Homeschool Day 10/15 + Barn Owl Pellet Lab

 This is our athletic co-op day, so we have a shortened school schedule today.

4th Grader

Sonlight D (history, Bible and literature)

• My First Catechism
• A Lion to Guard Us

Sonlight Readers 3/LA

• A Long Way to a New Land
• Handwriting without Tears cursive

Math

• Beast Academy

Abeka's 4th Grade Science

• Bird Design
• Birdwatching outside again
• Barn Owl Pellet Lab - we bought an owl pellet kit and dissected it, identifying the skeletal remains we found.  We looked at some of the teeth and bones with the hand microscope.

Here are pictures from the Barn Owl pellet dissection:

12th Grader

• Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales
• Mathusee Stewardship
• ASL Basics
• Dual enrollment courses at the college

Homeschool Day 6/19

 3rd Grader

Math

• Singapore Math

Sonlight Reading/Language Arts 2

• The Fire Cat
• Spelling
• Cursive practice
• Explode the Code

Sonlight B (history, Bible and literature)

• The Ology
• National Geographic poetry reader
• Catching their Talk in a Box

Science

• Apologia's Land Animals of the Sixth Day

Art

• Draw Write Now 4
• Orcas

Extras

• Swimming 

11th Grader

Bible

• She watched another video explaining the Book of Job

Science

• Crash Course Anatomy - the digestive system, part 2
• Sheep Kidney Dissection
• Her brother, the nursing student, did this dissection with her and did a spectacular job explaining everything to her

Salem Witch Trials Unit Study

• Read The Witch of Blackbird Pond
• Watched TED Talk video "What Really Happened During the Salem Witch Trials"
• Artist study 
• Sculpture at the MET "The Pilgrim"
• Painting - "Trial of George Jacobs Sr for Witchcraft"
• Drawing - "The Execution of Mrs. Ann Hibbins"

Trail Guide to US Geography

• Maine
• Mapwork

Homeschool Day 6/13

 3rd Grader

Math

• Singapore Math

Sonlight Reading/Language Arts 2

• Spelling
• Explode the Code
• Handwriting practice
• He read The Fire Cat

Sonlight B (history, Bible and literature)

• Read-alouds from the IG
• We finished Kate and Mack

Science

• Apologia's Land Animals of the Sixth Day

Extras

• Karate class

11th Grader

Bible

• She watched the Bible Project's video on the Book of Lamentations

Science

• Sheep Heart Dissection
• Heart is from the organ dissection kit from Home Science Tools
• Included a dissection guide, but we also used a dissection video we found on You Tube

Literature & History

• The Days of Elijah
• We watched Crash Course US History's The Seven Years War (Youtube)

Extras

• We talked about what she liked this past school year and what she wanted to do differently.  She said she would like to go back to doing unit studies.  She feels like choosing materials herself to study is daunting lately and she has always enjoyed unit studies.  She also seems to want to do more school together instead of just on her own.  We may say 'good-bye' to unschooling for now.

Brain Dissection: 5/3

 2nd Grader

• I finally caved and paid money for a dyslexia evaluation. He tested as severely dyslexic.  He scored as having issues with subword processing, word level reading, visual attention and passage level reading.  
• They have an action plan, so I need to sift through his scores and look at the action plan again

10th Grader

Bible

• She finished the Book of Psalms

History & Literature

• The Days of Elijah
• John Hersey's Hiroshima

Science

• Wicked Plants: The Weed That Killed Lincoln's Mother and Other Botanical Atrocities
• Brain Dissection
• We did it!  We dissected a sheep brain from Home Science Tools.  We located nerves, the spinal cord, the medulla oblongata, the pituitary gland, the cerebrum, the cerebellum, the meninges, the corpus collosum, etc.
• We did a longitudinal dissection and then a perpendicular dissection to see the arbor vitae and the grey/white matter

4/17: Tons of Science Today

 2nd Grader

Math

• Singapore Math
• We played Snakes and Ladders

Sonlight Reading/Language Arts

• Copywork
• He read his Sonlight reader
• Handwriting practice- capitals

Science

• Our butterfly chrysalises from Insect Lore hatched and five butterflies survived!
• Apologia's Land Animals of the Sixth Day
• Bears

Sonlight B (history, Bible and literature)

• Gooney Bird Greene (read-aloud)
• Time Traveler
• The Ology
• Hands-on History Box
• We made the final project - the Roman chariot!

