Finally the Homeschool Science Share and Tell is back hosted by TheHomeschoolScientist.com and Apologia! Yeah!! I’ve missed the event over the break and the loads of amazing science lab ideas from fellow homeschool families. Since the last link up we have finished Astronomy from Apologia and are into our second chapter of Botany. We enjoyed our studies thoroughly with astronomy and always looked forward to science. For our family the notebooking journals made all the difference and we will always use them with our future Apologia science studies.
I was going to share our favorite chapter and lab from the book with you but my little scholars could not agree on a group favorite. So here is a list of our favorites:
The Moon: This was a popular chapter. The crew continue to use terminology from this chapter even now…so naturally it is one of my favorite chapters. My brother was living with us while we studied this chapter and he helped them to build the Galilean telescope. I ended up just getting a simple kit on Amazon because it was cheaper than getting all the parts…this isn’t usually the case with the lab exercises. To help my crew learn the name of the moon phases I made some moon phase cards. First I cut some white construction paper up into smaller rectangles. Then I used a white crayon to
draw the different moon phases. My little scientists then used black watercolor to reveal the moon phase and we compared the card to a website with a moon phase chart. We then used these as flash cards and I think this activity helped my kids to remember the names of the moon phases. We also enjoyed decorating some cookies with moon phases…yum!
The Venus and Mars Mishap: I got ahead of my self and we did the volcano experiment with the Venus chapter when it was supposed to go with the Mars chapter…it helps to look more than one chapter ahead sometimes. Who doesn’t like making a volcano?! You can read all about our volcano fun here. So when we got to the Mars chapter we used the legos to build a Mars colony. Our colony took some time to build (about a week). The kids spent a lot of time brainstorming items and food the colonists would need to survive on Mars. I was really impressed with their list of necessities and the work that went into building the Mars station. Sadly, I forgot to take a picture…but it was really cool.
Reader’s Favorite: One of my most popular posts on this blog is the Lego Stonehenge . It was my first post to be “pinned” and it held the number one most read post until recently. (My top posts are now the Beautiful Feet history posts.) I now use legos every chance I get for learning opportunities and projects.
We were sad to close the book on astronomy but are now looking forward to exploring botany with Apologia. Thank you Jeannie K. Fulbright and the team at Apologia for providing us with great science to study and teaching my kids that the beauty of science points us all to our Creator. Faith and science are not enemies but complement one another in building faith and helping my children just to see how amazing and creative is our God.
Thanks for the memories!