The Latin 5th Declension Packet is ready! You can download it here: Latin Fifth Declension Packet Also, if you’ve missed my past posts with the other 4 declension packets, here they are: Firs…
Whether you are doing a gardening unit at school or teaching your kids all about flowers, they will love this flower dissection activity.
Last year, my tin whistle portion of class was a big flop (or so I felt) and I always had a headache coming out of class! We had tin whistle last and the 4 year olds were always too tired to pay at…
By 285, the Roman Empire had become too big for one ruler to manage. Conflicts among the many cultures of the Empire developed into several wars, so Emperor Diocletian appointed a sub-emperor, called a Caesar, to rule the western half of the Empire. Diocletian ruled the eastern half, indicating that the east was the Empire's more
So my parents have been excited to see how "luv and learning" has been going...especially the various pictures of Mylee having so much fun ...
What do your non-Christian friends and family think of your faith? Does that response differ at all from how they felt just five or ten years ago?
My kids love getting messy with craft, clay, paint and generally being creative. So this term I have been determined to make sure that we complement our Tapestry of Grace studies with more hands on activities. Our study of the Byzantine Empire inspired our art studies and there are so many different art activities one can do. Once we had spent enough time looking at the different aspects of Byzantine art from its architecture to mosaics and brilliant illuminations, I had to decide what we would take on. Mosaics Print a blackline picture drawn in Byzantine style on card stock, enlarge it and stick your tiles to it. Click here for a good source of Byzantine style colouring pages. This idea could easily be adapted to use paper tiles, coloured egg shells or glass tiles. Other ideas for Mosaics: Artists Helping Children is a good site with lots of different mosaic ideas. KinderArt has a cute lesson on bean mosaics. Frescos Ms Julie's Art School has a great post on making a fresco using a blackline drawing. In this post, she is using a drawing from a fresco by Giotto Di Bondone but it is easy enough to substitute with one of the Byzantine colouring pages provided in the link above. Illuminations This is the project that we picked in the end and I was very pleased with it. This site is fabulous for teaching your kids about manuscripts and illuminations. They have a slide show which shows a number of different illuminations and asks questions which allow the kids to explore each manuscript more closely and then it gives you more information about the manuscript you are observing. There is another resource that shows you how manuscripts were made, the different roles and the whole process. They also provide templates for you to make your own manuscript illuminations. Creating a whole manuscript page would have taken more time than we had, so I decided that they should create their own illuminated letter which was a smaller more manageable project. I found this fantastic PDF lesson on the Art Of Creating Illuminated Letters which I used as the basis of my instruction. Then I used a free download from Prose and Letters which distilled in one page the essence of how to draw a medieval border. We then surfed online to look at different types of letter fonts and calligraphy to help them decide how they wanted to draw their letter. We used felt tip pens, coloured pencils and various metallic pens to get the right effect. I was pleased with the end result. Other Illumination resources: This Crayon Resist Illumination lesson would be suitable to use with older children. This Lesson from the Utah Museum of Fine Arts is full of useful information.
Most people know about the Crusades but know very little about the cause and effect of them. This list explains the main eight crusades. There were additional crusades in later years but they were much smaller and had little effect, therefore they are not included here. Further information on the Crusades can be found at
Quizlet Vocabulary Game, M14 Videos, etc. for M14 Kingdom Plantae! Yeah, I know what that is. =) This module has words that I recognize, lol. We learned about xylem and phloem, the "straws" that transport things the plant needs. Those may be new words to some, but I did already know them. We learned about the macroscopic structure of the leaf. Macro means something you can see with the naked eye, and micro means you'd need a microscope. Which means your eye isn't naked then -- it has a microscope lens covering it, lol. =D palmate venation, serrate margin Experiment 14.1, Leaf Collection and Identification We had to classify leaves as well as observe the type of bark and the fruit, if any. There's a lot of parts to a leaf, including many shapes, as well as various types of edging on the leaf, called margins. We also learned about the different vein patterns, called venations. dentate margin, pinnate venation whorled mosaic I ended up having the kids to bring small branches so we could also see whether the leaves were simple or compound leaves, as well as be able to tell the mosaic -- the pattern of the placement of leaves along the branch. We did about 9-10 classifications, including drawing the leaf, and they were to finish the rest at home. ►Here's the page I typed for them: Experiment 14.1, Leaf Identification (My printer feeds the page back in and prints on the back side, so I just did 2 of the same page in this document so I could print a batch without turning the pages over. Am I lazy or just very clever? lol) We also learned a little about the microscopic structure of a leaf. Since we have naked eyes, lol, we just looked online. For Experiment 14.2, How Anthocyanins and pH Help Determine Leaf Color, we just discussed it a little, and looked at pictures from when we did the pH Experiment in Module 5. Experiment 14.3, Cross Sections of Roots, Stems, and a Leaf We were to look at the stems and roots of dicot and monocot plants. The words dicotyledon and monocotyledon tell how many cotyledons the plants have. A cotyledon is the part of the seed that contains "starter food" for the plant. A seed with two cotyledons (like a bean) is called a dicotyledon, or dicot, and can be split into two pieces. Again, our poor eyes were naked, so we looked at pictures online. ►Links are at Homeschooler's Resources. We learned some more about classification, and plants that have seeds, and those that don't. Those that have xylem and phloem and can grow really tall because of the ability to transport food and water through their stems, and those plants that don't have this system, like moss. And of course, we learned a little about seeds and reproduction. I really learned a lot in this module. God's creation is amazing! sMiLeS,
Was looking for some short videos to show my class for our plants unit next week and came across this great website called www.makemegenius.com WOW! Tons of great Science videos! Here's one of the plant videos I found: They had some good Earth Day ones too! Enjoy!
