The Ants Go Marching Two by Two...

While our Geography/History classes are about to get a lot more regular, our science units are as all over the board as ever. We've learned about worms, frogs, eagles, and bees. We've looked at the Earth, and saving the planet, as well as studied national parks. We've learned about earthquakes, volcanoes, and geysers, about Yellowstone wildlife and the concept of extinction. We've learned about varying flowers and trees. And now we're back to bugs again. There is just something about studying things the kids can get hands on experience with that I simply cannot resist. So, Santa brought the kids an ant farm and we decided to learn all about ants. It has been a blast. A brief overview of our ant unit is as follows:

Day 1: Intro to the ants. We started the day our ants arrived in the mail. This day we set up our ant farm and went to the library to get ant books. We also had a family movie night and watched A Bug's Life.

Day 2: The types of ants: queen, males, and workers, and the life cycle of an ant from egg:larva:pupa:adult ant. We also talked a little about the different jobs that worker ants can have. It's quite amazing how intricate their family systems are. Some ants take care of the eggs or larva, some dig, some get food, some watch the queen. Most people probably knew this stuff, but did you know some ants are in charge of the pet aphids. They kidnap aphids and bring them into their tunnels because the aphids make a sweet nectar that will be released if the ants pet them. Some ants are also in charge of the pet crickets. They also kidnap baby crickets and raise them in their tunnels because they like the music they make. Amazing.

After reading one of our library books on all of the jobs of worker ants, I went around and asked each child what kind of worker they would like to be. Emma wanted to take care of the baby ants in the nursery. Maddi wanted to be the queen. (of course) And Spencer, well Spencer's answer about made me wet my pants it was so funny. He thought for a minute, and then replied, "I don't want to be a worker ant, I want to be a dier ant." "A dier ant?" I said, not having any idea what a dier ant was. "Yeah," he replied. "A Dier ant. I don't want to do any of the work. I just want to mate with the queen and die!" Well, at least he was listening when we read about the jobs of the male ants. They do only live for two to three days. Once they reach adulthood they fly out of the nest, mate with a new queen, and die. Apparently that life sounds pretty good to little Spence.

Day 3: The body of an ant-with extra attention on the three parts of an insect and the ants' exoskeleton. We took some of the ants out of our farm today and studied them in glass jars with magnifying glasses. These little creatures are really so interesting. I find myself staring into their little glass container more than I ever thought I would. Their life is so orderly. Watching them is soothing to me in a weird sort of way, kind of like some people calm down by watching fish.

Day 4: Constructing our own ants to reinforce what we learned on day 3. Tonight we watched Honey I Shrunk the Kids. If you remember, they get a pet ant while they're tiny. This was a great show to get a better look at an ant's body.





Day 5: Ant's antennas. We talked all about what they use them for, and did our own antenna experiments. (In other words, identifying things by our sense of smell.)

Day 6: Other ant experiments including what ants like to eat, how much they can carry, etc.

Day 7: Ant Colonies and Ant Hills.

Day 8: Constructing our own ant nest to reinforce what we learned on day 7.





Day 9: Different kinds of ants, including all of the varieties of Killer Ants. (Spencer loved the killer ants' war strategies!)

Day 10: Ant predators.

Day 11: Visit the Children's Museum Ant Exhibit and pretend to be ants!

Geography/ History Update

Well, we haven't really had a geography/history post since our Minnesota State post. We have; however, been doing geography/history, in our own sort of way. After doing units on Utah, Oklahoma, and Minnesota, (states mom and dad were raised in, and the one we currently live in) we have mostly just been learning about different states that we travel to. I bought quite a few state books, including a cook book, and a sticker chart so that we could keep track of what states we have been to since starting school last summer. Whenever we travel into a new state, we read all about that state in our books, mark the state on our map, and try to find some activities to do while we are there that coincide with what we've read.

For instance, when we went to Chicago, Illinois at the beginning of the year, we learned about the World's Fair there where they built the largest Ferris wheel, we read about Sue, the largest T-Rex Skeleton, and studied up on the Chicago fires. Then, while in Chicago, we visited the Ferris Wheel, went to see Sue, and sang that silly "Fire, Fire" song everywhere we went. We also ate Chicago Deep Dish Pizza--the recommended recipe in our cook book. We try and do this where ever we go so that the kids get a sense for different people and places. It's really quite fun.

Here is a picture of the kids holding up our sticker chart of where we have been since last June.



The states we have visited are: Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Iowa, Missouri, (We actually did a little Missouri state unit too, but that write up is in the family tree post.) Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, and Utah.

In the next six weeks we will also add Tennessee, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, North and South Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana. With this trip, we will have made it just over halfway through the Unites States! I'd say that's quite the accomplishment for our little home school.

