Weird Stuff!

Miss L's most favorite unit study ever.  This unit focused on her love of "weird stuff" as she calls it, the unusual and unexplained things in our world.  We used a variety of books and materials.  Since she's so in love with the topic, some of the things on this list were not specifically used for this unit study, but have been hits here and easily could have been included had we not already done them. Her interests skew toward medical mysteries, mythical animals, and similar oddities so we went more that direction than UFOs.

Read aloud:
Mr. Wilson's Cabinet of Wonder
This is not a book marketed to children.  I started reading it to her on a lark and had my doubts that she would comprehend it and/or that it would hold her interest, but she surprised me and really did enjoy it.

Spine:
Strange Mysteries from Around the World, Seymour Simon.
This book is written at her reading level (approximately 4th grade) so we could easily read it together and use it as a base from which to jump off into more detail.  This book was originally written in the early 1980s, so it was interesting to compare some of the information in this book with newer information from other sources.

Supplementary books:

• Unexplained!  Strange Sightings, Incredible Occurrences, and Puzzling Physical Phenomena, Jerome Clark.  A big, dense book of more obscure unexplained phenomena.  We read selected portions aloud. Miss L particularly liked the monster sightings. 
• Weird Washington and Weird U.S.: A Freaky Field Trip Through the 50 States Both of these include short vignettes of the unusual and unexplained.  Nice geography tie-in.  Weird U.S. is intended for kids, but Weird Washington is also fine for the interested kid.
• Unexplained, Judy Allen  Kids title.  In the style of Eyewitness books.
• The Griffin and the Dinosaur
• Ripley's Search for the Shrunken Head and Other Curiosities Interesting pop-ups and interactive materials in this one.
• Other Ripley Believe It or Not books
• Enigmas, Vowery Carlisle.  A writing curriculum using historical mysteries

Documentaries (all available on Netflix):

• The Legend of the Crystal Skulls
• Selected episodes of Myth Hunters and/or Weird or What?  (preview to see which you prefer)
• Selected episodes of Oddities (currently unavialable)

Projects/Hands On/Field Trips

• Made a mythical creature fossil out of bones from an owl pellet
• Made a fairy mummy and/or Fiji mermaid out of small novelty halloween skeletons and craft supplies
• Found an unknown baby animal on the lawn, tried to identify it.  Took it to a local museum to get it positively identified and preserved.
• Visited the website of the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus.  True?  Fake?  How can you tell?Can you fool others with your own creation?
• Curated her own exhibit of "weird stuff" in a curio cabinet and made a companion guidebook
• Visit museums like Ye Olde Curiosity Shop, Ripley's exhibit at the science center, other small local oddity shop/museums.

Fizzing and foaming

So much fun can be had with citric acid, amirite?

One recent nice day we finally pulled out the Fizzy Foamy Science Kit that the kids had been bugging me to try.  We have wall-to-wall carpet so this seemed like an outside activity!  Turns out it was not so messy, but fun for outside anyway.

The instructions were clear and the kids were able to do almost all the activities with minimal help from me. Big K reading the instructions and the two of them taking turns adding and mixing, with me there to direct and watch that a tablespoon remained a tablespoon.

I think they were a little dissapointed that nothing fizzed over wildly like a good ol' Diet Coke-and-Mentos fountain, but they happily got up close to the little fizzing cups and observed what was going on in there. 

Most of the more interesting activities involve mixing citric acid and baking soda.  I think I need to lay in a supply of citric acid for the house, we went through almost all of the stuff that was in the kit...we would have had lots left over if we just stuck to what's in the instructions once or twice, but my little experimenters took it upon themselves to mix things in different quantities and in different orders to see what happens.

Oh, and we thought the dancing raisins didn't work at first, but after they'd soaked in the little cup in the sun for 10 minutes or so, they started bobbing away.  Another valuable reminder that patience is key!

Dino Day!

