Earth Science: Weather Week 4

Wind

(All posts before this should be caught up and up to date with photos.)

So  as always things don't go as planned. :) We had planned on spending the week of Thanksgiving getting caught up on our Science-y stuff, but that didn't happen, we got horribly distracted (and not by family, since we had none come by! LOL!)  So we took another slow week, and the Wind got pushed over to this week. :)  (no you are not seeing things, you might have seen the last post got deleted! ya, trying to keep things accurate!)

Monday

Creating Artificial Wind

• Read - Can you See the Wind by Allan Fowler
• Read - The Wind Blew by Pat Hutchins
• Completed - The Mailbox Investigating Weather, Grades 1-3  "Wind: Creating Artificial Wind" (page 20). 
• Watched - Bill Nye the Science Guy: Wind DVD by Disney. (Clip)

Giraffe read Can You See the Wind all by herself (since we're working on increasing her reading skills along with understanding of science skills.)  We had a good laugh at The Wind Blew, so today's books were definitely enjoyable!

We didn't have balloons in the house so we used a ziplock bag, to make the artificial wind.

Tuesday

• Read Millicent and the Wind by Robert Munsch
• Completed The Mailbox Investigating Weather, Grades 1-3  "Wind: Windy Matchup" (page 22).

I love Robert Munsch stories - have for a very long time, so any opportunity to read one!  Giraffe didn't share my love for it though.  The Windy Matchup game wasn't really her cup of tea either, but it does explain a point and she got it, so it is now on our table with our weather tools.

Thursday

• Read The Gates of the Wind by Kathryn Lasky
• Read the Whirlys & the West Wind by Christine Ross
• Complete The Mailbox Investigating Weather, Grades 1-3  "Wind: Wonderful Windsocks" (page 23).

Friday

• Read Wind by Marion Dane Bauer

All in all, this week wasn't really a hit with Giraffe or I.  The books were fun but the projects not so much.  Effective but un-fun.

Earth Science: Weather Experiments Week

We've been battlings colds this week, which has taken all of us down one at a time.  I've been pretending to play nurse but I was the 2nd one that got it, so I've failed miserably!

Part of last week got ended abruptly (though we will/did eventually play catch-up.)  I don't do sick or nurse very well, and am anxious to get back to our schedule program!

For years, I've had at least two Little Labs Weather Kits kicking around the house.  Ketchup used one, and I think this week Giraffe will pull out the other.  

So this week, I figured we'd play it slow and catchup what we missed (and fill in the blog) and work on some ways to measure the weather we're seeing.  Stay tuned and I'll add in our devices and experiments throughout the week as we go.  Hopefully we'll get a good variety of weather, that doesn't involve snow (personal bias!) and we'll have fun with it.  Stay tuned!

Monday

So Giraffe, is still under the weather but has little bursts of energy, so we used one of them to check out explore measuring temperature.  Not in the mood to re-invent the thermometer, we used a super big thermometer that I had purchased years ago at Lakeshore LearningI had to run out to the store so we got our super big thermometer and put it on the back deck (in the shade.) About 20 minutes later, when we got back, I had her take a look at it and it showed 61F.  We decided to take an extra reading put the thermometer on the front porch in the full beautiful, glorious sun and it read 76F.

Tuesday

We've got some more bad weather coming in tonight and tomorrow.  Hoping to make some tools today for use tomorrow.  She is still not feeling 100% but she is definitely on the mend.  Today we'll be building an Anemometer and Rain Gauge from the Weather kit.  We've also been identifying them in various locations when we go on drives - sometimes on phone poles, sometimes on buildings - just so she can see them truly in action.

Anemometer, Rain Gauge & Weather Vane

Discovering Humidity

 So with the Humidity detector, we filled a glass with cold water and just set it out to get an idea of how much humidty was in the air.  This was after only a few seconds, and considering the rain we're expecting - we're pretty sure it's accurate.

Wednesday

Yesterday while working with the Anemometer, Weather Vane and teeny tiny Rain Gauge in the kit, we made our own rain gauge because we knew it would hold more water and was less likely to blow away.  The empty Rain Gauge was shown on Tuesday right after we made it, but it was too windy to leave outside (15 mph winds)  It did rain a little over night which we didn't record, and it also rained a good deal of the morning (also not recorded,) but as luck would have it, we arrived back from the doctor's just before the heavy rain fell and Giraffe managed to get the gauge out in the nick of time! :)

Homemade Rain Gauge (marbles for added weight)

Just under 2 inches in 2-ish hours

In just over two hours (between 4:25 and 6:30pm) this was the amount of rain we caught.   Giraffe was pretty happy with the results of her rain gauge. We'll just empty it to the bottom line, and put it out again.

Earth Science: Weather Week 3

Precipitation

Monday

• Read - "Wet weather : Rain, Showers and Snowfall" by Jonathan D. Kahl 
• Watch - What is Precipitation on YouTube
• Complete The Mailbox Investigating Weather, Grades 1-3 "Precipitation: Weather Word Wheel" (page 17). 

Really didn't like the book we chose for today.  Very long and dense for Giraffe who wasn't really interested in reading it or looking at it.  Days of rain do that to a kid!