10th Grader

Writing & Grammar

• They Say, I Say writing course she's taking with a friend - persuasive essay

STEM/Technology

• 30 Days Lost in Space circuitry/coding kit
• She programmed the hero board to accept a code on a keypad
• This took a big chunk of the morning

Science

• DNA Extraction Lab Kit from Home Science Tools
• This worked wonderfully
• We extracted DNA from her cheek cells and suspended it in a 95% alcohol solution

Extras

• She is choreographing a short dance from the Royal Ballet's Romeo & Juliet to perform on stage during the homeschool center's end of year recital
• Ballet classes (at the ballet school)

Homeschool Day 4/12

 2nd Grader

Math

• Singapore Math

Sonlight Reading/Language Arts

• He wrote his spelling words
• He read his Sonlight reader
• Grammar exercise
• He's reading his dyslexia reader at night before bed

Science

• Apologia's Land Animals of the Sixth Day

Sonlight B (history, literature and Bible)

• Kate and Mack book
• The Ology
• Usborne's Time Traveler
• Read-aloud: Gooney Bird Greene
• We're reading Beverly Cleary's Socks before bed

Extras

• Wednesday night church activities

10th Grader

Bible

• Reading through Psalms

Math

• Mathusee Geometry

Grammar & Writing

• She wrote a rough draft of her persuasive essay for the They Say, I Say class she's taking with a friend
• Easy Grammar 10th Grade Ultimate workbook

Science

• Wicked Plants: The Weed that Killed Lincoln's Mother and Other Botanical Atrocities
• We watched the video: "How Mendel's Pea Plants Helped us Understand Genetics"
• DNA Lab: we did karyotyping - matching chromosomes using their centromeres, sizes and stains
• We talked about tetraploidy, quadraploidy, Turner syndrome, and XYY syndrome

History & Literature

• Days of Elijah

Extras

• Practicing ukulele
• Wednesday night church activities

We were finished with everything by about 1pm.

Nature Walk, Amazing Bird IDs, Photography: 3/9

 The weather is too nice to do school inside.  

So we did:

• Nature walk
• We used the Merlin Bird ID app (from Cornell University) to identify birds on the walk.  We identified:
• Red-winged blackbird
• Northern Mockingbird
• Mourning Dove
• White-winged Dove
• Savannah Sparrow
• Great-Tailed Grackle
• American Robin
• Northern Cardinal
• Greater Yellowlegs
• Eastern Bluebird
• House Finch
• American Goldfinch
• It was an amazing assortment of birds we found today
• 10th grader brought her DSLR camera and did some photography
• 10th grader did Mathusee Geometry
• I finished the Sonlight read-aloud Word of Mouse with the 2nd grader
• Both kids have ballet classes today

Homeschool Day 1/10: Flower Dissection Lab

 Flower Dissection Lab

We had specimens from the following flowers: Euphorbia, Haworthia, Tropical Hibiscus, orange Bird of Paradise and Purple Heart Tradescantia.

We identified:

• xylem
• phloem
• stamen
• anthers
• carpel
• ovules
• petals
• receptacle
• sepals
• pedicel
• pollen grains

We looked at the petals and pollen grains under the microscope.  It was a great dissection.

Tropical Hibiscus

Very clear dissection

Petal with pollen grains under the 3D microscope

Leaves from a bird of paradise

Botany Lab: Plant Slides

 We looked at the difference between Monocot and Dicot stems under the microscope.  We also looked at Zea mays cells (corn), Ranunculus cells (buttercups) and onion cells.

Here are the Zea mays slides - this is a monocot, because the vascular bundles are not in a clear ring around the edge of the stem.  The vascular bundles are in a random arrangement.

Also, these pictures are terrible, because it is really hard to take a picture with your phone through the eyepiece of a microscope.

Slice of a root (corn)- Monocot

Slice of a stem (corn) - Monocot

Onion cells with clear cell walls and nuclei.  One cell is undergoing mitosis.

I didn't take pictures of the ranunculus, but I should have.  It was clearly a dicot, with a ring of vascular bundles around the edge of the stem, with a pith in the center.

  

PlantSnap - plant ID app

 I just downloaded PlantSnap, an app for plant identification.  Here's the link: https://www.plantsnap.com

The app was free.  I went outside and took a picture of a plant.  The app has you move the image and expand it into a box, then it tells you what the plant is.  It gave me the common name, scientific name, a description, some of its classification (kingdom, division) and then there are options to learn more about the plant from tutorials on PlantSnap's Youtube channel.  Near the description of the plant, you click on the three vertical dots, click "watch tutorials" and it takes you to the videos of that plant species.  

There is an option for a premium version.