Miss L was over the moon happy.  After all my previous posts about dinosaur study ideas, and after listening to my daughter beg over and over again to have a big dinosaur event with her homeschool events, I finally agreed to put one together.  It was a couple days ago and this is a little bit of what it looked like.  I arranged 10 "stations" around the house and outside, with directions posted at each station so kids and parents could do them in whatever order and at their own pace, open-house style.  The stations ranged in complexity from coloring dinosaur pictures in Miss L's room and making dinosaur models out of Lego in K's room to real fossil examination and bone excavation, so no way was I going to herd all those kids through individually. 

The fossil identification station  was a pretty big hit.  A lot of the older kids really liked it.  There's something special about being able to put your hands on the real thing that is so different from reading about it in a book.

It was a station of 24 numbered fossils, with a list of possible fossils you can see on the left side of the photo below.  Just gotta match 'em up!  Some fossils were pretty easy (a clam) and others pretty tricky (crinoid fragments), so I color-coded them with the easiest to hardest to give people a place to start.  Plus handy guidebooks nearby and answers strategically placed if needed. 

My boy liked trouble shooting this table and helping me find all my errors before everyone got there.  There were more than a few of them.  Glad he was helping!

Geography wall.  Matching different dinosaur fossils to where they have been found on the globe. 

Skeleton and bone matching.  Determining which bone belongs to which dinosaur.  Remarkably tricky in real life, I stuck to easier bones for these kids.

Connections between modern birds and dinosaurs.  I punted a little bit on this one, having left it for last in my planning, so basically all I did was find some good pictures of velociraptor, archopteryx, and chicken skeletons online and wrote down some thought questions, and then posted the result on the chicken coop fence.  Good enough.

Dinosaur trackways.  Terra cotta-color air dry clay looks and feels a LOT like mud.  Add some realistic dinosaur toys and you can re-create footprints along a Jurassic shoreline pretty nicely. 

I tried to add some suggestions for making a story with it, like having the tracks of a carnivore hunting a herbivore, but I think most of the kids were too distracted by the pièce de résistance nearby to think very hard about that.

By far the most popular station was the Dino Dig.

To make this station, we cast makeshift T-rex bones in plaster from these molds and buried them in our big ol' sandbox.  Add some shovels and brushes to re-create a real paleontological dig, and you've got a fun afternoon.  If you're wondering why there are no kids in any of the previous photos, this is why.

Tight quarters in that sandbox.  A good time, but busy!  It will be a while before we do this again, but I think Miss L is hoping it might become an annual event.  We'll see, kiddo.  We'll see.

Notes on Dinosaurs

So, many kids are dino-crazy and want to study them, but a lot of homeschooling parents don't know where to start.  Or after you've whetted a child's appetite by watching Walking with Dinosaurs or some simple dinosaur reader books, where do you go from there?  Last night I met with a few other homeschooling moms to share ideas, run down the basics on dinosaurs to get your feet wet, and give some ideas on books and resources and activities that may help extend and enrich a dinosaur study.  Most of our ideas focused on the elementary years but many are applicable to much older students as well.   I previously posted about some of these resources, but I've expanded the list and added an assortment of themes or "pegs" to help organize your thoughts and activities about dinosaurs.  You can find the outline of what we discussed and a list of resources as a pdf document free to browse or download at the link below.

Notes on Dinosaurs

Drop me a line if you have any questions or would like to discuss ideas.  Enjoy!

Whooooo loves tiny bones?

This week we finally took advantage of K's interest in owls (he just finished #10 in the Gaurdians of Ga'hoole series) and L's interest in birds and skeletons.  Owl pellets!

Ours were from American Science and Surplus.  It said two pellets would be in the package, but there was just one.  Oh well, it was a large one, so I broke it in half and each child got to work on half.

It did not take long to start finding bones.

One fairly large skull started to emerge quickly, too.

All in all, we ended up with the remains of three separate skulls and lots of fascinating little bones. 

K had fun using the included pamphlet to identify different bones and the species...we think we had at least two vole skulls, with the third skull too broken to really make an attempt.

In the end Mr. K even wanted to arrange all the bones in a museum-style display.

