Science Lessons

OK, I admit it. I am a science nerd. I love science and science projects. I guess that's why I majored in Biology 100 years ago. (Oh wait, it probably wasn't quite that long ago! Was it?!)

Well, it is funny that someone who loves science as much as I do has had such a hard time doing science in our homeschool. Well, that is, until we found a few things that really, really helped it come together. For Joshua and Sarah, we started doing God's Design for Science from Answers in Genesis. It is a really great curriculum; one that I would highly recommend. (I was going to do Apologia, which is also excellent, but I happened to have the whole set of the God's Design for Science on our shelves from when we used to work at Answers in Genesis. I tried it last year and LOVED it, so we are continuing with that this year for Josh and Sarah.)

For Tim, though, who is in 3rd grade this year, I wasn't sure what to do. I didn't know if he was ready to do the God's Design for Science. Plus, I didn't want to add another full-scale curriculum to my already full plate, so I decided to just do some exploratory science lessons with him. It has been super fun. I think I have enjoyed it as much as Tim has! Plus, even better, Sam and Anna have joined with us on many lessons. So, it has been a win, win for us.

We started with insects. That was because we did a very extensive insect collection this summer (with the help of a good friend up here who caught a few of our biggest butterflies, and our friends the Daniels from Florida who actually mailed us bugs!)

[OK, I hesitate to even blog about the silly bug collection, because for some oddball reason that I have yet to figure out, some people think that if you do a bug collection, that somehow makes you a great homeschool mom. An insect collection has NOTHING to do with be a good or bad homeschool mom, but that is fodder for another blog.]

We learned a song about the insect parts, studied the insects we had collected, and just generally observed the world around us. This is Tim with our insect collection and Sam with an insect puzzle we have.

Next, we learned about rocks. This was so fun too. We did a rock collection, mainly because Timothy had started to collect rocks everywhere we went, so I figured this might be something that would interest him. I was right! 

This was part of a rock collection Dave's mom had saved from when Dave was a boy.

What can I say? Like father, like son!

We also made our own geodes. A very cool project, indeed.

The last exploratory science I was going to write about was doing a calendar of the moon phases. I started when it was almost a full moon and then we charted it every night for a month. After we charted for 2 full weeks, once again, just observing, then we started learning about the phases of the moon and even did a science lesson on "what was going on" with the different phases of the moon. We used just a flashlight and a small wiffle ball stuck onto a pencil. We got the idea from this website: http://sciencenetlinks.com/afterschool-resources/light-moon/.

All this to say, I am enjoying doing science this year (after many failed attempts over the years!)  :)