Our Classroom Today--April 26, 2011

It was a cold, rainy, cold, rainy day. Our Tuesday group has had to be indoors a bit too often as of late, winter is just dragging on and on! This week, though, Minnesota Sea Life Aquarium at the Mall of America is having homeschool days, offering a steep discount. YAY!


This was the best shot I could get!

We are studying cnidaria (R.E.A.L. Science Odyssey-Life Unit 12) and rowing Night of the Moonjellies this week and the aquarium is the only place close by that I know of with jellyfish. Seemed like a perfect match. OK, so I tweaked our schedule a bit to make the two coincide, but I have been tweaking the science schedule all winter to make it work with what we have available!


Peek-a-boo!

The aquarium has been completely redone in the last year or so, and it is much improved. I specifically wanted to see the jellyfish, sea horses, and the octopus. Kiddo specifically wanted to hang out with his friends, so the educational value was a bit lost on him. He willingly touched sea stars and horseshoe crabs, though, so his friends were a positive influence there. Normally he is hesitant to do those things.


Jellyfish fun house!

The room the jellyfish are in has walls of mirrors, which makes it seem like there are even more jellyfish than there actually are. There were many, but not as many as it seems at first glance. Kutey had pinched her fingers prior to this room and was having a hard time calming back down, Kiddo had gotten ahead of me so I couldn't make sure he had taken notice of the things he was supposed to take notice of, and there were a lot of people. I got kiddo to come back and stay closer, Kutey calmed down a little, but the loudness and the people didn't go away. I did make sure we got a good look at the jellyfish. I could have spent literally hours staring at them, if there had been fewer people. And if my kids hadn't wanted to move on. And if we hadn't been with friends. Hours. So peaceful. But we moved on.



We made our way to the seahorses, which were quite cool, but crowded. At one point, I noticed Kiddo start talking to a woman we didn't know. I wasn't worried, I knew why he was talking to her. She looked a bit like me, and was holding a camera like me. He had no idea it wasn't me until I tapped him on the shoulder. Kutey lost me for a second in this room, mistaking the same woman for me, and melted down again. But the sea horses were fun to look at. Really fun.



Then it was on to the coral and anemones, and finally the tube aquarium, where you literally walk directly under the fish, sharks, rays, and turtles. The kids love this part. It used to be the first thing you did, but they have reversed the path and made it come at the end. The Sawfish was particularly popular with our friend N. Kiddo enjoyed the Shark Ray. Kutey liked seeing the Loggerhead Sea Turtle. We read a book about Loggerheads a couple of weeks ago, so it fit right in.


Kutey loved these Koi.

We finished up our trip through the aquarium and headed to lunch. We boarded the elevator with...the woman both Kiddo and Kutey had mistaken for me! She knew they had done it. She thought she had made Kutey cry. I assured her it was just the timing, it wasn't her specifically. She is a homeschooler as well, so we exchanged pleasantries and names. Maybe I'll bump into her again!



A few more fun things we saw:


Almost as much fun as the jellyfish!


My friend T loved these eels. They were quite fun to watch!


Shark eggs. We almost missed these. They were right at the door on the way out, along with a few tiny baby sharks!




Aren't they magical?

A purposeful trip to the zoo

After our outing to Orchestra Hall this morning, we at lunch at one of the kids favorite restaurnauts (that is not a misspelling. That is what they call them.) IKEA. Yes, really. IKEA. They love the meatballs. I love the bright, open cafeteria at IKEA. Who says homeschoolers don't eat in cafeterias?

After that, we went to the Zoo. Yes, a full day, but we had a lab to do for R.E.A.L. Science that involved going to the Zoo. I figured half the day was shot with the trip downtown for the concert (half hour there, 2 hours there, half hour home, three hours, the better part of the morning), we likely wouldn't get much done the rest of the day anyway, so might as well make it productive somehow. So to the zoo it was.

We started learning about mammals this week. The first lab in R.E.A.L. Science Odyssey has to do with descriptive names of animals. Our mission was to find as many animals with descriptive names as possible. We got bonus points if it was a mammal, and mega bonus points if we caught a mammal doing what only mammals can do, nursing young. Before we even started, Kiddo went through the list of mammals he knew had babies currently at the zoo--the snow monkey, the dolphin, and the other monkey (De Brazza's Monkey). He was determined to get the bonus points. Guess going to the zoo a zillion times this winter has benefits.