A few bucks well spent, for sure.  I appear to have whetted their appetite for dissection, however.  Ms. L found page 20 of the Home Science Tools catalog and has asked to dissect a starfish!  Someday, kiddo.  Baby steps.

Armchair Geology (Rocks, Minerals, and Earth Science for Homeschoolers, Part 3)

Continued from Part 2.  You had a great field trip, you went out and had a great time looking at those sparkly stones, or those cliffs, or that rocky shoreline.  Or maybe the weather is bad and you are waiting for summer adventures.  What now?  How do you learn more, or encourage questions, or get more inspiration? 

OMG ya'll.  So many ways.  It's hard to go really wrong.  The only way to go wrong would be to stop now.  Natural history museums, websites, and tv shows are great, but a good book is something special.  Good books rock! (pun intended.)  So that is where I focus here, starting with guidebooks, then some engaging topics on the rock cycle and general geology topics, and finishing with a long list of my favorite kinds of books--the ones that explore history and the connections between us humans and the physical earth. As usual, for each general topic I've tried to recommend solid titles for each level, elementary to high school and adult.

A note on curriculum:  I do not think a "curriculum" is necessary to learn a lot about rocks, minerals, and earth science,  but if that is what you are looking for, my favorite science curriculum in Building Foundations of Scientific Understanding.  I'll do a review of that someday, but suffice it to say it is a robust, wide-ranging science curriculum that integrates all the strands of science.  It works great for my kids and my natural approach.  If you take a different approach than I, and want  to teach one subsection of science at at time with more explicit direct instructions or workbook pages to complete, R.E.A.L. Science Odyssey's Earth & Space is solid for early elementary.  Intellego Unit Studies also offer interesting units on earth science topics.  With that said, though, a decent small rock collection like this one can really enrich any rocks and minerals curriculum and is highly recommended.  Now, on to the book lists!

Rocks and Minerals Guidebooks are best when they have beautiful pictures and interesting information, not just dry statistics or drawings that do not show a rock clearly.  My favorites:

• For early elementary, Rocks and Minerals (Eye Wonder) can be a good choice. 
• My kids like the Eye Wonder book, but often prefer to flip through a solid but approachable guidebook for adults like the Smithsonian or DK Pockets.  These are also nice to slip in a backpack for a field trip.
• If you have an older elementary to adult enthusiast in the house,  Smithsonian Rock and Gem and Smithsonian Earth are gorgeous.  Can be a wonderful gift in addition to fascinating browsing.

General Geology and the Rock Cycle

• For the youngest, Sand to Stone and Back Again is a wonderful picture book with eloquent prose.
• Magic School Bus Inside the Earth is a modern classic for early elementary.  Can't miss.  
• Elementary students may also enjoy some of the activities in Geology Rocks! 50 Hands-On Activities to Explore the Earth.
• Middle school to adult amateur can learn a lot from the very straightforward The Practical Geologist by Dougal Dixon.
• High school to adult may find The Field Guide to Geology as a solid and clear explanation of some higher-level geological principles.  Combined with John McPhee's Pulitzer Prize-winning Annals of the Former World, which eloquently follows working geologists as they travel across the country and explain North American geology, you could have a solid high school-level geology course. 

The Good Stuff! Where Geology and Human History Connect.  IMO one of the best ways to encourage interest in earth science topics is to study how humans have used, studied, and interacted with the earth and the world around us.  The books below cover a wide variety of earth science topics and include some of my favorite books.  Some in the homeschooling world would call most of these "living books".  I find that name a little silly.  They are just good books written in an engaging, narrative way that can turn a dry subject into something fascinating. 