Homeschool Day 7/5

 2nd Grader

Math

• Life of Fred Apples
• Addition flashcards

Reading

• He read an Easy Reader book to me

Language Arts

• Handwriting without Tears

Science

• The Good and Beautiful Marine Biology
• We looked at the Pelagic Zones in the ocean using this website: https://neal.fun/deep-sea/.  This website is incredible!  At least, the 7 year-old thought it was.

Sonlight B World History 1 (Bible, literature and history)

• All the usual Sonlight readings

10th Grader

Math

• Mathusee Geometry

Bible

• Daily Bible reading
• Mere Christianity (CS Lewis)

Easy Grammar 10th Grade Ultimate series

Science (Biology)

• Ellen McHenry's Protozoa 
• Foraminiferans
• Radiolarians
• LAB: Boy, this was a nasty lab.  We took the bacterial cultures that we prepared yesterday and identified the bacteria by shape under the microscope.
• One culture was clearly Cocci bacteria - I'm guessing staphylococcus.
• One culture had a mix of cocci and bacilli. (the swab of the dog paw)
• The culture from the dog's teeth looked like cocci bacteria
• We read about how different antibiotics work for killing different kinds of bacteria
• We talked about how autoclaves work

Bookshark J History of Science (history and literature)

• We only had time to read The Thief (the literature selection)

Art

• She sketched using pastel sticks on mixed media paper

Homeschool Day 7/4

 2nd Grader

Math

• Mathusee Alpha 

Reading

• Ordinary Parents' Guide to Teaching Reading

Language Arts

• All About Spelling 1

Science

• The Good and Beautiful Marine Biology unit study

Music Appreciation

• Easy Peasy Ancients Music Appreciation

Sonlight B World History 1 (Bible, literature and history)

10th Grader

Math

• Mathusee Geometry

Easy Grammar 10th Grade Ultimate workbook

Bible

• Daily Bible reading
• Mere Christianity (CS Lewis)

Science (Biology)

• LAB: Last week, we cultured bacteria on Petri dishes.  One dish was a swab of her teeth before brushing and one was a swab of her teeth after brushing.  Today, we looked at the results.  The Petri dish "after brushing" had significantly less bacteria on it.  We looked at the bacteria under the microscope.
• LAB Set-up: We set up three more Petri dishes.  I'm going to check for bacterial growth around Thursday.
• 1 - a swab of the dog's teeth along the gum line
• 2 - a swab from underneath the dog's paw
• 3 - a swab from an open sore on skin (yep, really gross)

Music Appreciation

• Easy Peasy High School Music Appreciation (this is surprisingly pleasant)

Bookshark J History of Science (literature and history)

• I added a writing assignment.  She wrote a short narration on the reading.

Pond Culture - Two weeks later

UPDATE: After doing some online research, we've figured out that these are Infusoria.  They eat phytoplankton.  They love decaying plant matter and you can actually culture these (which we accidentally did).

Two weeks ago, the 14 year-old and I collected pond water samples from a local pond.  When we looked through the microscope the same day the water was collected, there were a few protists on the slide.  We placed the remaining water sample into a jar with decaying plant matter.  The water sat unattended for two weeks.  

Today, we made new slides of the water to see if anything has changed.  There was a dramatic increase in microscopic life.  Here are a couple of videos of what we saw under the microscope.

Homeschool Day 4/13

 Kindergartener

• Listened to me read aloud The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.  This was originally supposed to be for the 13 year-old, but he listened quietly to the entire second chapter, so I guess I'll invite him in to listen when I read it again tomorrow
• Played in the woods, skipped rocks in a creek, played on the playground
• Went with me to run errands

13 Year-old

• Algebra - we worked through a number of slope + y-intercept problems together on the dry erase board
• Language Lessons for the Secondary Child
• Free reading.  She read Because of Winn-Dixie and I read aloud The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
• Anatomy reading - the integumentary system
• History 
• video: "Hiroshima Dropping the Bomb - BBC"
• video: "Nagasaki Bomb and Surrender - BBC"
• finish movie: Defiance
• Timeline figures (from History in the Woods) - we worked through all the timeline figures for WWI and WWII.  We reviewed/discussed them and taped them onto our wall timeline.  This took about half an hour, but it was a great review!
• Went walking in the woods and skipped rocks in a creek

16 Year-old

• Algebra - we worked through several problems together
• Language Lessons for the High School Student - editing
• German together - we are about done with the Komm Mit 2 text
• Scarlet Letter Unit Study
• The Scarlet Letter
• Whatever Happened to Justice
• The Fallacy Detective
• History 