Streaming Chloroplasts Flip Book Purpose of activity: To see how chloroplasts circulate around inside a plant cell. Target age group: Ages 9-12 (but can be used with older or younger without any sp…
Sorry the image is blurry! I'm also sorry I don't remember where I discovered this idea to give credit; it is a fantastic activity! After studying plant and flower parts, including the foldables I posted before, my students created flower parts they could eat once they labeled them all correctly. The petals are fruit rolls. The stamens are licorice pulls (a single strand). The sepal was a full-size licorice. The pollen was cake/cookie sprinkles. (Tip—put these in a small cup. Have a second cup with water next to it. Have the kids dip the licorice in the water and then in the sprinkles.) We keep the ovary and its breakdown simple at our grade level, but you could get more detailed if needed. A marshmallow and m&m were used.
My kids love getting messy with craft, clay, paint and generally being creative. So this term I have been determined to make sure that we complement our Tapestry of Grace studies with more hands on activities. Our study of the Byzantine Empire inspired our art studies and there are so many different art activities one can do. Once we had spent enough time looking at the different aspects of Byzantine art from its architecture to mosaics and brilliant illuminations, I had to decide what we would take on. Mosaics Print a blackline picture drawn in Byzantine style on card stock, enlarge it and stick your tiles to it. Click here for a good source of Byzantine style colouring pages. This idea could easily be adapted to use paper tiles, coloured egg shells or glass tiles. Other ideas for Mosaics: Artists Helping Children is a good site with lots of different mosaic ideas. KinderArt has a cute lesson on bean mosaics. Frescos Ms Julie's Art School has a great post on making a fresco using a blackline drawing. In this post, she is using a drawing from a fresco by Giotto Di Bondone but it is easy enough to substitute with one of the Byzantine colouring pages provided in the link above. Illuminations This is the project that we picked in the end and I was very pleased with it. This site is fabulous for teaching your kids about manuscripts and illuminations. They have a slide show which shows a number of different illuminations and asks questions which allow the kids to explore each manuscript more closely and then it gives you more information about the manuscript you are observing. There is another resource that shows you how manuscripts were made, the different roles and the whole process. They also provide templates for you to make your own manuscript illuminations. Creating a whole manuscript page would have taken more time than we had, so I decided that they should create their own illuminated letter which was a smaller more manageable project. I found this fantastic PDF lesson on the Art Of Creating Illuminated Letters which I used as the basis of my instruction. Then I used a free download from Prose and Letters which distilled in one page the essence of how to draw a medieval border. We then surfed online to look at different types of letter fonts and calligraphy to help them decide how they wanted to draw their letter. We used felt tip pens, coloured pencils and various metallic pens to get the right effect. I was pleased with the end result. Other Illumination resources: This Crayon Resist Illumination lesson would be suitable to use with older children. This Lesson from the Utah Museum of Fine Arts is full of useful information.
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After learning the photosynthesis song, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C1_uez5WX1o, we create a photosynthesis model. This model begins as a single sheet of copy paper. Fold it in half and cut out a large leaf shape. Very little scrap should be left over, but don’t toss it away! The two leaves are glued together from the petiole towards the tip. We draw in veins and label the upper epidermis. Fold the upper leaf back, so it stands up and away from the lower leaf. Draw the veins on the lower leaf. I show the students how to draw a cross-section that indicates the epidermis layer. Using some of the scraps, we cut and color a scalloped strip to represent the chloroplasts. This gets glued to the upper leaf, along the inside, right at the fold. Finally, students cut out 4 arrows, free-hand or stenciled, label each with the basic steps of photosynthesis, and glue them to the leaf.
Nasturtiums add a peppery taste to a green or mixed salad and a flash of contrasting color. This is an attractive summer salad, rich in vitamin C, and can be eaten as a first course or on its own. I use other summer flowers in bloom too(red clover, cosmos,marigolds,pinks,roses, etc.). In the ingredients, it says nasturtium petals, but I actually use whole flowers along with petals.