Tuesday

It has been raining here for days, since Halloween to be exact.  Some days it was a light drizzle, other days it was torrential downpours, other days the clouds would drift in and out and leave a puddle in their wake.  We've been under flood watches and flood alerts as area rivers take in the deluge of 10 days worth of rain.  They're calling for more rain later in the week.  Today we were happy to see the sun and blue sky though.

Last week when Giraffe and I, attempted to make a cloud in a jar (which I have tried 2x in the past) we instead watched the raindrops form on the the bottom of the "lid" of our jar.  The smaller droplets combined together until they were too heavy and then they just fell.  So while we didn't follow the experiment here exactly, we did get to see it in action and talk about it.

• Read - "Down Comes the Rain" by Franklyn M. Branley.
• Read - "Listen to the Rain" by Bill Martin.
• Read - "Come On, Rain" by Karen Hesse.
• Completed The Mailbox Investigating Weather, Grades 1-3  "Precipitation: Looks Like Rain" (page 15) and "Going Down!" (page 16).

Snowflakes and raindrops, which one falls faster?

Wednesday

• Read - "Snow Is Falling" by Franklyn M. Branley
• Completed The Mailbox Investigating Weather, Grades 1-3  "Precipitation: Frosty Figures" (page 16).

Ice Crystals Booklet

Thursday

• Read - "Snow" by Marion Dane Bauer during reading.
• Read - "It’s Raining" by Gail Gibbons (wanted "It's Snowing" our library didn't have it.)
• Read - "Snowflake Bentley" by Jacqueline Briggs Martin

Earth Science: Weather Week 2

Clouds

Monday

• Read - "Sector 7" by David Wiesner (picture Book)
• Watch - Cool Clouds
• Complete the Mailbox Investigating Weather, Grades 1-3, "Clouds: Sing a Song of Cloud Types" and Cooking UP a Cloud (page 9)

The "Sector 7" picture book was a fun look.  I've never been good at choosing picture books, so this was a neat thing to Giraffe.  We tried to cook up a cloud, but have never managed to make it work, we did get to see it dripping with rain though! So no exciting photos today! :(

Tuesday

• Read - "The Cloud Book" by Tomie dePaola
• Complete the Mailbox Investigating Weather, Grades 1-3, "Clouds: Clouds of Foam" (page 8)

This is the actual photo of what Giraffe was supposed to do today, and as you can see Frog and Ketchup got in on the action - everyone loves to play with shaving cream here! :)

The experiment for today didn't seem as exciting as I'd hoped, so remembering I had seen the shaving cream rain somewhere, I decided to give that a shot, and it proved amusing to Giraffe.  She watched as the Food colouring made it's way through the shaving cream to the bottom of the cloud and then produced a rainbow of rain!   It was neat to see how it the food colour just hung there until it accumulated enough to drift down.

  

Wednesday

• Read - "Clouds" by Anne Rockwell
• Complete the Mailbox Investigating Weather, Grades 1-3, "Clouds: Cloudy Weather Windows (page 11)

Thursday

• Read - "Clouds" by Marion Dane Bauer
• Read - "The Little Cloud" by Eric Carle
• Complete the Mailbox Investigating Weather, Grades 1-3, "Clouds: Clouds Up Close" (page 10)

Earth Science: Weather Week 1

In year's past, Giraffe listened as Ketchup learned about the Weather, and designed weather instruments, but she was never interested enough to participate or answer questions, so much of this is new to her.  We'll be working on expanding her vocabulary and working knowledge of various key points about weather.

The Water Cycle

Monday

Magic Schoolbus Kicks Up a Storm

• Watch - Magic School bus: Wet All Over
• Read - "What's the Weather" by Melissa Stewart
• Giraffe helped read - "Whatever the Weather" by Karen Wallace - we had some good conversations about the pictures and all the things we saw there.
• Watch - Magic Schoolbus: Kicks Up a Storm

(The Stewart book was dry and not very interesting - Giraffe lost interest pretty quickly here)

Tuesday

• Read - "The Water Cycle"by Trudi Strain Trueit
• Watch - Bill Nye the Science Guy: Water Cycle by Disney
• Complete the Mailbox Investigating Weather, Grades 1-3, "The Water Cycle: An Itsy-Bitsy Water Cycle (page 6)

(The Trueit book was also dry and not very interesting - we ended up going straight to the Bill Nye video which Giraffe and Ketchup found a little strange and simply reiterated what we watched yesterday but in a more grown up approach.)

Wednesday

Building a Water Cycle in a Bottle

Water Cycle in a Bottle

• Read - "A Drop Around the World" (Kindle) by Barbara Shaw McKinney
• Complete the Mailbox Investigating Weather, Grades 1-3, "The Water Cycle: Watching the Water Cycle (page 4)

(Loved "A Drop Around the World" but would recommend if you can get your hands on the actual book, you'll enjoy it better.The Trueit book was also dry and not very interesting - we ended up going straight to the Bill Nye video which Giraffe and Ketchup found a little strange and simply reiterated what we watched yesterday but in a more grown up approach.)

