Science Sunday: Canines and their relatives

 

 

We finished up our study of the canine family with a field trip to our local nature center.  I will take any excuse to go there, and this was a perfect one: observe and write down about the animals from the canine family.

We first sat outside the coyote enclosure.  This coyote was raised as a pet, so cannot be released back into the wild, it’s too acclimated.

For the two animals we observed they had to write one sentence, and draw a picture that used at least 3 colors.

Superman’s says: Coyote has pointy ears.  Tail is pointing down.

Batman wrote both on the same page, so the coyote one says: He has a black nose.

Side note: They need to work on understanding how to write on the page.  They do better at home, but for some reason every lesson I’d taught them flew out the window when we were there.

From the coyote we headed over to the Fox enclosure and spent some time observing her.  Again she was a pet that can’t be released back to the wild because of acclimation issues.  She wasn’t exciting to observe because she was asleep in the back of the cage.

Superman’s says: Red fox has red fur and they like the shade.

Side note: Notice there are still lots of letter reversals, and capital letters.  Not what I was working on for this lesson, so no corrections.

Princess: She has pointy red ears.

Batman’s said: He has red fur.

 

I was going to have them work on writing more, but I could see I was starting to lose them, so I released them to play in the water, which they happily did until I dragged them home again.

 

Let’s see what others did this week:

Each week I’m spotlighting a few posts that were shared previously.  Many posts get linked up later in the week and they don’t always get as many clicks as they deserve, so I’m trying to spotlight a few every week.

 

This particular week, I’m going to play hooky and send you to my land animals pinterest board, because I’m going to sneak away and go cuddle with my hubby………

 

 

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Science Sunday: making a dam

 

As I mentioned earlier this week, we had a lot of rain, and our backyard flooded.  Jeff and I took that as an opportunity to teach the boys some engineering.  We challenged them to create a dam to stop some of the water.

Some of the challenges were the white waters in the stream, and the water flow was rapid enough to take away many of the building materials they could create.


They started by weighing down the big bucket with some rocks, then they remembered the huge pile of bricks in our backyard, but transporting them one by one is tedious and boring.


But a wagon……..  That’s easy and you get the amusement of pulling it through the water.

Eventually this is what they came up with.  It’s an odd combination of bricks, buckets, watering cans, and what have you, but it raised the water level on the upstream side about 6 inches, and the downstream side was significantly lower.

All in all a good spur of the moment engineering lesson.
Let’s see what others did this week:
Each week I’m spotlighting a few posts that were shared previously.  Many posts get linked up later in the week and they don’t always get as many clicks as they deserve, so I’m trying to spotlight a few every week.

Source: homeschooljournal-bergblog.blogspot.com via Ticia on Pinterest

Over at All Things Beautiful Phyllis shared how to make a terrarium.  I can’t wait to see updates on it and what happened to it.

Source: homeschooldiscoveries.com via Ticia on Pinterest

Homeschool Discoveries shared why sodas explode in the freezer, it was a fun read and I know I’ve left a soda or two in too long while trying to instantly freeze it, and SUPER kudos for using Dr Pepper.

Source: teachingstars.com via Ticia on Pinterest

I loved how Teaching Stars used bubbles to explain nuclear fusion.  BRILLIANT

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Yorktown Victory Center

Whereas yesterday was little girl heaven with the carriage ride, today was little big boy heaven, with lots of pretending to be soldiers and firing of weapons.

The boys even got to participate in the “firing of a cannon."

1.  The Sergeant (the man with the clipboard) gives the order to prepare to fire.


2.  Add in your carefully measured scoop of powder and then add in the cannon ball or in this case bomb.

3.  Set the range using what looked rather similar to an astrolabe (no picture because of poor angle).


4.  Clear the cannon and set the fuse.


5.  Light the fuse.


6.  BOOM!  (this shot is of course from the actual trained people firing it)

I’ll write a more concise and what we learned type post on another day.  For now I’m going to read a little bit and then go to sleep……..  Maybe even before midnight, what a novel concept.

Taking a carriage ride

On Princess’ list of things to do since we got here: TAKE A CARRAIGE RIDE, well she’s only young enough to really want to do this once, so we decided to let her do it.

First we had to pet the horses and take some time to enjoy them.

 

Then we rode around town in it with a grinning 5 year old.

She did have to be reminded on a fairly regular basis to sit  back down.  Then we went on the “Bits and Bridles” tour, which will be the subject of a Science Sunday post later on, but that was not as fun because she didn’t get to pet any of the animals.  However her day was made when one of the carriage drivers offered to give us a ride back to the historic district.

And SCORE it was a “pretty carriage that the princess rides in when she marries the prince.”

 

Batman was just happy to be allowed to bring his gun and be a soldier.

Jamestown Settlement

Can you tell the kids are excited holding their animals skins and “17th century computer” (also known as a navigation tool)?

We wandered through the museum for a while, where I was not allowed to take any pictures.  Poor me, that and I was frustrated by poorly labeled displays.

After spending a good hour or so at the museum we headed out to the displays, braving the COLD and RAIN, did I mention the COLD!  and wet toes!  I’m sure you can guess the first thing the boys headed to.

The armor, they happily tried on armor every opportunity they got, and arrested poor Jeff.

They were even more impressed with watching a musket being fired, I wish I’d gotten better step by step pictures, but it was hard to catch it as quickly as he did it (the steps are more or less in order clockwise, top left).


Superman was supremely amused by the church and had to preach a sermon.  All three of them would have done so as well, but we had to hurry off to watch the muskets be fired.

It was a loud and happy sermon, with many quotations of “love God.”


We toured the three ships in dock, but the kids were getting cold and it started raining fairly hard while we were the first one, so not much time spent there.  We were mainly amazed at the cramped quarters and how small the beds were.  The boys were able to stretch out on it, but I certainly couldn’t.  It was a very crowded place, but what really amazed me was they left before Christmas to come here, and they didn’t make it until a few days from now (Thursday, April 25).  How is that for crazy?


We ended up spending the longest amount of time in the Powhatan village, mainly because there was a nice warm fire, which let me dry my feet a little and restore feeling to cold toes.

All in all a fun, if somewhat cold day.  Which ended with our eating at the worst Chinese buffet I’ve ever eaten at, how can you mess up Jello?  And my buying a POUND OF FUDGE!  YUM YUM YUM!