We only went through the tropics trail and the aquarium, we were exhausted by then. But we were able to find 29 animals with descriptive names--Red-ruffed Lemurs, Ring-Tailed Lemurs, Pipefish, Leafy Sea Dragons, and Asian Forest Tortoises, to name a few.


Love the Leafy Sea Dragons.

The De Brazza's Monkey isn't far into the Tropics Trail, so it was the first baby mammal we came across. The baby monkey is getting bigger, so it wasn't just clinging to the mother like it had been the past few times we saw it. It was fun to see the baby out exploring, but Kiddo REALLY wanted to see a baby nursing. Given that the other babies we might see are older, we waited. And waited. And waited. And finally. FINALLY! We saw it. Good thing, too, since we didn't see any of the other babies we thought we might.


Finally, you can see just how different the baby looks! That is an older sibling. The baby is starting to get a beard, like the adults, but is still a very different color.

Only 17 of the 29 descriptive names we found were mammals, which gave us the opportunity to figure out what they were given what we have learned.



Given it is Spring Break time for public schools, the zoo was a little crowded. We got a couple of odd looks when we were filling out forms for the lab, but it didn't curb the kids enthusiasm at all. R.E.A.L. Science Odyssey really is a fun curriculum, if I can just get myself geared up to actually do the labs!

Our zoo has a great deal of construction happening at our zoo, which is great. We'll soon have penguins, very exciting. We will also have a new reptile and amphibian area, which the kids are really looking forward to. In the meantime, we have construction. And exhibits like this:


How would you classify this animal? (I got a LOT of strange looks from people as I took this picture--crazy lady taking pictures of a ladder?)

Oh, and remember the upside down fish? It was back.

No ear hearing

Remember earlier this year I did a post on "Instead of...?" One of those was as follows:

1. Instead of...waiting for the perfect supplies to do an art project or science project, move ahead with what you've got. The kids won't know the difference!

I need to remind myself of that one regularly. Science has been roadblocked, not because of the content, but because I want it to be perfect. So I wait for the perfect supplies. For the last two weeks it was a metal slinky. We have plastic one, but the book said metal, so I didn't move forward. We waited. It also called for an eye dropper, which I don't have, so we waited. BAH!

This week, I decided we needed to just do it, get through it, plastic slinky and all.

And you know what? The lab went fine. The kids learned what they were supposed to learn. Go figure!

The lesson was on waves and how some animals hear--newts through their legs, fish through a line on their bodies, etc. It is part of the Amphibians unit in R.E.A.L. Science Odyssey-Life (Unit 21). We explored waves of all sorts using various demonstrations.

Slinky waves


Waves on pie plate




Waves in water


Notice the dropper? Yeah, I used a medicine dropper, because that is what I had. It worked, no problem what so ever. It isn't about the perfect equipment, sometimes what you have available will work just fine. Gotta remember that!

Reptiles and Amphibians

This week we have spent time studying reptiles and amphibians. It is 2 separate units in R.E.A.L. Science Odyssey, but we kind of combined them. Partly because I was ill-prepared and couldn't find a slinky for one of the amphibian labs and partly because we were on a roll and just wanted to keep flowing with it.



For the first lab, we made metamorphosis wheels. Very fun project, though a bit picky. I shrunk the template down to 80%, for those of you using the curriculum. This allowed me to cut both squares out of one folder. With two kids, this seemed less wasteful. I used plain cardstock for the wheel in the middle, scraps left over from other things. I cut out all the pieces. I marked the circle in quarters on one side and thirds on the other. I put the square and the circle together. I cut out the phases. The kids did the rest. Kutey was even able to put all the phases on the wheel in the correct order, on the correct side, with no help from me.

The kids love these wheels. Kiddo was very excited to show Daddy when he got home.

We skipped the next lab, because we couldn't find the slinky. We probably could have done the rest of the lab, but we didn't. Instead we moved on to reptiles. We learned about the difference between the skin of an amphibian and the skin of a reptile, then we did a lab to demonstrate this difference.



The idea is to see which one of the paper towels dries out first, which is bad, and explain why amphibians need to stay near water and reptiles don't. And of course, where humans fit in to this.