Thursday

• Read - "Follow the Water from Brook to Ocean" by Arthur Dorros
• Complete the Mailbox Investigating Weather, Grades 1-3, "The Water Cycle: Wonderful Puddle Project" (page 5)

(the Wonderful Puddle project was fun!  Definitely an exciting splash of colour on our delightfully rainy day.)

Earth Science: Weather Unit

Themailbox.com has an eBook on Weather for 1st -  3rd grades (TEC 30224).  It doesn’t offer a lot in the way guided lesson plans but has a wealth of experiments, demonstrations, activities and suggested reading so that is what we’ll be using as the spine of our Science for the next few weeks.  I hope to be able to update weekly what we did so someone out there in the ether will be able to use it as a jumping point like I did at someone else’s suggestion!  We will cover:

• (1) The Water Cycle 
• (2) Clouds 
• (3) Precipitation 
• (BONUS) Weather Experiments Week
• (4) Wind
• (5) Storms 
• (6) The Seasons 
• (7) Weather Forecasting - we deleted this unit mostly due to the fact that we had spent some time talking about how to predict the weather using the other units - we also deleted it due to illness taking up time and we were ready to move on to the next unit!  (sorry for any trouble.)

I hope to make it back and make a link to each of the parts we covered but in case I don’t just keep reading.

Also, I'd like to thank BlueHouseSchool for the jumping off points.  I used a lot of the suggestions she made when working with her daughter  - plus what was available to me locally to make it fun for Giraffe.  All together, this was a pretty low budget unit, which provided a ton of entertainment.

2015-16 School Year

I won’t apologize for my absence; dealing with 3 kids has been a challenge.  Keeping 2 doing school and 1 entertained has been a challenge!  Each time we start schooling with a new student I feel like a newbie again because so much changes and the challenges of different learning styles make so much of what we’ve done in the past not workable!  Each kid learns so differently and when we started this 10+ years ago, I had to find my way, and so I begin again.

So let me introduce the students, keep in mind none of them have ever been to brick and mortar school.

Froggy 14, is between 9th and 10th grade.   She is pretty self motivated and planning to go to college.

• Science - Easy Peasy High School Homeschool Biology
• Literature - Designed her own because studying just American authors seemed so limiting
• Grammar was studied intensively from 1st – 8th Grade – so not covering that.
• Social Studies – Designed her own Religion and Culture Study
• Math – Life of Fred – Algebra 1 and 2 this year
• French – Rosetta Stone
• PE is Horsebackriding
• Extracurricular – Girl Scouts, writing for a Girl Scout eZine, and the Student Nanowrimo

I won’t be writing much about her studies as she is pretty independent and doesn’t like me sharing what she is up to but there might be the odd post.  She is heavily into writing, loves to write her own novels and has participated in at least 2 years of NaNoWriMo. (National Novel Writers Month - which happens in November every year.)

Ketchup 9, is pretty solidly 4th grade in everything but Math.

• Grammar – completed 4th grade last year – so taking a year off
• Literature – Moving Beyond the Page’s 9-11 Literature Units
• Science – Moving Beyond the Page’s 9-11 Science Units
• Social Studies – Moving Beyond the Page’s 9-11 Social Studies Units
• Math – Life of Fred and Singapore Math
• Extracurricular – Girl Scouts

She likes her materials to be fairly structured with a good balance of physical activity.  She has never been tested but has several markers of ADD/ADHD – so we take a lot of breaks and move pretty slowly somedays.  She has a vivid imagination, a gentle heart and we work with it.  There is a lot of sitting with Ketchup to keep her focused and on task – so I spend a lot of time juggling her and Giraffe between subjects.

Giraffe 6, is just getting started.  She is comfortably 1st grade.  At the moment she will be the focus of most of these posts.

• Literature – Various reading books on leave and read alouds – covering all subject areas
• Language Arts – Explode the Code (Phonics), No spelling, various Handwriting projects, Grammar to come
• Math – Singapore 1A & B, Life of Fred Apples & Butterflies
• Science – Various materials following a kind of Earth Science Life Science pattern
• History/Geography – Evan Moor Beginning Geography / History Odyssey (Ancients), Horrible Histories
• Language/Art/Crafts/Music – nothing here as yet
• Extracurricular – Daisys as a Virtual Girl Scout (formerly known as Juliette)

She’s pretty stubborn and doesn’t like having to do school work.  I’m working to find materials and subjects that interest her and get her motivated to keep going.

If you look through past posts you’ll find that we’ve used a variety of methods in the past from parts of self-pay K12.com, to standard workbooks you can get a the bookstore, to purchased materials like Oak Meadow (OM) or Moving Beyond the Page (MBtP) etc.  We’ve pretty much stubbornly stuck with Singapore for Math til 5th grade, and then moved to Life of Fred (LOF) which has done well for us.  But Science and History/Social Studies has always been a challenge as they aren’t really MY favourite subject and so they’re more of a challenge for me to teach.

Beginning this year I’m actively trying to motivate the girls in the Sciences and History and trying to make sure they get equal air time.  As always, if there is an interest in any subject, we’ll drop everything and run with it as far as we can take it.