This has been one of most cool projects of our botany block. In this lab, we used a polymer from Miracle Grow, promoted as water crystals, as a germination and growth medium. These polymers are marketed at hydration crystals that help keep soil from getting too moist or too dry. They do this because they…
Category: nature study
Wild Bird Egg Replica Project
When we arrived on birds within our animal block, I knew I wanted to replicate Hana’s, with Pepper and Pine, egg project. Her YouTube video has been so helpful in avoiding mistakes that I’m almost sure we would have made without her wonderful guidance. We made a couple of deviations from her process. We were able…
Making Mushroom Spore Prints
We love to go mushroom hunting. Our mushroom hunts are for spore prints. We do NOT eat our mushrooms. I wish I knew which ‘shrooms were edible and which were not, but alas… Goals! Spore prints are a favorite around here. I do not know how I made it all the way through my college…
Tree Unit Resources, Games, and Activities
New Blog Post: I’ve just finished a blog post going over the resources, game, and activities for our Tree Unit. This has been such a delightful unit. There is the usual list of games and book with details of our favorites and what each book contains in the post. In addition though, I go into detail about how we incorporated math, geography, writing, poetry, art, and science into the unit with a list of activities. Enjoy and be sure to tell me what you think or what I left out. Go hug a tree today. They are amazing creatures.
Leaf Crown Tutorial
Even though for most of the Country the color of the leaves have faded and snow has fallen on a few choice places, here in North Florida we are just now seeing a bit of color in our trees. Having made our first leaf crown of the season, I thought I’d share our process. It’s…
5 Ways to Liven up your Homeschool Journey
Homeschool feeling bogged down. Here are 5 ideas to help. These techniques will help to solidify the information your children are learning.
10 Tips for Rearing Butterflies in your Classroom
We have so enjoyed rearing butterflies over the years and observing their life cycles. Here are my 10 tips to get started on one for yourself. Of course I’ve listed a couple of activities and lots of our favorite BOOKS! Hope you enjoy an easy read on this Mother’s Day.
Leaf Prints for our Tree Study
Leaf prints are not difficult to do, but so gratifying when you see your creation, even for the youngest artist. We are studying trees for our naturalist unit, and leaf prints were an easy way to get a lot of new trees on the pages of our nature journals. It was a messy project taking…
Our Bird Unit
We did a naturalist unit for science this semester giving me a chance to teach/learn about the local fauna and flora. Part of that unit included birds. Following are the various resources that I used for the unit. The first and favorite were the picture books. We read a great number of books, but these…