Monday, September 22, 2008

Our volcano activity

What better way to finish off our volcano unit than to make a model volcano of our very own. We used a plastic container and put our volcano in the middle, along with dry leaves, rocks, grass and some of Pernella's dinosaurs strategically placed by Pernella herself... The kids were just happy making the model and didn't realize that we were going to make a mess... oops I mean lava!

After half filling the cup inside the volcano with vinegar the children added some red food colouring.

and then I told them to add a teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda and they looked on in amazement as their volcano errupted.

The kids decided 'heh let's make the lava blue, then green,' etc, etc....
well why not....


We got this fun activity from fun-learning-activities-for-children.com
and you thought science was boring!~ big grin...

Sunday, September 21, 2008

VOLCANO LAPBOOK

Our big project for term 3 was on Volcanoes. (The childrens choice, they have a thing for natural disasters - big grin!)

I brought two IMAX DVD’s on volcanoes from ebay
* The eruption of Mount St. Helens and
* Ring of Fire.
Would highly recommend both and we enjoyed watching them.

The books we read about volcanoes were:

Eyewitness – Volcanoes
Volcanoes – facts, stories and activities
Pompeii buried alive
Volcanoes – lets read and find out science
Pompeii and Herculaneum, past and present
Hill of Fire
The House on the Volcano
Geology, Volcanoes – enrichment 4 You e-guide (from Currclick)
National Geographic magazines that we owned had several really great articles on volcanoes from around the world.


Don't you just love their artwork on the front cover of their lapbooks!




What we learnt
.What is a volcano
.Facts about volcanoes
.About the ring of fire
.Inside a volcano
.Types of volcanoes
.Parts of a volcano
.About the earth's plates
.What causes a volcano
.About the earth's crust/what's inside the earth
.How volcanoes were named
.Warning signs of a volcano
.The hazards of an erupting volcano
.Mount Vesuvius eruption
.Mout St Helen's eruption
.Vocabulary used for volcanoes
.Types of rocks from volcanoes
and a few other things besides - big grin!








We got our lapbook templates, maps & pictures from...

Homeschool Share have great resources. We got our Volcano tri-fold from here (thanks Jimmie) also they had lots on volcanoes from the book ‘hill of fire’ (they now even have a volcano lapbook that was posted two days after we finished ours! Oh well!
Enchanted learning
Homeschool Helper
Currclick

John Bunyan and William Tyndale

Recently we had the opportunity to watch The 'John Bunyan Story' and the 'William Tyndale story' on dvd. A series of animated programs for young children presenting the lives of true-life heros from Christian history. www.torchlighters.org. Both the children really enjoyed watching these dvd's and me not missing a learning moment (big grin!) decided to get the children to write a short biography of each of these great men of God. We also read John Bunyan's childrens copy of a Pilgrims Progress.


Saharna's Biographies

Josiah's Biographies

thanks to Notebooking Pages for the free biography sheets. We found pictures of Bunyan and Tyndale on Wikipedia to print off, cut and stick on our sheets.

Our Pineapple Lapbook...

We kept this lapbook simple and fun to do. We took photos of our excursion to the Packing shed and stuck them into our lapbook with a one-line description of what was in the photo.

The children wrote a brief outline of their visit. I made a couple of basic (very basic) mini books for the children to fill in and stick in their books.
The main focus of this lapbook was on their visit to the packing shed and not on so much detail of the pineapple industry as a whole. We did cover where pineapples grow in Australia and included a labelled map. We looked up how long it takes for pineapples to be ready for harvesting and what needs to happen for the crops to grow well. We included some pictures of pineapples growing in the field and of course we learnt that the botanical name for a pineapple is Ananas Comosus. It was called a pineapple because its shape looked like a pinecone.

Pernella's Lapbook



Charlie's Lapbook




Lapbooking is great for all of us to sit around the table and work on it together. As Pernella is in grade three her lapbooks have more detail and more writing in them then Charlie’s does. (Much to her disgust! Big grin!) I have brought them magazine holders so that they can keep their lapbooks/notebooks in them and so they can look at them anytime. (Which they do often) I find with lapbooking or notebooking they learn more on a chosen subject then if we were just reading from a workbook or textbook and filling in the answers. With a lapbook they are left with a beautiful item of work to display and show around to the family.

Saturday, September 20, 2008

A visit to the Pineapple Packing Shed

Just recently the kids and I, along with our friends Eloise, Martin, Matthew and Amy had the opportunity to go along to Paradise Pines packing shed to watch what happens after the pineapples are picked from the field to how they end up at our grocery stores. We got a 'special tour' around the shed (I have contacts)and the children (even the adults) had a great time.

This picture is of the field bins of Pineapples. The types of pineapples they pack are smooth, rough and hybrid. Did you know that it takes up to two years for pineapples to be ready for harvesting!



One of the highlights for my two was getting to wear these 'groovy orange' safety vests.


Our 'Tour Guide'!


The bins of pineapples are taken to the conveyor belt where they were put on, sorted and packed into boxes.


Saharna and Josiah hard at work!


I will post photos of our Pineapple lapbooks soon...

Just going fish'n....



Hubby, Pernella & Charlie have started fishing! These pictures are of Charlie's first fish that he caught. Very proud moment. Unfortunately
Pernella's got away...
They had an excellent time at the beach and among all the fisherman that were there, they were the only ones to come home with a catch.

Our Beach at Sunrise

Every couple of weeks Hubby gets up very early on a Saturday morning and takes Pernella & Charlie to our beach. They watch the sunrise, look in rock pools, walk, talk and collect shells.
Just spending time together.

“I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.” C.S. Lewis


From the rising of the SUN unto the going down of the same the LORD's name is to be praised. Psalms 113:3

A walk in the woods

Our homeschooling group got together to go for a nature walk along the river. The children took bags to collect leaves, plants and whatever else they could find. We also took along binoculars to watch the birds in their habitat. These are the outings the children love the best, hunting high and low to find new and interesting discoveries, watching spiders spin their webs, looking at cocoons hanging from leaves. When we got home out came their nature and sketch books to make personal recordings of our days events.





“Reading about nature is fine, but if a person walks in the woods and listens carefully, he can learn more than what is in books, for they speak with the voice of God.” ~ George Washington Carver

Friday, September 19, 2008

What's in the toolbox???

Charlie wondered into the house very calm and said in a 'matter of fact' voice.. "Mum there's a snake in my toolbox". At first I thought he was joking as he disappeared outside again but then I told hubby to quickly go outside and see what was happening. Sure enough we had a snake in the tool box. We had the local snakeman 'Dave' pop over to see what kind of snake it was. Just for your information Australia has 8 of the world’s 10 deadliest land snakes and in Townsville we seem to have most of the 8 living here - big grin... Anyway it turned out to be a common tree snake having a rest after consuming the tree frogs which inhabit our back verandah.

Nature study up close (too close in my opinion!)

Getting the snake out of the tool box so Dave could see what type of snake it was.

Dave held the snake so that the kids could have a good look at it. Then he took the snake far, far away...