• Have you ever really noticed salt?  Seriously.  It's the only stone people eat, and they used to fight wars over it.  Two books by Mark Kurlansky are very good: The Story of Salt for kids, and Salt: A World History for adults.
• If you want to think BIG, and read about the evolution of the earth, touching on changing theories over time, famous scientists, and many other science topics, Bill Bryson has written just the thing, with humor and enthusiasm.  A Really Short History of Nearly Everything for kids, and A Short History of Nearly Everything for high school/adult.
• Sometime when you're at the beach pull out the magnifying glass and look at the sand.  Then come home and compare your beach sand to the beautiful photos in A Grain of Sand: Nature's Secret Wonder by Dr. Gary Greenberg.  For young kids, Jump Into Science: Sand could be worthwhile. The website SandAtlas.org has amazing photos of sand from all over the world. 
• If you liked the close up photos in the above title, the close up photos of minerals and precious stones in Within the Stone: Nature's Abstract Art by Bill Atkinson might blow your mind.  I have used this book for inspiration for art projects more than once.
• Many people are fascinated by diamonds.  For the youngest, The Rock Factory is a gentle choice that also covers the rock cycle.  The discovery of diamonds in Canada in recent history is also fascinating-- for late elementary through middle school this story is told in Treasure Under the Tundra.  For adults, the same story is told in Barren Lands by Kevin Krajick, which is one of my top 10 geology books ever.
• The story of gems and precious stones is wrapped up with stories of power and intrigue throughout human history.  The best of these for adults is Jewels: A Secret History, by Victoria Finlay.  Ms. Finlay also wrote the fascinating book Color: A Natural History of the Palette about pigments, many of which are rare stones.  Either of these books could be a great choice for high school or a read-aloud for older elementary or higher.
• Most people don't think much about building stone, but people have built their homes and workspaces from stone since time immemorial.  For adults/high school, Stories in Stone: Travels in Urban Geology by David Williams explores the sites and stories of many historic stone sites in North America.  What's So Great about Granite? by Jennifer Carey covers similar information but skews younger.  Stone Wall Secrets by Kristine and Robert Thorson is for older elementary and is very well done. 
• Most people realize that coal is an important, but dirty, source of power.  But what else do you know about it, was it always this way?  Coal: A Human History by Barbara Freese tells more of the story for high school/adults. A slice of life in coal mining country in the early 1900s is told for late elementary and middle school in Growing Up in Coal Country by Susan Campbell Bartoletti.  For the younger elementary students, Coal by Ron Edwards is a gentle introduction to this complex subject.
• Poetry and prose.  Rocks and stone and our interactions with them can be poetic.  Really.  Try Byrd Baylor books like Everybody Needs A Rock for kids, or Terry Tempest Williams Red: Passion and Patience in the Desert for high school/adult. 

Whew!  I better quit while I'm ahead.  This list may change over time, I'm always finding new books and there are many more good titles on other earth science topics, too.  I've got lists already on volcanoes,  dinosaurs/paleontology, and Washington State geology, but drop me a line if you'd like any more specific recommendations, it might end up as a future book list post!

Look Around! (Rocks, Minerals, and Earth Science Resources for Homeschoolers, Part 1)

Rocks are often fascinating for kids.  They come in so many different colors, and some are sparkly, and some are pretty or clear or spotted, and a lot of them look like the gravel in the driveway. 

Unfortunately, it is this last part that causes many adults and parents brush off a kid's interest in a pebble as a boring rock.  Even the well-meaning homeschooling parent often overlooks the humble pebble, treating earth science as an afterthought or a less-important scientific sibling to biology or chemistry or physics.  This is a missed opportunity.  All the sciences are dependent upon each other, and earth sciences are an easy and gentle way to introduce your kids to nature, cultivate skills of observation, and even act as a "gateway drug" to a lifelong love of science and nature.  When I was a small child, my grandmother, a hardcore mineral collector with many rare, world class specimens in her collection, gave my sister and I wooden collection boxes with a few nice specimens, and took us along on a few rockhound expeditions.  Combined with my parents that encouraged my budding love of driveway pebbles and other interesting things to be found out-of-doors, little did anyone know it would eventually lead me to a couple degrees in geology and a hand lens in every backpack.  So, suffice it to say, I have strong opinions about how to teach our kids about geology and earth sciences. 

And I'm not too shy to share, haha! 