It was an easy lab, the results were exactly as expected, even though there was no sun to place the tray in as we were supposed to.

Then the kids drew a picture to illustrate a poem about lizards. Very fun, even if it didn't introduce any new material. It was the second of the reptile "labs."

I also had Kiddo read a book about reptiles. At least once every couple of minutes, he was telling Kutey and I some interesting factoid he was reading. So excited. Must have been a good book.

We also read About Amphibians. We have read it before. The first time, I wasn't sure I liked it. There is a sentence on each page, with a lovely picture. At the back of the book, however, there was a paragraph of information that goes with each picture. I think I would have liked the book more if the paragraph of information was on the same page as the picture. It is growing on me. The information is good, it's the format that I have trouble with.

Eventually we'll finish up the last lab on amphibians, but even without it, the kids have learned a lot.

We finished plants, FINALLY!

This week we finished our plant study. Oh, you thought we had already done that? Before we moved on to birds, amphibians, and reptiles? Well, almost. We had one lab that was not cooperating. Remember when we covered leaves with foil to see what happens when leaves are deprived of light? Well, removing the foil after one week did not yield results. Two weeks, no results. Three weeks, nothing. Finally, at four weeks, we saw results. Well, on one leaf. Out of three. Darn healthy plants.



It is entirely possible that the leaf was simply due to die through the natural life-cycle of the plant. We won't mention that to the kids, though!

And apparently this plant is opposed to pictures that are in focus...

Bird classification

One of the labs in our science curriculum required going to the zoo or a nature area to view birds of different kinds. We have a great zoo, with lots of birds. We were looking forward to going!

Then Kutey fell ill. I put it off, but well, it was holding up the unit to not get the lab done! When Kutey was still sick on Saturday, I started pulling together pictures of birds to do a virtual visit to a zoo. I did try to find a zoo or aviary that had a web cam to make it a little more like a visit to the zoo, but, well, I couldn't find one.



So I collected pictures. Many of them came from Nature's Pic's. Beautiful pictures, wide variety. I printed them 8 to a page, cut them out, then hung them on the walls of the house in 5 different locations. There was a tropical area, birds of the antarctic, the African Savanna, a water habitat, and birds we see in our area.

Once I had them all set up, Kiddo and I went to each area and talked about all of the birds. The idea was to put each bird into one of seven groups. It isn't about being right, the process is what mattered. As long as Kiddo could tell me what his reasoning was for putting a particular bird into a particular group, it was fine. I did the writing--I wanted him to enjoy the activity, the writing would have made it less fun for him.

He loved it! I asked a lot of questions in the beginning, making sure he understood why a bird was going to a particular category. As we went on, however, Kiddo was telling me why as he classified the animal. I asked less questions, because it was obvious he understood.

We will still do the activity when we are able to get to the zoo, but sometimes you just have to punt. This activity worked well enough for now!

How do birds stay dry?

We started our bird unit in science this week, in preparation for the Great Backyard Bird Count this weekend! I didn't get the books requested from the library, but they will be in soon, so we went ahead and started the labs, anyway. The first lab recommends going to a zoo to view and observe the different birds. Both of my kids have colds. Kutey's is nasty. The zoo was out of the question. So we moved on to lab 2: how do birds stay dry.



The lab was quite simple, but demonstrated the idea very well. Birds oil their feathers, oil and water don't mix, so the oil repels the water and the bird stays dry.



We had 2 "bird" bags--we oiled one, left the other one as is. Then we sprayed with water. I stuck my hand inside as they kids sprayed. I might have pretended the "bird" was flying. Maybe.

Not oiled:


Oiled:


It was immediately obvious what the difference was. I think the kids enjoyed using the spray bottle the most.

This is from Unit 23 in R.E.A.L. Science Odyssey-Life 1.

Plants get water from their roots!

We were finally able to see some visual evidence that plants get their water through their roots, not through their leaves.



The difference was mainly in the flowers, but it was sufficient to allow the kids to see the difference, which was the important part. When we measured, though, we did find that the pink plant had grown a centimeter while the red plant was actually 3 centimeters shorter. The leaves were that much less rigid. We only measured to the top of the leaves, not the flowers, since those have a cycle and may or may not have been there when it came time to measure.



