handbook of nature study hard copy - January nature journal

I've had the Comstock book on my kindle for years, but never imagined what a hard copy of the text would mean to me. Barb McCoy challenged me personally, well-not really b/c I've never met the woman in my life, to try a nature journal this year.  So, even though it was in the negative cold category the week the Gs did these drawings, we enjoyed practicing a skill we'd tried a couple times before with our painted leaf friends from the previous post.  These are their winter blind contour sketches of the fading crabapple with no leaves.

Unexpected Field Trips to Review a Rain-forest Habitat

Kudos to all you teachers out there who are constantly carrying out a unit study.  But when you don't know if the Daddy will authorize an attempt at empty seats on a plane (because he works at the airline) it's hard to plan ahead for the unit study opportunity. Most often, our field trips don't relate specifically to what we are studying in history or science.  With exception, our trip last month to Gettysburg National Park came just as we finished our studies and reading about the United States Civil War, but the trip to San Jose, Costa Rice this month was an unscheduled review of HABITATS (as well as a visit to our church's international workers here).

I seem to recall from my professors in teacher's college that we, as teachers, must repeat something three times before a student will process it (even to the smallest degree) - or maybe that was in church from one of our pastor educators.  Either way, we've completed physical geography lessons from Hands of a Child regarding the (cloud) Rain-forest Habitat and visited the big island of Hawaii once to see the Hilo side where everything is lush and forested in like manner.  But we never expected to take a day trip to the La Paz Waterfall site north of San Jose on a perfect October morning with the guide extraordinaire.

We saw brilliant foliage, indigenous animals and waterfalls. This trip made an impression on my kids so that if given the choice again, they would go to the mountains before trekking to the beaches on either side of the isthmus between the Americas.  And maybe they will visit more sites in the future to make reference to their habitat studies, but that only reinforces how important it was to be intentional and make the effort to teach them nature study no matter what habitat they found themselves (irregardless of our unit study status).

APRIL YARD NATURE STUDY

Squirrel nest post back here.  Why not combine #naturestudy and gardening? Builds character too.

Spring? Well, Almost

Chemistry Lessons about Salt (Warning: No-hands on experiments done)

There were not hands-on experiments done this week in our science study.  Just one of those "hills I decided not to die on" this week.  We discussed the differences between types of salt that is used in the kitchen, in our bodies and in the environment.  For example, table salt has a different chemical formula than the salt used outside on the very snowy roads (that erodes away the road surface).  Narrate about salts from DK page 44-45, Usborne pages 88-91 and Basher page 30 on your Elemental Science Grammar Stage Chemistry blue binder page 51 (Yes, we reusing and adding to our 2nd/3rd grade materials because they are that good).  Read Tiner chapter 14 & answer questions about chapter on lined sheet of paper placed near binder page 51.  Read and answer questions in Elements of Faith on same lined sheet of paper for Na and Cl.  I enjoyed discussing the Elements of Faith topic of salt and light with my kids this week. So many brilliant bonuses of homeschooling my kids.

One other bonus this week was enjoying nature during the longest winter of my life.  Sometimes the mittens get in the way when taking pictures outside, because it is THAT COLD.