Parents, the single most important thing to encourage an interest in earth sciences in your kids, is to go outside and look around.  (This also works for interest in lots of other topics, too, but I'm trying to stay on track here.)  Try going somewhere new, or someplace you enjoyed but haven't been in a while.  Both you and the kids.  Get away from the city or subdivision where you can't see the land beneath you any more.  A groomed city park is great for playdates, but not the place to go for earth science.  Go to the mountains, or the beach, or the river, or the desert, or wherever you can get close to the land without the covering of man-made changes we are so used to seeing.  Have a nice, relaxing outing.  While you are there, open your eyes and LOOK.  You might notice things you never saw before.  "Huh, I never noticed these black sand grains at this beach."  "Wow, the bend of this river is a lot narrower than it was last summer."  "Dang, that's a big rock!" 

These observations lead to questions, naturally.  "Why is that mountain shaped that way?"  "How come this part of the trail is so much steeper than that first part?"  "What's up with all these little sparkly bits in this boulder?" 

There, now you and the kids, you're already thinking like scientists.  It's ok if you don't know the answers.  And, it's ok, even essential, to tell the kids you don't know the answers--and to tell them you will try to find out, or to gather more information.  "Hmm, good question, let's take a picture of that cliff and ask the Ranger about it."  "I don't know, I've never noticed that before!  Let's go see if the rocks over there are the same."  "Beats me, good observation!  Why don't we come back next month, and see if it is different."

If the kids don't have questions, parents, YOU have the questions and curiosity, model that for the kids.  Honest curiosity and enthusiasm is infectious.  Kids will more than likely catch on.  You can't fake it though, kids see right through that.  At least, mine do!  If it's an off afternoon or the weather is bad or you should have stopped for lunch an hour ago, oh well.  Don't force it.  Go have a snack.  It's the habits of observation and curiosity and investigation that are crucial, not any one specific experience.

And, there you go.  Those habits in themselves will get you pretty far.  To encourage further interest in specific earth science and rocks and minerals study, there are some helpful tools that are easy to put in a backpack or the trunk of the car, though.  And I've put them in Part 2.

Dinosaur (and paleontology) books!

If you have met my daughter, it is no secret that dinosaurs are a big hit around here.  Not too long ago I was asked for a few good places to start for a study of dinos and paleontology.  My picks below range from adult, for the parent that wants some background in these topics, down to the early elementary child in love with dinosaurs.  Most skew late elementary and higher since I don't like to 'dumb down' material for my kids, especially when they show a strong interest and thrive on depth...but that's a topic for another post.


Dinosaurs books for overview and what/where/how:

• Dinosaur Lives by John Horner is a great nonfiction book for adults that gives good insight into both the fieldwork of paleontology and how paleontologists recreate how dinosaurs lived and highly recommended.  It is written for the lay reader but doesn't shy away from some of the more technical ideas.  John Horner is one of the most respected paleontologists currently working and if you are ever in Bozeman, do not miss his Museum of the Rockies.
• Eyewitness Books Dinosaur by David Lambert.   I love all the Eyewitness titles and we have a million of them, but the dinosaur one is a standout.  It is marketed to late elementary/middle school but with the beautiful pictures younger kids like them and there is plenty of information for adults.
• Dinosaur by Stephanie Stansbie is another "kid's" book, but it disguises itself as a paleontologist's notebook and the science is pretty sophisticated.  Tons of little manipulatives and envalopes and flippy bits that could get lost, but my daughter likes it so much she keeps everything where it is supossed to go. 
• There's lots of early elementary-age books on dinosaurs.  Tons.  Too many to list. Many are fine, some are crap.  The books on fossils and paleontology by Aliki are good, and Magic School Bus in the Time of Dinosaurs is probably one of  the best IMO.