• video: "Hiroshima Dropping the Bomb - BBC"
• video: "Nagasaki Bomb and Surrender - BBC"
• finish movie: Defiance
• Timeline figures (from History in the Woods) - we worked through all the timeline figures for WWI and WWII.  We reviewed/discussed them and taped them onto our wall timeline.  This took about half an hour, but it was a great review!
• Went walking in the woods and skipped rocks in a creek
• Apologia Biology LAB - from the chapter on Plants - we collected about 15 tree leaves and went through the book classifying the leaves by shape, branch orientation, lay-out of the leaf's veins, edging, etc.  We went to a park in the woods for this lab, brought our textbook and just sat in the grass going through the different kinds of leaves that she found 

Homeschool Day 3/29

 Five more weeks left of this "semester" - even thought we school year-round and it really doesn't matter.  But, I have been keeping track.

Kindergartener

• Summer's Lab science - what is living and what is non-living (kinda obvious, right?).  This led to a discussion of cells, looking at onion cells under a microscope, looking at a model of a cell and watching an animation of the inner life of a cell.  This is actually a fun video - made by Harvard.    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_zD3NxSsD8  We also watched a video of bacteriophages attacking an E. coli bacteria.  (He's really interested in cells for some reason)
• We read I Am a Booger: Treat Me With Respect - yes, it was gross
• We read Far North in the Arctic: Counting Alaska's Animals
• I Spy! Extreme Challenger - we did one of the challenges
• Ballet class today

13 Year-old

• Gospel of John
• Algebra video
• Language Lessons for the Secondary Child
• Free reading
• She read To Kill a Mockingbird, I read Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH
• History video: "WWI: The Aftermath"
• I'm going to try to find All Quiet on the Western Front tonight on streaming
• Anatomy reading
• Ballet class today

Our cat sleeping on To Kill a Mockingbird.  Maybe the title of the book was interesting to her.

16 Year-old

• 2 Samuel
• Algebra 2 video
• Also Ballet Class
• Language Lessons for the High School Student
• History video: "WWI: The Aftermath"
• She'll also watch All Quiet on the Western Front if I can find it tonight 
• Scarlet Letter Unit Study
• Read The Scarlet Letter
• Researched Cotton Mather and write a short narration about who he was
• Read "The Witches of Salem" from The New Yorker
• Whatever Happened to Justice
• The Fallacy Detective
• Apologia Biology: Crayfish Dissection lab.  We followed along with this video during the dissection:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQ79ivCgNe8

This was probably one of the more disgusting dissections.  Its leg and claw popped off right away and the smell lingered around for several hours.  We were able to find everything in the dissection video, though.  A success!  

Homeschool Day 3/17

 Kindergartener

• eh...he skipped school today.  He went to Home Depot and looked at plants and played all day.

13 Year-old

• Gospel of John
• Algebra workbook page
• Language Lessons for the Secondary Child
• Free reading from her book crate.  She finished A Treasury of Poetry for Young People
• She read To Kill a Mockingbird, I read Mrs. Frisby
• She also went to Home Depot, which meant we didn't do more than we would've

16 Year-old

• 2 Samuel
• Algebra workbook
• Language Lessons for the Secondary Child
• Health - reading
• Scarlet Letter Unit Study
• Read The Scarlet Letter
• Whatever Happened to Justice?
• The Fallacy Detective
• Apologia Biology - Earthworm Dissection. Boy, this was disgusting.  Surprisingly, we were able to identify the organs, including the ganglia.  I didn't think we would be able to, but our worm dissection abilities exceeded our expectations!  Yuck!

We ordered this earthworm from Home Science Tools.  It was huge and she didn't want to touch it.

Probably much easier to see in real life and not on a computer screen, but we were able to find all of its organs.  Dissection pins are an absolute must when you do dissection labs!  They really help.

Homeschool Day 1/21

 Kindergartener

• Math workbook page
• Handwriting without Tears - one workbook page + working with the capital letter chalkboard
• Read a story from the Reader - All About Reading
• Played Playdough

Five in a Row - Mirette on a High Wire

We went through the art sections in the teacher's guide.  We also got out some watercolor paints and paper.  We made a color wheel with complementary colors - paired blue/orange, red/green, and purple/yellow. 