We'll keep this up as we visit new states, but I've decided it's time to take on a little more serious study of history. Originally my plan was to learn about the USA as a nation (which we did), then learn something about all of the states (which we were in the middle of), then study some different countries (the ones in Epcot, remember) and then do small units on the seven continents. After that, we would finish up with space. This seemed like it would give the kids a general overview of the world before moving into a real history class. While I think this would have been nice, we have had a slight change in our plans. Last week, Nick found out that Mayo needed him to attend a conference in Washington D.C. the week after we finish our Florida rotation. After much consideration, we've decided to go ahead and drive from Florida up to D.C., attend the conference, and then head home from D.C. This will actually take us right past Jamestown and Colonial Williamsburg. So, I've decided to go ahead and dive into our American History Class.

During the month we're in Florida, we're going to hurry and cover early American exploration including Christopher Columbus and many, many others. This course of study will naturally introduce us to some other countries, but will hopefully do it in a more meaningful context than simply picking countries to study at random. After looking at early exploration, we can get straight into the Great Virginia Adventure, with a big focus on Jamestown. This will set the stage nicely for a visit to Jamestown.

After visiting Jamestown and Williamsburg, we'll only have a month or so of school left before taking our summer vacation. As a result, we will only be able to get through the puritans, pilgrims and Indians--a subject we did already in November, but one we'll review again briefly now. (We have to, after all, since we're going to try planting a plot of our garden with the three sisters method the pilgrims used. You'll hear more about this later.) Then we'll let history be for a while and pick back up in the fall with an in-depth look at the original thirteen colonies. Then we'll continue studying American history all the way up until our rotation in Boston during the month of November. By then we hope to have covered everything through the Revolutionary War so we can do some meaningful sightseeing while we're there. With this new plan, I'm not sure when we'll get to look at some of the continents not covered in our early exploration unit (Africa, Antarctica, and Australia), or at outer space, but hey, we'll get there someday. Maybe even when we have enough money to visit them--all except space that is. I don't think we'll ever have enough money to visit the moon!

Family Trees

As part of our ongoing unit on trees, I thought it would be fun to take the month of February, a month we normally celebrate love and family, and study family trees. I myself had just learned how to use the new family search program the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints put out, and it seemed like a good time to get the kids interested in genealogy work. Since we still hadn't gotten around to studying the state of Missouri, the birth place of the three older kids, I figured a good place to start our unit was with the kids own personal histories. As such, our first order of business was to talk to the kids about their individual entrances into the world. We talked about when I was pregnant with each of the kids, and of course, the day they were born. We looked through their baby books, their photo albums, and watched home videos. The kids absolutely loved the few days they each got to be spotlighted.

Following our week and a half of spotlighting, we then took a little bit of time to study the state of Missouri. During this time we made little books entitled Once Upon Time I lived in St. Louis. (I will scan one of these on for a different post on our family blog.) We printed out old pictures of our St. Louis house, our yard, and lots of the places that we used to love to go. During our last few weeks in St. Louis, I envisioned making these books, (though not in the context of homeschooling) and as such, I also took pictures before we moved of each of the kids with their best friends in town. These pictures would make up the last page of each of the kids books. The kids really enjoyed this project, and it helped them "remember" our time in their birth state.

We also took this opportunity to study the whole state of Missouri. We had already talked about the history and destiny of the state of Missouri as far as its religious heritage was concerned, i.e. as the sight of the garden of Eden, and as the place for the New Jerusalem. Now we also talked about more general state history. One of the things that impressed the kids most was the terrible earthquakes of 1811 and 1812 near New Madrid. These quakes were the nation's largest, so big in fact, that they caused the mighty Mississippi to temporarily flow backwards.

With their birth stories, memory books, and Missouri state history behind us, we then moved through our whole family tree and began a few more weeks of pictures and storytelling. Nick and I went first, showing our baby pictures and telling stories of our childhood. Then the kids got to call and Skype with their grandparents to hear their stories and stories about their parents and grandparents. I even sent letters to my grandparents, the kids' great-grandparents, and had them write down stories of their childhoods. The kids loved our daily family history lessons, and begged to hear more and more. They really internalized these stories too, and I could tell from the light in their faces as they listened that we were successfully planting the seeds of genealogy into their hearts. It was an awesome month long unit, and one of the reasons that I love homeschooling. The kids could never have learned all of this stuff at public school!

Here is a picture of Spencer (and Mase) holding the family tree that we made during our unit.
There were a few pictures missing when we took this picture, and eventually Mason got a hold of the tree and ate the faces off of it, but someday Nick and I want to put together a binder with another version of this tree so the kids can always look at it and remember their ancestry.



And here is a picture of Maddi that I took a few days after we finished our family tree unit. I asked her what she was up to and she proudly declared, "I'm playing in a one man band, just like great-great-Grandpa Carter used to do for you when you were a little girl!" Indeed, the music of great-great Grandpa Carter may be one of the most lasting impressions on my kids. They love it when I sing them his lullabies, and in truth, for some reason those lullabies sooth them more than any others. I like to believe it's because he is present beyond the veil when we remember him in this way. The kids also like it when I sing any of his other silly songs. They're even pretty amazing when it comes to knowing the words. Grandpa would be proud!