Paleontology, paleontologists, and the history of fossil hunting:

• Jack Horner's book Digging Up Dinosaurs is a fun and accurate book about how fossils are really found and studied today. Appropriate for elementary through middle school.
• A good book on paleontology for the middle schooler or the student ready for a step up to more meaty information is Bones Rock!  Everything You Need to Know To Be a Paleontologist.  Lots of examples of real science and great stories.
• Look up books on Mary Anning.  There are several biographies on her life on Amazon for different age groups.  A particularly good one for elementary is Rare Treasure: Mary Anning and her Remarkable Discoveries by Don Brown.  Mary Anning was an english girl in the 1800s who discovered several species of dinosaurs.  There are lots of books for kids about her,  but this is my favorite--I love all the Don Brown biographies.  Mary Anning was fascinating--for grown-up and high school reading of a novelization of her life, Remarkable Creatures by Tracy Chevalier is wonderful.
• Lena loves learning about the T-Rex named Sue, which is the largest, most complete t-rex ever found, now displayed in a museum in Chicago.  There are tons of books about the fossil and those who found her, because it was a very contentious and litigious fossil.  Our favorites are this music cd and Sue Hendrickson's autobiography for kids, My Life as an Explorer.  (bonus, Sue Hendrickson dropped out of highschool and homeschooled herself)  A very good (but long) story of the find for adults is Tyrannosaurus Sue: The Exraordinary Saga of the Largest, Most Fought Over T. Rex Ever Found by Steve Fiffer.
• A wonderful picture book about an early paleontologist and dinosaur reconstructor is The Dinosaurs of Waterhouse Hawkins.  My daughter loves the pictures in this book and comparing how our ideas of how dinosaurs look has changed over the years.

Fun books that stretch the imagination:

• Dinotopia: A Land Apart in Time by James Gurney and its sequels like Journey to Chandara (but not the novelizations that came out later, those are not good)  we read these at story time for many evenings, they are long but my kids absolutely loved a chapter each night.  It is about some 19th-century explorers who stumble upon a lost continent inhabited by intelligent dinosaurs and humans.  Gorgeous paintings on every page. 
• Uneversaurus by Professor Potts is not fiction, but it works here because it is all about how we imagine the colors of dinosaurs skin.  Fantastic fun because it shows both wild&crazy coloring and more sober information about camoflage.  Good inspiration for art lessons, too. 
• If You Are A Lover of Fossils by Byrd Baylor.  Simply beautiful, a prose-poem about fossils and the connection with the earth and our short lives.

Random stuff:

• Usborne's Dinosaur Jigsaw Atlas  is pretty cool.  Shows where different dinosaurs have been found across the world.  Dinosaurs AND geography AND puzzles!  Score!
• Not a dinosaur, but look up information on the Coelacanth.  This is a fish that was thought to have gone extinct with the dinosaurs until a few of them were found off the coast of Madagascar in the 1930s.  A great book for adults is A Fish Caught in Time by Samantha Weinberg.
• The Walking with Dinosaurs and Chased by Dinosaurs/Prehistoric Park BBC series shows are great.  My kids have watched them over and Over and OVER.  Chased by Dinosaurs and Prehistoric Park are especially fun because a modern zoologist goes back in time to capture some of those CGI dinosaurs, which are pretty well done. 

A conversation about Rockfish

One of our traditions for New Years Day is a trip to a local zoo or museum--yesterday we went to the Seattle Aquarium.  It happened to be Rockfish Day!  So the kids learned all about Rockfish and they are happy to tell you all about them.   We had a nice conversation over fish & chips at the aquarium cafeteria.

Happy Carl Sagan Day!

My friendly facebook subscriptions reminded me that today is Carl Sagan Day!  Today would have been Mr. Sagan's 77th birthday.  A very good day to remember to pause and look up at the sky. 

Sadly, Cosmos is not available on Netflix streaming, but we'll watch The Universe this afternoon and watch the new Symphony of Science video released today.  A fitting tribute.

A view of what's inside

Our house has a "territorial view", but often, the view of what's inside the house is way, way better. 

K and L, looking at what is inside a tooth in The Way We Work by David Macauley, because he had just lost his second baby tooth.  Say it with me now: awwwww.

If a picture is worth a thousand words

This photo should tell you what this blog is about.

L at the Grand Canyon, June 2010