Crime scene in my bathroom

One of my favorite things about homeschooling is being able to tailor education. If a child is particularly interested in a certain topic, I can take that topic and cover a multitude of subjects and lessons with it. They stay engaged, because they are interested.

Tyler has been interested in forensics and crime scene stuff for a while. This year we are doing a huge CSI unit. It's going to be so much fun! Through it he will learn all about forensics, obviously. But he will also practice math and reasoning, do a lot of research and writing, not to mention problem solving and creative thinking. I could cover these subjects in lots of ways, but why not use an avenue he is already interested in and intrigued by?

We are going through this book of forensic labs. It teaches how to lift fingerprints, how to interpret blood splatters, how to take an impression, along with lots of other crime scene activities.

We are reading through this DK Eyewitness book. I love these books. They are so full of information and great photos.

Today we talked about securing the crime scene. Tyler read all about the importance of details and how carefully all evidence is collected. He learned about how each piece of evidence is marked, measured, sketched and recorded.
Then he opened the door to a crime scene in our bathroom *cue creepy music*. He had everything he needed to secure and record the scene.

Gasp! A movie ticket??
Ewww...a "blood" splatter...and a hair.
Zoinks! A footprint!

After collecting, measuring, sketching, and recording everything, he went to work problem-solving. He wrote about each piece of evidence and the different ways it could possibly be used to help solve the crime.It's going to be a fun study! More to come!

A little science on the fly

On a recent long lunch at the lake with our friends, we came across some unexpected science.

Yikes.

Immediately Cole was requesting that our next study be on snakes. Gulp. So we went to the library and checked out lots of snake books. We have been learning so much about snakes (sorry Grammy)! We found books with tons of amazing photos and interesting information. Each day we have read a book or two, reviewed fun new facts, discussed new vocabulary words we find in the books, and just for fun, made crafts I found by googling "snake crafts."

These were made from a paper plate.

These were made from old ties, stuffing, and coat hangers.

Then today we came upon more unexpected science. Apparently a bird or something grabbed a perch out of our pond and lost him as he flew away. The kids found the newly dead perch on the shore and wanted to dissect it.

And because I was off my game due to the stifling humidity, I couldn't come up with a reason why we shouldn't participate in this smelly activity, so we dug in. (I know, dug in, that was good, right?)

We investigated his mouth and how it expands, we propped it open and looked at the tongue and all of the teeth. We did some in depth eye exploration *shudder*. We neatly sliced the side of him open and found his air bladder. The air bladder is the pocket that allows the fish to be buoyant (among other things). And no, I certainly did not know this until today. And we marveled once again at God's creativity.

It was definitely gross. But fun! And it ended in a big water hose fight. You can't beat that.

This is the kind of natural learning that sticks with you!

Oh, barf.

We have moved into studying Seasonal Forests with our Planet Earth unit. We have been learning a lot about animals that live in the forests and we are focusing on owls this week. Also,Riley and Cole are doing the Five in a Row book Owl Moon.

One of the most interesting things about owls is how they digest their food. First, they swallow their prey whole. Their stomachs digest everything except the fur and the bones of the animal they swallowed. After digestion, their stomach compresses the bones and fur into a pellet and the owl throws up this dry fur ball of a pellet.

You see where this is going, don't ya? Gulp.

There are companies out there that make a living off of collecting these owl pellets and sterilizing them and selling them to people for science lessons.

I know.

So we had to do it. We just had to. It's like a treasure hunt. If you happen to consider rodent skeletons to be treasure. And it was sterilized, after all.

But don't think for a second that didn't stop me from boiling my children's hands in water and then soaking them in alcohol when we were done.

You just break apart the pellet...

And start pulling away fur...see, it's not so scary...

Look! a tibia!

And a tiny mouse skull!

You can download all kinds of sheets to use with this activity, like this bone identification sheet.

Come on, you know you want to do it. You can order them at http://www.pelletsinc.com/

A science flop!

Sometimes your amazing lessons just don't work out! Today we were learning about venom and venomous sea animals. We did an experiment that I found here to learn about denaturing venom. Venom is a protein and can be coagulated so that it does not absorb. This is done with heat treatment. Here is the experiment and what I learned!

First you crack an egg into a bowl.

Remove the yolk. This leaves you with the white which is a protein, similar to the protein found in venom.

Put a little egg white on the back of someone's hand. Place a hot compress on top of it.

What was supposed to happen: The egg white was supposed to become a solid that could be peeled off, demonstrating how they denature venom.

What happened: Garrett ended up with a really hot, red hand covered in liquid egg whites!

We still got the idea of the experiment, and because of all the trial and error we used the word coagulate so much that I know at least they are familiar with that! If you want to try an experiment like this just cook your egg white a different way. Not as cool as it solidifying on your hand, but they'll get the point. Oh, and if you are going to put a lot of heat on someone's hand, don't use your high-pain-tolerate-kid, you may end up with second degree burns!

Our first day 2008

Today was our first day of school. We spent the day looking at our new stuff and discussing what we would be doing. It was fun just hanging out and talking and getting back into a routine.

We looked through a book about nature journaling, and then went on a nature walk. I love nature walks because they help everyone appreciate the beauty that is around us and they always naturally lead to other lessons.

Does anyone else find this funny? We are in the middle of nature finding all kinds of cool nature things and what do you know, we find a cherry. From our Hi-Ho-Cherrio game.

Riley sketched a couple of things she found. These things led us into a conversation where I introduced her to compound words as she labeled her mushroom. We also talked about past tense and writing -ed when she wrote uprooted. I love the natural progression of learning this way.

Garrett and Tyler were looking at something with a magnifying glass which led to
melting chocolate with a magnifying glass in the sun...

And that led to…you guessed it, lighting leaves on fire with a magnifying glass, which led to a lovely lesson in fire safety and why burning our house down in the name of a science experiment could possibly lead to regret…and how we must try to avoid regret. Anyone feelin' an "If You give a Mouse a Cookie" book comin' on?

We also did our traditional diet coke and mentos experiment that we always do on the first day.

And then we took a break for showers.

We ended our day by meeting David at Incredible Pizza to celebrate the beginning of our school year.

I can not tell you how thankful I feel today that I get to do this with my kids. Sure it is challenging sometimes, but we are smack in the middle of each other’s lives, and I couldn’t be happier. It is truly a blessing.

As we get started on some of our units this week I will be posting what we are doing so stay tuned!

Tyler's solar system experiments

We based Tyler's astronomy this year off of the Apologia Astronomy. It had some good reading and ideas for experiments.
Learning how different types of craters are made

Learning about the magnetic pull in the earth by making a compass.

Making a volcano

Nature Studies

We put a lot of focus on nature studies. It is great for building curiosity, research, and learning to appreciate our surroundings. In doing nature studies, we can cover writing, language, science, research skills, and art. We put things we learn about nature into our nature notebooks. They are 3-ring binders with page protectors for each page. They end up being kind of a scrapbook of our findings. Here are some samples of the types of things we do for our notebooks. Some of the pictures are a little light, but you can get the idea.

As they get older, their books become more advanced and you see more papers, poetry and diagrams.