No pressure or anything.

Roots Shoots Buckets & Boots ~ a great book on gardening together with our parents! Fun and informative as well. We really like this one.

Up, Down, and Around ~ wonderful for preschoolers! Here we learned about veggies that grow underground, some that grow above ground and others that grown all around the garden.

The Vegetables We Eat ~ a good source of info on how various veggies are grown and then the process of how they get to our grocery store. We learned much about how botanists catagorize veggies--by the part that we eat: tuber, leaf, stem, bulb, flower bud, root, seed, or fruit.

A Seed is Sleepy ~ this is Mom's personal favorite, you can find her looking through it on her own! This book has gorgeous illustrations and information on seeds and their 'abilities'. Such as...a seed is clever: it knows to seek the sunlight, to push itself up, up, up through the soil.

In all of this talk and reading, Mom has also explained that God planned for seeds to do their job from the very beginning of creation. Isn't that amazing? He made every tree, every plant, every fruit with the ability to make more of itself. That way, He wouldn't have to keep speaking words of creation every time we needed more fruit or another tree somewhere. In one word, He planned for it to go on, and on, and on....Wow! How super-duper intelligent of God!!

Oh, one more book: One Bean, which inspired this project:

We're growing beans! A bean is a seed that we can eat; and we started it off by placing two between wet paper towels. Their hard skin will get soft and wrinkly and begin to sprout. We'll update as we go along!

Feed the Birds

This is the most we've posted in one day!

But, it seemed important to include a project started and completed in one setting. Sometimes Mom's ideas take a little longer than that. Inspired by this tutorial on Bella Dia's blog, today we made some wild bird treats to hang outside on the tree. We used dental floss instead of upholstery thread and it worked well. Jordyn is slightly upset that no feathered friends have come to feast though the snacks have been hanging for a total of two hours. Be patient, sweetheart.

We're Back...

Yes, we're still here dear faithful blog readers! The end of November was full with our school projects and also just family activities and the like. One thing we enjoyed was what Mom labeled The Great Pumpkin Project! Lots of math as we predicted, estimated and counted the actual number of seeds, did mental calculations, skip counted, etc. Jordyn's predicted 7, Janelle 50, and Mom 150. After cutting the pumpkin open and looking inside, we estimated based off what we could see. Jordyn changed hers to 100 ("no more than that!"), Janelle 150 and Mom to a possible 300. Well, the actual count was FIVE HUNDRED NINETY-NINE! No, we didn't count from 1...599, but rather placed the seeds in groups of ten and went from there. The pumpkin then got baked and the insides are to be used for a pie at some point. Jordyn also explored how a pumpkin grows as we read about the seasons of a patch and she learned that other seeds can be eaten besides pumpkin--she was excited about that! All in all, it was a fun project! Now, on to Christmas...:o)

The Girl, The Grasshopper and The Owl

No, this not the title of an Aesop fable. It's the pictoral adventure of one young girl who loves science! We didn't catch the specimens ourselves :o), but ordered a dissection kit from Home Science Tools which included a frog, an earthworm and a grasshopper. Thinking it would be a good idea to do a 'dry' dissection, we worked on the owl pellet kit as well. Very interesting! And owl swallows its prey whole and regurgitates a pellet containing all of the bones.

Here are a few pics of the dissections Janelle has worked on so far:

taking a look at the owl pellet...

separating out the bones...

and the grasshopper...

(Jordyn suggested that we not show close up pictures because 'it might make people sick').

Simply Science

Okay, Janelle reporting here. I am here to tell you that I LOVE Science!! Mostly life science and anything having to do with the human body. Well, after almost a year of begging.....(drum roll please)....I have finally convinced my mother to let me dissect a frog! YES! I am so very, very excited you would think it was my birthday all over again. We ordered it this week, so it will be several more days for me to painfully wait. Mom says I should work on my skill of observation before then, so here is a simple project I completed.

If you take 3 apple pieces and place one in water, one in hydrogen peroxide, and one in white vinegar, what changes will occur after 1 minute? After 5 minutes? After 10 minutes?

Mom made me a chart to record my data. First, I made observations about the liquids. For example, they are all colorless. Can you think of others?

Then, I wrote a hypothesis for each of the three. You do remember what a hypothesis is, correct?

Then, with timer in hand and some help from Mom, the apples got dropped in as I kept a vigilent watch for any particular changes. One minute.....5 minutes....(nothing much happening, except the peroxide making sizzling sounds and bubbles around the apple).

Ten minutes....well, still no significant change for the water or vinegar solutions. Peroxide still bubbling. I guess some experiments are like that. Anyway, lastly I recorded all my observation on the chart and called it a day. I wonder if the apples changed in smell? Hmmm....

While I worked, Jordyn used an apple to paint.....

....and Josiah surveyed his kingdom.

An Apple a Day...by Jordyn and Josiah