13 Year-old

•  Watched an algebra lesson
• Language Lessons for the Secondary Child
• Worked on spelling the books of the Old Testament
• Free reading from her book crate and I read aloud
• Apologia's Anatomy & Physiology - still reading about skeletal muscles.  I came to a realization today that she is getting more information from this middle school anatomy text than the high school sophomore is getting from her high school level Health course (ACE).  I've already been beefing up her labs with high school level labs to accompany the textbook.  She participated in several of the high schooler's biology labs at this point already.  If I can add a unit on First Aid/CPR, I'm planning to give her a half credit in Health.  She's literally covering the exact same material as the high school health course, but in better detail.  Because she wants to be a dentist, I plan to go through Apologia's Human Anatomy course anyway in a few years.
• Ballet class

15 Year-old

• Algebra 2 - we have reached a point where there are only a couple of lessons left of solving algebraic equations.  I'm now having trouble solving them.  I completely forgot about the Quadratic Formula.  I'm trying to remind her that there's light at the end of the tunnel.  After this unit is measurements and more graphing.  Then, on to Precalculus.
• Wordsmith Craftsman - I'm dropping this after this week - this isn't working out
• Huckleberry Finn
• Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
• German together
• Music Appreciation - last week, she asked, "What's bluegrass??"  Well, you're going to find out!  She listened to Earl Scruggs and Friends 'Foggy Mountain Breakdown' - a famous bluegrass song used in car chase scenes in old movies
• Apologia Biology - lab 3.2
• Ballet class

LAB 3.2

This lab entailed viewing different slides of protists under the microscope.  These are slides you can buy as part of a kit through Home Science Tools.  The protists are dyed, so you can see them more clearly.  Here's some examples of what we could see in our microscope:

Paramecium

Volvox

From my understanding, the circles that look like lily pads are the individual cells.  They group themselves together in colonies - which is what the pink bag-like thing is that's surrounding them.

We saw this under the microscope - it looks like the colony broke apart.

I love Apologia Biology and basically anything from Home Science Tools.  This is the third time I've taught this course and I really enjoy all the labs.

Homeschool Day 1/15

 Kindergartener

Ok, he listened to the hymn with us and looked at the bacteria under the microscope, but other than that, he got into everything...ransacked the living room...trashed his room...jumped on the couch and looked out the window, screaming...it was not a good day.  sigh..

13 and 15 Year-olds

They mostly worked together today on Bible and finishing the bacterial colony lab.  15 year-old also read The History of Medicine and worked on her Health course.  She also had her Musical Theater class at the enrichment center.

Bible

• Hymn Study - read the background info for the hymn "Amazing Grace" and listened to a version of it
• Saint Study - we didn't do a saint study this time, because we did the Angels & Demons study from this Lutheran Homeschool site:  https://www.lutheranhomeschool.com/product/angels-demons-a-bible-study-anthology/  This study was incredible.  We worked through the entire thing (all 50 pages) in one sitting.  We spent a bulk of our time on Christian Dogmatics by Theodore Mueller, published in 1934.  Excellent!  The reason why we did this study in one sitting is because the teens didn't want to stop reading it.

Bacterial Colonization Lab

Procedure:

• 10 agar plates with 10 sterile swabs
• The teens dampened each swab with sterile water
• They swabbed ten different household items
• They ran the swabs over the agar plates
• Plates were sealed and place in a warm, dark area for 4 days
• We opened the plates today and compared bacterial growth between the 10 items
• We took samples of the colonies, smeared them onto microscope slides and examined them under the microscope

Results:

List of items from the MOST bacterial colonies to the LEAST (most disgusting to least disgusting)

1. Bottom of dog paw
2. Aquarium water
3. Kindergartener's palm (yep.  We are going to have a little talk.)
4. Exterior of a worn medical mask
5. Interior of a worn medical mask
6. Laptop keyboard (at this point, these items #6-10  had very, very few colonies)
7. Headphones
8. Bottom of cat paw (ironically, one of the cleanest things on the list)
9. Unused mask
10. Inside of a toilet (yes, this was literally the cleanest thing on the list - which was shocking)

Some pictures of the bacteria under the microscope:

I'm assuming this is bacillus bacteria.

Close-up, this also looks like bacillus.

The picture didn't end up as clear as it looked through the microscope, but these looked like clusters of grapes.  They were also much tinier than the bacillus bacteria.  I'm wondering if they weren't cocci bacteria?

College Students

College freshman made an appointment for his TSI testing.  He did a practice test for the math and only missed a couple of questions, so I think he feels better about it.  

College sophomore is all ready for school on Monday.  She is trying to buy a used camera for her photography class.  They're supposed to develop their own film in the darkroom at the college.  Her classes for the semester: Developmental Psychology, Intro to Speech Communications, Intro to Horticulture, Photography I, and Nutrition.