My son is testing rocks to try and identify unknown specimens for science this week. I have lots of labeled rock samples for him to test.
Algebra Readiness Assessment Test Review
September 25, 2011 By 4 Comments
My 12 year old son is just starting 7th grade, and almost ready to start Algebra. At least I think he is ready to start Algebra, but how can I be sure? Seventh grade is kind young for Algebra, so maybe I am just pushing him into Algebra early and becoming one of those annoying homeschoolers who likes to say her child is advanced! I recently had the chance to have my son take an algebra readiness assessment test, so I could get an outside evaluation of his skills, and feel confident about what class to teach him.
Wordless Wednesday–Dry Ice Fun
September 21, 2011 By 32 Comments
I got some frozen fruit bars to review yesterday, and they came packed in dry ice. So of course we had to have fun doing some science experiments with the dry ice!
Sixty Minute Shakespeare Review and Giveaway
September 8, 2011 By 17 Comments
Sixty-Minute Shakespeare Series: Macbeth (Classics for All Ages)
By Cass Foster
The Sixty Minute Shakespeare series is designed to provide a shorter, simpler version of Shakespeare, while still retaining the main points of the story and the language. These books shorten the plays, but don’t modernize them. I was primarily interested in this series for using in homeschooling my 12 year old son, but now that I’ve seen it I think many adults would enjoy it as well. It is a great way to enjoy the beauty of Shakespeare’s language without devoting long hours to reading it. Reading Shakespeare’s original plays is certainly worthwhile, but lets face it, takes time. These would be excellent to read before going to a performance of one of the plays, and the extra exposure would add to the enjoyment of the performance. [Read more...]
Tackle it Tuesday–Organizing the Closet
September 6, 2011 By 3 Comments
This year I wanted to be more organized with my homeschooling, because I have noticed that the more organized I am, the smoother our days run. So I set out to organize the closet in the dining room where I store all of our books and supplies. Here it is the “Before”, overflowing with 13 years of homeschool stuff, and the “After”.
This Year’s 7th Grade Homeschool Curriculum
August 2, 2011 By 1 Comment
At Heart of the Matter is sponsoring a “Not Back-to-School” Blog Hop for all homeschoolers to join in and share what they are using this year. We don’t start school until after Labor Day here in New York, so I still have quite a bit of time, which is good because I still have some stuff to plan and buy. This year I just have my son homeschooling for 7th grade, since my oldest is off to college and my 15 year old wants to go to the local public school. Since I’ve taught 7th grade before (twice) this should be pretty easy, and I shouldn’t need to buy any new curriculum, right?
Natural Easter Eggs for Earth Day
April 22, 2011 By Leave a Comment
My son and I finished dying our Easter eggs this week. We made it a science experiment and used natural ingredients to color the eggs. The colors aren’t necessarily as bright, but it is fun and is neat to see the colors you can get from natural materials. This year I didn’t plan ahead, so we were limited to using what we already had in the house, which affected our results somewhat. Here is what we used.
- Red Cabbage – Although we have made natural dyed Easter eggs before I have not used red cabbage before. I still had some red cabbage from our Red Cabbage Acid/Base science experiments a few weeks ago. So we chopped up lot of red cabbage and added it to the pot with the eggs we were boiling.
After 15 minutes the eggs were hard boiled, and the water was purple, but the eggs were still white. So we cooled the eggs and the cabbage juice and soaked the eggs in the juice in the refrigerator for a few hours. The results was gorgeous blue eggs. Some of them were more teal green when they dried, and they all look very nice. I think we are going to use red cabbage again for this, I had no idea the eggs would be such a vibrant blue. - Carrot Tops – I read online that carrot tops would make yellow eggs, so we decided to try those.
Again, we chopped the tops up and put them in the pot with the eggs we were cooking. By the time the eggs were done they had turned a very pale yellow. We decided they weren’t yellow enough, so we put them in the cooled liquid to soak in the refrigerator. After a few hours the color was better, but it is still a pretty pale yellow. Yellow one of the easiest colors to get, and we have got a brighter yellow with turmeric in the past. - Grape Juice – We wanted purple eggs, so we decided to try grape juice. We soaked hard boiled eggs in grape juice for a few hours and got purple eggs , but the color is very uneven.
I only had sparkling grape juice, and my guess is the carbonation messed up the color transfer. This is one of those cases where a little planning on my part would have probably given us better results, and next year we will try with regular grape juice. - Onion Skins – We felt we needed an orange or red to round our our color palette. The only thing we had in the house that would make red was pomegranate juice, and my kids love pomegranate juice and wouldn’t let me “waste” it on eggs. So we fell back on onion skins, which are easy and yield a beautiful, bright orange color. For onion skins we didn’t need to soak the eggs in the liquid, 15 minutes of boiling in water with onion skins was plenty to color the eggs. My saucepan is now also stained orange, but I suppose the color will wear off eventually.
We have enough hard boiled eggs now, so attempts to get red and a good green will have to wait until next year. If anyone knows what makes a good green please comment and let me know, I’ve never been successful at anything more than a very pale green.
Wordless Wednesday–Owl Pellet Dissection
April 13, 2011 By 3 Comments
A fun science project that isn’t as gross as it sounds. You can get owl pellets and instructions at Home Training Tools. For more Wordless Wednesday check out 5 Minutes for Mom.
LHS GEMS Homeschool Science Curriculum
April 7, 2011 By 1 Comment
Since I have been homeschooling for 13 years now I’ve used a lot of different resources and curriculum. So I though it might be useful to start posting some curriculum reviews, especially some of the less well known things I’ve used. One of my favorite things to use for science is the LHS GEMS series. GEMS stands for Great Explorations in Math and Science, and these are relatively short, stand alone booklets on a specific science topic. There are over 70 guides on all different subjects, so there is bound to be something interesting for everyone. I think for science it is very important (and fun too) to do lots of hands on activities, because if you just focus on text books science becomes boring. LHS GEMS teacher’s guides are nice because they are organized and easy to use, and don’t take any specialized knowledge. We can usually work through one of the guides in a week or so, which makes a fun break from our normal routine.
This year my son has been studying chemistry, so we have done a few of the chemistry GEMS. We recently finished the Chemical Reactions guide, and Of Cabbages and Chemistry. They are designed for the classroom, so some things have to be modified for a home setting. Plus you do have to put the supplies together yourself, and sometimes I have had to order chemicals or supplies. For the Cabbages and Chemistry book we didn’t need any special supplies, we just made cabbage juice from a red cabbage, and tested the pH of various household chemicals. We improvised and used shot glasses for test tubes.
The next one we are planning to do is Vitamin C Testing. For this we need to buy a chemical to use as a Vitamin C indicator, but it only costs about $6 to order. Or we can make our own indicator using cornstarch and iodine, which would be educational in itself, so we will probably do that. The Vitamin C Testing GEMS is currently out of print, and is available as a free download on the website here, so if you are interested in checking the curriculum out it would be great one to download and look at. I’ll post how well our homemade indicator worked in a few weeks. After we finish Vitamin C Testing we are going to close out the year with Crime Lab Chemistry, which teaches about chromatography. So if you are looking for something more than a text book to use for science check out these booklets.
Wordless Wednesday–Maple Sugaring
March 23, 2011 By 1 Comment
We went on a Maple Sugaring field trip last week, and learned how to collect sap and boil it for maple syrup. My son even got to do a taste test between real maple syrup and store bought syrup – he liked the store bought syrup best! He came home excited to tap our maple trees, but I’m pretty sure we have silver maples, not sugar maples.
Check out 5 Minutes for Mom for more Wordless Wednesday.
