Six Weeks of Science

Monday is money day. I paid the boys for all of their chores and school work over the past week and they added it to what they already had and counted their money. A couple weeks ago a boy at school brought in his "piggy banks" for show and tell. He had three jars, one for spending, one for saving, and one for giving. Today Thomas decided he wanted to divide up his money into three jars, too. When I asked who he would give money to he said "Anyone who needs money. You know, the box on the counter at McDonalds or maybe if I see a beggar I'll give him some, too."

We finished up week 6 of Classical Conversations last week and we do not meet with our community this week so it is kinda like a mid-term break. But that does not mean we are taking a break from school at home. I am using this week to review everything we have learned up to this point and start compiling it into a notebook for each boy. Today we focused on science. We created a notebook page for each topic we covered over the past six weeks.

 

 

Week 1:  The Classifications of Living Things

Week 2:  The Five Kingdoms of Living Things 

Week 3: Some Parts of an Animal Cell

Week 4:  Some Parts of a Plant Cell

Week 5:  The Major Groups of Invertebrates

Week 6:  The Major Groups of Vertebrates

While the boys were working on coloring, cutting, and pasting we listened and sang along to the memory work songs from all the subjects and all the previous weeks. Everything we learn has a song that goes along with it. I have all the songs on my phone and ipad. That makes it easy to squeeze in review time no matter what we have going on. We also have the information up on our memory wall so it is right there in front of us.

As the boys were working I made tabs and cover pages to go in their notebooks.

We keep a binder with a sampling of their work from every school year.

 

I am constantly taking pictures of the boys while they are working. Today Jacob turned the tables and took a picture of me at the computer.

We took a break in the afternoon when a friend brought us a bunny. It had been wandering around her neighborhood for a couple weeks. It is obviously a pet rabbit, not wild, so she caught it and was looking for a home for it. Since we have rabbits at the farm she though we might want him. He is so sweet and calm. I would love to keep him as a pet in our house. We will see what Ryan says.

After dinner I let the boys watch a few episodes of Wild Kratts on TV. It is an educational show that goes right along with what we were covering today in science. Every episode is about a specific type of animal or habitat. The first one they watched was about hermit crabs. That was perfect since we were just learning about mollusks in week 5 when were talking about invertebrates.