The garden is coming to life quite nicely and we are enjoying lots of salads and the greenhouse is doing really well with courgettes, aubergines, tomatoes, cucumbers and lots of busy lizzies and petunias but also it is getting alot of wildlife in it too such as spiders and slugs, eauuw! I don't mind them in the garden afterall that's where they live, but I really hate them in the greenhouse because they are just too close for comfort.
Academically we are finishing off a lot of projects that we have had on the go for a while... I really must try to stick to one or two and finish off before we move on to something else in the future.
The loft tidy up is continuing slowly, also the bedrooms now look messy again because they have more things in them... sigh, my eldest's floordrobe is looking more like a rubbish tip :o(
On a happy note: I've lots of pics for my next post but that will just have to wait because I have to feed the family :o)
Tuesday, 15 June 2010
Monday, 7 June 2010
Periodic Table Lapbook
Whilst doing our Chemistry studies I came across this fantastic lapbook for free from here. There is such a lot in it though that I've decided to do one lapbook on the Periodic Table and another on basic Chemistry and notebooking pages on the famous Scientists, rather than one huge lapbook as I think my daughter would lose interest fairly quickly.
Here are the photos so far:
My youngest designed the cover using photoshop and cut it in half so that it could open. I'm not sure what font she used but I quite like it :o)
The first page (green) has an introduction to the Branches of Science, what is Chemistry flap and a flap on Atoms and one on Elements.
The middle (red) page has a periodic table chart on it which can be used for reference through out the study and flaps on Halogens and Alkali Metals.
Across to the righthand page (yellow) is a short biography of Dimitri Mendeleev, apparently he only cut his hair once a year and two flaps explaining the table and the difference between Groups and Periods.
Below are pockets made by my daughter to put all the information cards which we got from here.
Below are flaps on Non-metals and Transition metals
The yellow flap below folds down and has information on Noble Gases, Lanthanides and Basic Metals.
Below is a print out of Mendeleev first Periodic Table. On the front of this sheet (but somehow hasn't been photographed) are flaps on Alkaline Earth Metals, Actinides and Metaloids.
The bottom of the lapbook has more pouches with information cards in and a flap which explains what each box contains in the Table.
Below shows some of the information cards.
We have the pillow case and fabric paints to make a Periodic Table pillow case but haven't done one yet but you can find the pattern here and we played this game to round off our project.
Here are the photos so far:
My youngest designed the cover using photoshop and cut it in half so that it could open. I'm not sure what font she used but I quite like it :o)
The first page (green) has an introduction to the Branches of Science, what is Chemistry flap and a flap on Atoms and one on Elements.
The middle (red) page has a periodic table chart on it which can be used for reference through out the study and flaps on Halogens and Alkali Metals.
Across to the righthand page (yellow) is a short biography of Dimitri Mendeleev, apparently he only cut his hair once a year and two flaps explaining the table and the difference between Groups and Periods.
Below are pockets made by my daughter to put all the information cards which we got from here.
Below are flaps on Non-metals and Transition metals
The yellow flap below folds down and has information on Noble Gases, Lanthanides and Basic Metals.
Below is a print out of Mendeleev first Periodic Table. On the front of this sheet (but somehow hasn't been photographed) are flaps on Alkaline Earth Metals, Actinides and Metaloids.
The bottom of the lapbook has more pouches with information cards in and a flap which explains what each box contains in the Table.
Below shows some of the information cards.
We have the pillow case and fabric paints to make a Periodic Table pillow case but haven't done one yet but you can find the pattern here and we played this game to round off our project.
So all in all we enjoyed the project but of course we are constantly coming across elements in our everyday life and it is so good to know that the children know what they are too.
Baby Elephants awww!
This link has absolutely nothing to do with what we are studying at the moment but I was sent it from a friend and I simply love elephants and just had to share!
Please don't watch if you are squeamish as it is a video of an elephant giving birth to a baby, if your not squeamish then please keep watching till the end because the mother knows just what to do to get the baby breathing, it's awesome!
Please don't watch if you are squeamish as it is a video of an elephant giving birth to a baby, if your not squeamish then please keep watching till the end because the mother knows just what to do to get the baby breathing, it's awesome!
Sunday, 6 June 2010
Green Festival
We had a lovely afternoon here. It was a much larger event than I had first thought with loads of things happening, something for everyone's tastes I reckon :o)
Our local home ed group had a stall there which apparently got lots of interest so we'll wait and see if anything comes of it. My youngest bought a roller boot 'Pandora' bead and we had a freshly stone baked pizza for lunch. I got lots of information about composting so I am raring to try again as last years compost came out rather heavy and very wet; aparently I needed to put more 'browns' into it, so now I know :o)
For a perfect ending to a perfect day... it is pouring down with rain so for the first time in two weeks I get to put my feet up instead of watering the plants in the garden, yeay!
Our local home ed group had a stall there which apparently got lots of interest so we'll wait and see if anything comes of it. My youngest bought a roller boot 'Pandora' bead and we had a freshly stone baked pizza for lunch. I got lots of information about composting so I am raring to try again as last years compost came out rather heavy and very wet; aparently I needed to put more 'browns' into it, so now I know :o)
For a perfect ending to a perfect day... it is pouring down with rain so for the first time in two weeks I get to put my feet up instead of watering the plants in the garden, yeay!
Friday, 4 June 2010
More on Chemistry
We have been working our way through this book, albeit slowly but we are getting there. There is so much information in it that we keep going off on tangents so it's taking a while.
Here is the download we used for making candy compounds, common ones such as O, CO2, etc.
We started off with some simple compounds, even I could do these ones without much thought,
then we moved onto more complex ones, sadly I can't remember what this one is supposed to be but it looks impressive :o)
Below you can see a rather tasty looking Carbon atom. The nucleous has green and yellow sweets showing the neutrons and protons and the shells have red sweets showing the electrons. We used this template to make lots of other atoms but I won't show you all the photos but you get the gist of it; we got through lots of packets of wine gums :o)
Here is the download we used for making candy compounds, common ones such as O, CO2, etc.
We started off with some simple compounds, even I could do these ones without much thought,
then we moved onto more complex ones, sadly I can't remember what this one is supposed to be but it looks impressive :o)
Below you can see a rather tasty looking Carbon atom. The nucleous has green and yellow sweets showing the neutrons and protons and the shells have red sweets showing the electrons. We used this template to make lots of other atoms but I won't show you all the photos but you get the gist of it; we got through lots of packets of wine gums :o)
Chemistry ugh!
Over the last few weeks we've been looking at Chemistry, nothing too indepth as my daughter's love lies with animals but I just want her to have an understanding of the subject upto GCSE level and then if she takes it further that's up to her.
Having never studied Chemistry myself I felt very much out of my depth and I have to admit it, I have been putting it off and didn't go out of my way to encourage my daughter to learn about it. We've done the usual experiments because they were fun but nothing too serious. We used the Chemistry kit we bought way back when my son was interested but he just got on with it and didn't need me to interfere at all except to clean up the exploded blue ink off the kitchen ceiling ;o)
However after reading a lot of books and visiting many websites I now feel I have a thorough enough understanding of the Periodic Table to explain it to my youngest.
We started off by doing a little atomic structure, obviously using as many sweets and marshmallows as we could, guaranteed to get my daughter's interest. We also played this game of elements trading cards and visited these websites One, and website two.
Then finally we got around to The Periodic Table and visited these websites: one, two and three and four is the answer key. We also did some chemical bonding, photographs to follow after I've taken them off the camera. All in all it went quite smoothly and we've enjoyed it so far... I think that might have a lot to do with the sweets though :o)