Halloween Biology

This Halloween you can opt out of the ghosts and goblins, but still use the gory spirit of the season to your advantage in your home school. You can learn about the human body. Create a lapbook or a small book reporting on the different systems or just on a particular system.

• Study the skeletal system. Construct your own skeletons and name the major bones in the body. Dissect a whole fish from the grocery story and investigate its skeleton. Learn about x-rays. Research calcium and how it is absorbed.
• Study the heart. In your book you can name the parts of the heart, include a mini report on Dr. Daniel Hale Williams (the first heart surgeon), include data from heart rate experiments, etc.
• Study hematology. Blood is quite gory! Learn about red and white blood cells and about how blood coagulates. Investigate blood typing. Contact the Red Cross to find out more about blood donation.

The ideas are endless, but hopefully this will get you thinking outside of the box. Have fun!

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Love Your Neighbor, Officer Michael

Here is yet another post about our Make Way for Ducklings lapbook. I hope your lapbook is coming along as nicely as ours is. When we have completely constructed ours, I will post pictures.

I managed to find a Biblical connection in Make Way for Ducklings. Our memory verse this week is “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Matthew 22:39Matthew 22:39
English: World English Bible - WEB
39 A second likewise is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’

(The little one is memorizing “love”.) I picked this verse out because Officer Michael is so kind to the Mallard family. In the story, he goes out of his way to help the ducks by directing the traffic and calling for other police officers to stop the traffic. He didn’t have to do this; he was just treating someone else the way he wanted to be treated.

During the week, we read other Bible stories that relate to the “be kind to others theme”. The story of Ruth and Naomi is one and the other is the story of King David and Mephibosheth. I connected the theme to these other stories. We discussed how the theme applied to the memory verse. We even talked about how the verse relates to our lives.

In order to help us remember the verse, we sang it to the tune of “Frère Jacques” and “London Bridge” adding “Just like Jesus” at the end. We sang the songs throughout the day all week long. At the end of the week, the kids were able to recite their memory verses easily. They even sang the songs to Daddy.

Then we made a book in the shape of a police officer’s hat (HT: DLTK) and glued the verse inside. We simply cut out the hat and a blank piece of paper in the same shape. I printed out the memory verse and cut it out. As my kiddo said, “We used a police officer’s hat because Officer Michael was kind to the ducks in the book. The hat helps us to remember that.”

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Mallard Math

We have practiced our math skills in a variety of ways through Make Way for Ducklings. There are a few mathematical possibilities in this particular book that you might find helpful if you are also working on this particular lapbook.

Since there are eight ducklings in the book, we have practiced counting the number eight. Since my kiddos are kinesthetic learners, I need to incorparate manipulatives into our math work, and a great manipulative for this particular lesson is plastic Easter eggs. First, we sorted the eight eggs by color and counted how many eggs there were of each color. We compared which color we had more and less of. We also dabbled in addition and subtraction by adding one more egg and removing one egg. After all of that manipulative work, we made a counting book with the numbers 1-8. It’s a graduated page book. On each page the children drew the amount of eggs that correlate with the number on the page. Creating this book is also a great way to address the unique the needs of kinesthetic learners since there is a lot of interaction involved – turning the pages, drawing the eggs, counting the eggs, and coloring the eggs. My children needed a bit of guidance with staying focused on the task, but overall, this was a hit!

We also used the song “Five Little Ducks” to talk about counting backwards from 5. We used it as a finger play while I a read a great picture book of the song, Five Little Ducks illustrated by Ivan Bates. They really love this song and adding a kinesthetic piece to it just makes it more engaging. Having the visuals (pictures) also makes the song more interesting. Lessons are so much more dynamic when you weave multiple disciplines together.

Get cracking on your math skills, homeschoolers!

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Try Out Lapbooking

As I have been researching homeschooling curriculum ideas, I have stumbled upon lapbooking. Have you ever tried it? It has the potential to be a combination of thematic learning and portfolio assessment at its best. This is something that I am very excited about and interested in trying.  If you have never tried it before, I encourage you to look into it and try at least one to see if it is a good match for you and your children.

There are many lapbooking options available to you. You can purchase a commercial lapbook plan book from Five in a Row (FIAR). This curriculum is structured so that you “row” a book, complete five days of lessons based on a particular book that touch on each of the curriculum areas. There are a few groups of homeschoolers who get together and share FIAR resources, too.

You can purchase curriculum from In the Hands of a Child. This is similar to FIAR. There is a guide with printables for your mini books. Essentially you purchase an ebook to print from.

Of course there are also many free resources online. Try the website Lapbooking for many ideas and lists of resources. You can plan your own lapbooking lessons using the lesson guide at Vintage Garden Graces. You can also watch some videos about lapbooking on YouTube.

I hope you try something new this school year by making a lapbook or two! I know that I am going to try it out.

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