Spencer's Adventures on his Magical Boat

The Elf Princess and the Magic Marker

The Language Arts

Since our Geography/History classes are more spread out these days, I've decided to introduce a new segment into our home school to go with our regular math, reading, and science classes. This will be a language arts segment. It will consist mostly of reading different types of literature together. We will also do quite a bit of talking about the genre, as well as about the authors, and about basic story elements like: Setting, Characters, Plot, etc. The following types of literature will be included in this class:

Fairy tales
Tall tales
Legends and Myths (We have already done some work with Legends in our Native American Units, but we'll touch on it again.)
Fables
Allegories
And at Maddi's suggestion: Parables. (Perfect while we study the New Testament this year!)

During the month of January, we started with Fairy Tales. We talked about key features of fairy tales, and we read every fairy tale we could get our hands on. We also studied a few of the famous fairy tale writers like the brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Anderson. I can't say enough how much the kids loved this unit. During the course of the unit we bought over 12 fairy tale books to keep at our home and the kids still beg to have a daily fairy tale reading. One of the best parts of this unit was letting the kids write their very own fairy tale. We talked about characters, setting, and plot. Then I helped the kids actually write down their fairy tale story. I broke their story into pages for them, and each day for a week they typed up their fairy tales. Then we re-covered some of our old board books and pasted in their words. The kids then spent a full week illustrating their books. They were so proud of their work, and their fairy tales turned out really great. When Nick gets a chance I will have him scan in their books.

I think we'll do Tall Tales next, and I think we will do it much the same. Even though it is very time consuming letting them do their own books, I don't think the kids will have it any other way. We'll probably curb the writing of our own texts after tall tales though, just for the sake of time.

When we get through all of these types of literature, I want to turn our language arts into a poetry class. And believe me, when we get to poetry, we'll for sure go back to letting the kids try out writing poems of their very own.

What's the Weather?

Well, when you live in Minnesota, what else do you study in January other than Weather? And study weather we did. I found a few great children's books at our library that helped me to develop a fun three week Weather Unit. One of the books broke weather down into these three parts:

1. Temperature
2. Moisture in the Air
3. Air Pressure and Movement

We used these three things to structure our whole weather unit. First we talked about Temperature-what temperature is, how it is measured, how it is determined by the Sun and the Sun's position to the Earth, and the different temperatures during the course of a day as well as the course of a year. The kids started a temperature log that included entries four times a day for an entire week. This got us talking a little bit about our solar system, about the rotation of the earth, etc. which was an unexpected but fun tangent. (We'll have a full-blown space unit later.)

Next we talked about Moisture in the Air. We talked about humidity, dew, frost, clouds, and every type of precipitation we could think of. My kids (and I) enjoyed learning about what causes hail verses snow, which clouds are cumulus and which are cumulonimbus, and we still joke about the difference between a drizzle, a shower, and a rainstorm. During this section I started some weather flashcards so I could drill the kids on all of the weather terms they were learning. I also had them make a weather log--the first week we did a picture graph, and the second week we did a bar graph. (This tied in nicely with a graph unit we were doing in math class.) The most fun part of this section was that we did tons of experiments with weather. I'll list as many as I can remember:

First we tested humidity. We have a humidity reading on our thermometer so we could watch as the humidity changed. We turned on the shower scalding hot and let it run with the door closed for five minutes. Then we went in with our thermometer. We didn't need a thermometer to feel the change in the air quality; however, it was fun to watch the reading as we went from the regular house, into the bathroom, and then outside into the freezing cold.

We made clouds. First we watched how clouds are formed by many water droplets joining together. This was accomplished by taking wax paper and a dropper. The droplets merge together when you pick up the wax paper and move it slowly from side to side.



Then one of our books showed how to use a two-liter pop bottle, a spray bottle, and some matches to form a cloud right in your house.

We made it rain on our stove with boiling water and a pan of ice.



We made homemade thunder.

We made homemade lightening.

We "caught" rainbows with a mirror and a pan of water. (By "caught" I mean projected them onto our easel so that we could paint the colors.)

And we studied snowflakes. By freezing a piece of dark cloth (and then wrapping it around a frozen object) we were able to catch snowflakes and study them with a magnifying glass before they melted. We found a chart in one of our books on how the shapes of snowflakes change depending on the temperature. It was fun to catch snowflakes on different days and compare their shapes based on the outside temperature.



Our last section was Air Pressure and Wind. For this section we talked about air pressure systems, fronts, air masses etc. We are lucky to have an exhibit at our science museum on weather that was very helpful when teaching this section. We also spent quite a while talking about tornadoes and hurricanes. We watched tons of u-tube videos of actual tornadoes and hurricanes, and well as talked about safety during storms.

To cap off our unit, we got weather bingo cards and instead of playing it the regular way, we watched the news every night over the course of a week and marked all of the items that were mentioned during the weather segment. The kids loved it, and it helped them understand a little about forecasting.

While I initially thought weather would be a pretty mundane unit, it actually worked out to be a lot of fun. And I have to say, as usual, I learned as much as the kids. Now I understand so much better about cold and warm fronts, as well as high and low pressure systems. It's like having a whole new level of understanding if I ever watch the weather.