From Egg to Flight

We have had the privilege this spring to watch a robin's nest be filled and then serve as a cradle for four babies.  What a gift to watch the whole process!

{May 14}

One lone egg...

{May 19}

...and then there were four!

{June 2}
Don't hate us because we are beautiful!

{June 4}

{June 5}

{June 6}

{June 7}

{June 8}

{June 9}

{June 9}

It's a little snug!!

{June 10}

Jumped out of the nest to take a look around.

 {June 10}

The Exodus of all four babies

{June 10}

Baby visitor in my greenhouse...the plants will have to wait for water.

School in January

Here are our plans for January

For history: We are starting on Ancient Greece. We use Biblioplan as a guide for all our history studies. Here are some of the books we will be using...

For science we are continuing our study of zoology.  In January we are going to study insectivores and toothless mammals. We are mostly using lapbook pieces from Homeschool Share to create our zoology lapbook.  In case you aren't familiar with either of these categories take a  look at the pictures below.

Insectivores

moles

shrews

hedgehogs

Toothless Mammals

sloth

anteater

armadillo

Zoology Lapbook Update-Ungulates and Primates

We have been working on ungulates (hoofed mammals) and primates.  Here are just a few of the lapbook pieces we have done. We are getting most of lapbook pieces from Homeschool Share.  We are putting the pieces in Bare Books (big spiral notebooks).  I just had to order some more books this week because we are running out of room!

Here are some of the books for ungulates.

Here are some of the books for primates...sorry, some of them are blurry!

A map of where the old world and new world monkeys are located.

Rainforest Animal Fun

We are doing zoology this year, and I decided to add a few fun things in the boys' workboxes this week related to rainforest animals.  Here are a few of the resources...many of them are more for Noah's age, but Zach might do a few also.

I am going to have Noah read about South America as that is the rainforest I am familiar with.  Years ago Tim and I traveled to the rainforest in Northern Argentina/Southern Brazil.  It was awesome!

Noah loves to draw so I will have him draw a few rainforest animals.

This is a cool poster in which I will have the boys try to spot each of the animals that are on the border of the poster.

Update on our Science Lapbooks

This year we are doing zoology and using Lyrical Life Science and lapbooks to work through and learn the different animal groups.  If you want a complete list of our plan, see my sidebar under "School Plans 2009-2010". We started out doing an overview of invertebrates.  There are a lot of phyla of invertebrates (i.e. mollusks, poriferans, worms, etc.). We then moved on to vertebrates.  So far we have done fish, amphibians, and reptiles which are all cold-blooded. We finished birds last week which are warm-blooded and started mammals this week.  The different orders of mammals will last us for the rest of the year! This week we studied monotremes (egg-laying mammals...the platypus and the echidna). Did you know that the platypus has venom and that the echidna has a pouch?  We are learning all kinds of things about God's amazing creation!  Next  week we will move onto marsupials.

Invertebrate Classification

As many of you know, we are doing Zoology this year. We recently finished an overview of invertebrates and the different phyla (groups) that they are categorized in.  I created this workbox activity for Homeschool Share. Today the boys did the activity.  Basically they had to put the different animals in their groups.  This is not an easy task considering there are several phyla of invertebrates! It can be confusing.  We may do this activity a few more times to make sure they have got the different groups down.

Here are different categories...as you can see it is a lot to remember!

Arthropods-animals with jointed legs and an exoskeleton. (insects, spiders, crustaceans, millipedes and centipedes)

Mollusks-soft-bodied animals (octopus, animals with shells, slugs)

Worms-which are divided into three different groups: flat, round, segmented

Enhinoderms-spiny-skinned animals with suction tubed "feet". (starfish, sea urchins, sea cucumbers, sand dollars)

Poriferans-sponges

Cnidarians-hollow-bodied animals with tentacles and stinging cells (sea anemones, coral, jellyfish)

Update on Our Zoology Lapbooks

This year we are doing Zoology for our science.  You can see our plans here. We are basically going though the different phyla of the animal kingdom.  So far we have done invertebrates and we just started on vertebrate by studying amphibians.  Our is to move onto the rest of the vertebrates spending the most time on mammals. Here you can see our lapbooks/notebooks of the booklets we have done so far. I am taking the lapbook pieces from different sources.  Here is a list of the ones we are using:

Hands of a Child

Homeschool Share (most of the pieces will be from this awesome site!)

A Journey Through Learning

Some lapbook pieces created by me using files from Homeschool Share since I am a member there.

The big notebooks that we are putting our pieces in are from Bare Books.  We love these spiral bound books!  They are high quality yet not pricey!

Zebra Cake

Since next year our science will be zoology, I am constantly on the lookout for cool ideas.

Well, I found this idea through Kendra's blog, Aussie Pumpkin Patch. It is a zebra cake and it looks so cool! I thought it would be extremely difficult to create the stripes, but when you read the directions you will see how easy it is!

Zoology-Science for 2009-2010

Spring is the time I plan for what we will be doing next year. I will be typing up my plans and creating links for them in the sidebar. For science I work off a rotation between the following subjects: one year we do chemistry, the next physics, the next biology. The coming school year we are scheduled to do biology, but I thought I would narrow it down a bit to zoology. We will be using several sources for our year in zoology....Lyrical Life Science Volume 1-We will use only the first part of this book.

Lyrical Life Science-Volume 2A few lapbooks from In the Hands of a Child: Animal Classification, Invertebrates, Ecosystems, one of the habitat lapbooksAnimal lapbooks from Homeschool Share. This is where we will get the majority of our lapbook materials. All free!!!!

Zoology Schedule

LLS-Lyrical Life Science unit: includes song, reading, and worksheet

HOAC-Hands of a Child lapbook

HSS-Homeschool Share lapbook

Week 1: LLS: All Living Things, Animal Cell Jello Model

Week 2: HOAC: Animal Classification lapbook

Weeks 3 and 4: LLS: Invertebrates, HOAC: Invertebrates Lapbook

Week 5: LLS: Cold-blooded vertebrates, Glow in the Dark Fish activity

Week 6: LLS: Birds, Pick a bird, draw and write about it.

Weeks 7, 8, and 9: LLS: Mammals, LLS: Marsupials and Monotremes, HSS lapbook: choose platypus or marsupials

Weeks 10 and 11: LLS: Carnivores and Pinnipeds, HSS lapbook: choose tigers, wild dogs, wolf, meerkats, panda, cheetah, bears, or raccoon

Weeks 12 and 13: LLS: Hoofed Mammals, HSS lapbook: choose pigs, camels, zebras, giraffe, rhino

Weeks 14 and 15: LLS: Primates, HSS lapbook: Monkeys

Weeks 16 and 17: LLS: Rodents, Read Capyboppy

Week 18: LLS: Rodent-like Mammals, Draw and Write about an animal in this category.

Weeks 19 and 20: LLS: Bats, HSS lapbook pieces from Stellaluna unit or HOAC bats lapbook

Week 21 and 22: LLS: Insectivores, HSS Hedgehog lapbook

Week 23: LLS: Toothless Mammals, HSS Sloth lapbook

Weeks 24 and 25: LLS: Whales, HSS lapbook: choose whales or dolphins

Weeks 26 and 27: LLS: Sirenians, HSS Manatee lapbook

Week 28: LLS: Single Family Orders, Draw and Write about an animal in this category

Weeks 29, 30, and 31: LLS: Biomes, HOAC lapbook: deserts, forest, grasslands, mountains, oceans, polar, or rainforests

Weeks 32, 33, 34: LLS: Ecology, HOAC Ecosystems lapbook

Weeks 35 and 36: Extra weeks to complete tasks