We will have fun!!!

We have been in school now for about 6 weeks. The first 2 weeks were great!! The kids were excited. They did their work quickly. The next two weeks -not so much fun… My oldest and youngest were not the issue…although the oldest didn’t want to do his work either. It was mainly the middle one. It was a struggle to get anything done. And it was taking all day to do the work. This should not be taking that long!! It was frustrating us all…except my youngest who can take school or leave it. So last week I asked myself why am I struggling like this. Is this why I chose to homeschool? To sit at the table all day and fight with them to learn anything? So I decided to become a little less structured. We are going to do a unit study one day a week. Which is why we did our weather study last week (See the first blog in Oct). We are going to do experiments. We are going to go outside and build forts and take walks. Every chance we get we are going to get a group together and have fun stuff. I did not start homeschooling to be stuck in a “classroom” for 7-8 hours a day. We will have fun!!!

So do bears Hibernate or are they Dormant?

We use Apologia for our science curriculum. I love it because I can have a “science class” with all grades and then just assign work according to their level. Yesterday for our science lesson we were learning about bears. According to the lesson bears don’t hibernate- they go dormant. Hibernate means that breathing slows and body temperature drops to the same as the surrounding air. Dormant means a temporary state of inactivity, kind-of like a long nap. So bears are actually experience dormancy and don’t hibernate. Anyways the boys have been taught in public school that bears hibernate all winter. So here is our conversation:


Me: “Do you know what many bears do during the winter?”

Jason and Kenneth: They hibernate.

Me reading from the book: “They sleep! Because of this, some people say they hibernate, but that’s not really true.” I go on to explain the difference between hibernate and dormant. And the fact that they can even give birth during their dormancy.

Jason: So they don’t hibernate?

Me: No they don’t.

Kenneth: Well why did they teach that at public school?

Me: I really don’t know but now do you understand why I have chosen to homeschool you??

This is not the first time in the last few weeks that we have had a similar conversation, where they boys have found out that something they learned in public school was not correct. It just reaffirms one of the many reasons why I homeschool.

9/30/10


It was pouring all day today so we decided to do a weather unit study. What a great day to do this on since we could actually see some of the things we were talking about!

First I did a search for unit studies. I found a great one that was perfect for a one day subject study: http://www.homeschoollearning.com/units/unit_09-17-01.shtml

We looked up weather vocabulary words:

Flood Plain, Downdraft, Occluded Front

Anemometer, Whirlwind, Psychrometer

Wind Shear, Virga, Microburst

Cirriform, Katabatic Wind, Thermograph

Ball Lightning, Gully Washer, Isotherm


We talked about tornadoes and other weather. I had a few weather books so we read them. We did 3 experiments I found on this site: http://www.weatherwizkids.com/weather-experiments.htm . We made a bottle tornado, thunder, learned about rain gauges and how to use them, and learned about rainbows by a color experiment (http://www.weatherwizkids.com/experiments-rainbow-colors.htm). Unfortunately I didn’t get pictures of the color experiment.

The Bottle Tornado (http://www.weatherwizkids.com/experiments-tornado-bottle.htm)

The Rain Gauge (http://www.weatherwizkids.com/experiments-rain-gauge.htm) We had almost 3 inches of rain in less than 24 hrs!!