Days To Remember G's Blog

Above......our week of tent making. 

Not in my lesson plans.......or early morning plans.

Early morning plans for me, naturally would be sleeping in. 

However, my children rise early.  Like their father AKA my husband!

All tents were created with little hands........

Tent making awoke ME, at 5 a.m. this morning and 6:30 a.m. Tuesday morning. 

I "love" how my children decide to wake up and cause a RUCKUS on the mornings when I taught the night before....those are usually late nights for me, it is usually one individual who wakes up the rest of his siblings.  No Names Mentioned Here.....

Nevertheless, he has had severe consequences those mornings.  Hopefully, he has learned his lesson.

Our week of Kingdom Protista........and microscopy.

Our week of reading the Hill of Fire......for Eli and he running for his volcanic sand (that Grandma and Grandpa got for him in Hawaii)......he loves how it is magnetic!

Our week of circuits and making circuits and finding good conductors and insulators.

What I loved about this lab, Eli, my first grader got all his supplies together and did this one all by himself.

That was SWEET, b/c I had to help another son with the Lewis and Clark Expedition. 

That was a portion of our week of..........

How was yours?

My oldest walks around often purposefully with red marker above and below his eye.

Many times random people or parents will ask, "Oh, no what did he do?" 

My response, "He's Anakin."

So, if you see the H-man sporting his black glove and red marker above and below his eye.........it's really not him, it's Anakin Skywalker. 

And yes, just in case you are wondering........he does this often.  Very often.

But I guess at his Blue and Gold banquet.......since it was Star Wars themed......it was alright.........and no one asked any questions.

Eli earned his Tiger badge last evening at the Blue and Gold Banquet.

Hezekiah earned his Bear Badge last night at the banquet.

I think they had a pretty fabulous time. 

Thanks to everyone who put it all together.  It was AWESOME!

Last night at the boys Blue and Gold Banquet for Boy Scouts, the 501st came for a visit.

The theme was Star Wars.......how awesome for a group of little boys! 

We got to meet some Storm Troopers, a Jawa, and whom other than Darth Vader.

I am sure Uncle Roger will be jealous! 

Yesterday for Central Home School Fellowship, I did a lesson for the PreK-third graders on Sharks.

I used these resources to help with the lesson:

Shedd Aquarium – Lesson Plan on Sharks

http://www.sheddaquarium.org/pdf/education/edu_guide_sharks.pdf

Sea World – Lesson plan on Sharks

http://www.seaworld.org/just-for-teachers/guides/pdf/shark-4-8.pdf

Discovery Sharks Survive by their Senses – Video

http://dsc.discovery.com/tv-shows/shark-week/videos/sharks-survive-by-their-senses.htm

National Geographic Shark Detective video

http://video.nationalgeographic.com/video/kids/animals-pets-kids/wild-detectives-kids/wd-ep4-sharkguy/

So after looking through the resources I had, which is a lot of material, I chose to focus on the following:

1)  What makes a shark a fish? (we discussed this as a group)

2)  What makes sharks different from bony fish?

--we looked at their skin and their teeth, I had some sand paper to replicate their skin and we talked about how their skin (denticles), look like the sharks teeth (we used some magnified pictures of their skin to see this)

--we talked about their skeleton made of cartilage, etc.

Then I had some cut out examples of various sharks teeth, so we could be detectives to figure out what type of food we thought they would eat, with their specific teeth.  

There were lots of cute ideas about what sharks ate. 

We learned that not all sharks are meat eaters.  Like Whale sharks that feed on plankton!

So the kids looked at shark teeth, lots of shark teeth!

We also talked about the senses of the shark, about their best sense is hearing.  Did you know that they can detect sound up to a mile away?  Because sound travels faster in the water.  We watched the short videos on the IPad.

The video above from Discovery is wonderful about the sharks senses and the Shedd aquarium gives a diagram of the sharks senses and at what distance they can detect sound, smell, etc.  

We also learned about their Amupullae of Lorenzini.  So we created a electrostatic detector with a paper clip and two pieces of aluminum foil.  This is from the Shedd Aquarium pdf file.  I did not use the baby food jar with it.  Anyhow, I had the kids rub their heads with the balloons and make static electricity.  I had one student be the shark using the Amupullae of Lorenzini to see if they could detect the "fish" which would be giving off a charge.  So some kids were coral and some were fish.  If they were a fish they put the side of their balloon up that was charged, if they were just the reef they put up the side that was not charged.  If the Amupullae detects a charge the aluminum foil pieces move, they twitch. 

We also went outside and played sharks and minnows.

There were a few other things that I had planned but we did not get to. 

So I had my own kids work on it at home today. 

Like make a shark book (from Sea World's pdf) and also do another pdf from Sea World on classification of the sharks based on their anatomy.

So if you were looking today for a lesson on Sharks.  Hopefully these resources I found will help you!