Once we completed the lab, we pulled out the foil and watered them both at the roots. The red flowers had perked back up by the end of the day when Daddy came home. He noticed right away that we had watered it.

Once we finished up that lab, we talked about the different parts of the plant and what part of what plant we eat. The curriculum calls for making a "Plant Parts Salad," but, well, the idea did not appeal to my kids or myself. We made a list of what we could put in, but we didn't make a salad.

Our final plant lab is still in a holding pattern. We are STILL waiting for the leaves on the plant to change color!!! Apparently our plant is just too healthy, which is odd, since I horribly neglect my plants!

Water moves through plant stems!

This week was supposed to be a week of wrapping up our science study of plants. We are still waiting to see results in two experiments. I wish it was spring so I would have access to plants that would show results faster, but we are doing the best we can with what we have.

This experiment was supposed to be set up on Wednesday and wrapped up yesterday, but well, the car dying made that a bit more difficult. We got it set up yesterday, though, and anxiously awaited results.



The celery was not a disappointment. By three hours in, we had red dots at the top of our sample. Woo-hoo! (The picture is 24 hours later, but we did have red!)

I knew the flower would be slower. The split stem gave us our first sighting of color, around the same time as the celery, but then the color stopped. We continued to check throughout the day, but not much changed.

This morning? The celery was more red, but the flower? Still white. When Kiddo looked REALLY closely, he found some blue.



Do you see it? That is all we got. Tiny little blue marks. Not exactly what we were hoping for, considering we had the stem split into red and blue. I could not have yet ANOTHER experiment in a holding pattern, so we finished out the write-up. I left the flower set up, just in case, but I have little hope of seeing much more.

I did, however, find this lovely picture of what was SUPPOSED to happen. It is exactly what Kiddo guessed would happen, and it allowed us to talk about how water goes straight up the stem.

Incidentally, the picture comes from Science Bob's site. I just discovered Science Bob a week or so ago, and I am adoring it! Lots of fun stuff, easy to follow, well explained.


*No, I am not being compensated in any way for the review of Science Bob's site. I just like the site!

More plant study

In addition to our Seurat study in science this week, we started two other labs that will take a few days to weeks to see the results.


First, we are learning what happens when a plant is deprived of light. Or at least what happens to a few leaves on a plant that is deprived of light. We wrapped them in foil which we will remove a week after we placed it.



We are also studying how plants get water--through their roots or through their leaves. To find out we are watering one plant at the roots and the other by spraying the leaves.


We even put foil around the one we are watering by spraying the leaves, to prevent any water from dripping into the soil and watering the roots.

The kids both already know what will happen. We have plants in the house, they have watched me water them, helped me water them, and witnessed what happens when we don't water them! The process is important, too, though. So in spite of their claims to knowledge, we did the experiment. Results to come, when we have them!

p.s. sorry about the blurry photos. I have to figure out what is going on with my camera!

Science and Seurat

We have been studying plants in our science curriculum. This week, we studied the leaves and their function. As a part of that study we studied the artist Georges Seurat. How's that for 2 subjects in 1!

I pulled together information about Seurat. To be honest, while I know his famous painting A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, I knew very little about the artist and his style. It was quite interesting!

I pulled together some information and paintings for the kids to look at while we talked. We looked at a few on the computer because you can see the details much better there in some cases. If you are interested in seeing the information, I have uploaded my document here. That document also has all of the links I found useful in preparing for the lab, along with the sites I used to get the information.



We used Seurat to talk about plant leaves because leaves appear green, though they are not. Chloroplasts are green. If you put enough of them close enough together, the whole leaf will appear green. Much the same way as Seurat's dots of different color paint combine to make an image when looked at from a distance.



After we discussed Seurat and looked at his paintings, we tried our hand at creating pictures with dots!

Seed lab addendum

When we finished our seed lab last week, one of the extension activities was to place the soaked seeds in a closed dark container in a dark place to see if they would sprout. The question we are trying to answer? Do seeds need sunlight to sprout?

We opened the container today, a week later. Here are the results:


Nope, light is not necessary. The next question? Would they have light if they were planted in the ground? Nope, so it is a good thing they don't need it!

One warning: If you do this, be warned that the seeds will smell not so pleasant after being in a sealed container...

Seeds

We finally got to our seed lab this afternoon. I thought we would get to it this weekend. We didn't. We needed the down time after a week which had us sick, and therefore simply tired. I thought we would get to it earlier in the week. We didn't. Extra kids, a day at the zoo, the Works, all limited our time. And admittedly, I was blocked for this particular lab. Most of them seem easy and fun, the last two (the flower dissection and this one) didn't seem as easy. I had to get past my own reservations and just do it.



The kids enjoyed peeling off the seed coat of the beans to discover the cotyledons. Finding the embryo inside when the cotyledons were separated was a treat. Measuring the wet seeds and comparing them to the dry seeds was a great lead in to talking about what the seeds need to begin their growth.



It wasn't a hard lab, so why did I procrastinate? Who knows. It is done now. Next week we get to talk about Seurat to explain why leaves are green. Art and science all mixed into one. Looking forward to it!

Blood Model

We are studying the circulatory system this week in R.E.A.L Science Odyssey. Have I mentioned that we are really enjoying this curriculum? Easy for me to follow, and the kids are getting a lot out of it--makes it so worth it for us!

Our lab consisted of making a model of the blood. I never would have thought to do that on my own, yet the kids loved it!

It called for:
K*ro syrup--for the plasma
Red hot candies--for red blood cells
Dry lentils or split yellow peas--for platelets
Lima beans--White blood cells.

This posed a bit of a problem. The grocery store did not have K*ro syrup, and I really was not excited about buying it anyway. I don't use it for anything else anymore, so it seemed a bit silly to by a jug of it to use a half cup. No one here eats lima beans, so buying a bag of them in order to use 5, yes 5!, seemed silly as well. Similar reasoning for the tablespoon of lentils.

So I got creative. I made simple syrup for plasma. It worked, likely not quite as well as the K*ro syrup, but well enough. I used pearl barley for the platelets, and mini marshmallows for the white blood cells. The marshmallows floated, not the best substitution. Still, the kids got the idea, so I consider it a success. They wanted to eat all the red blood cells, though! the hazard with making a model with candy!

Bones and muscles

Unit 4 of our Life science curriculum covers the skeletal and muscular systems. The first lab covered the skeleton. We talked about which bone is the longest (the femur) and where it is(your thigh). We talked about the humerus and how it isn't humorous when you hit it. We talked about the skull, the vertebrae, the rib cage, and others. We also talked about how if we didn't have bones, we would be blobs--and we would have to be in water or be the size of a bug.


Then we put together a skeleton! Well, a paper one, anyway. I cut out Kutey's, Kiddo did his own. They both glued them together on their own, with no direction. Yes, there is a picture, but Kiddo realized that later, and Kutey never wanted to use it.

Then we moved on to the muscles. We talked about how your bones can't move without muscles, how muscles pull, they can't push, and how they work in pairs. Then we made a model of the arm to demonstrate all of that (in the upper part of the picture).

We then moved on to reading more about bones in The Magic School Bus The Search for the Missing Bones (which I didn't even realize we owned but found when I was cleaning up the floor in the kids room the other day--how cool!)

Plot Study

When I started the first lesson of R.E.A.L. Science Odyssey last month, I had intended to finish the lesson in the week. I don't know what happened. We didn't get to it, and it just kept getting put off.

I tend to be a bit of a perfectionist. I didn't have exactly what they were asking for (I don't have a meter stick, for example, just a yard stick and barely that) so I kept putting it off until I had the "right" tools. I finally decided that I was not going to get anywhere if I kept doing that and plunged ahead. So today we did the second lab for lesson 1--a plot study.

We have a large yard, and toward the back it is less tended. None of my yard is exactly "manicured" which the book said to avoid, but I figured this would be some of the more wild space. I used tent stakes to stake out a space 1 yard x 1 yard. Then we started observing and writing down the things we saw that were living and the things we saw that were not living. Garbage, rock, stick (WAS living, now isn't). We saw some very cool living things, too, I thought. There was a tiny green caterpillar, several ants, and a couple of small winged insects along with grass and dandelions, common blue violets (which the kids can both easily identify! YAY!), and some buckthorn that should NOT be there, among other things.

Kiddo and Kutey lost interest fairly quickly. I'd say they looked for maybe 10 minutes, total, and that was in several spurts. I spent probably 30 minutes looking and pointing things out before I gave up and called it good enough. Maybe the next session will be more interesting to them!