Another fun Science Experiment!!

Good morning all!! Our Science subject for this week was fish. It was a fun week learning about these cold-blooded , aquatic vertebrates with gills and fins. Little V got to learn about:
- Salmon
- Seahorse
- Shark

We had visited the Shedd Aquarium many times before so we were able to look at some of the old pictures we had and hopefully soon we will be able to take advantage of the free days at Shedd Aquarium and make it a field trip day!

So now, let me share with you one cool experiment we did this week. This serves to teach them about osmosis (for older students) but also helps them to appreciate the importance of the animal's habitat. For example, Little V was able to see that a fresh water fish would have a hard time surviving in a salty water and vice-versa.

For this experiment we used:
- 2 shallow bowls
- tap water
- 6 slices of cucumber
- 1 tsp of salt

Little V wrote salt on s small tape and we adhered it to the bowl with salt water.

Once she added the cucumbers, we set the timer for 30 minutes. Once the time was up, we came back to check the cucumber slices.

Because the cucumber slices in the salt water lost water they were more flexible than the cucumber that were placed in the fresh water. Now, we switched the cucumbers and set the time for another 30 minutes.

The cucumber slices that were previously on salt water then were switched to fresh water recovered some of its firmness and the ones that were previously on fresh water and were switched to the salt water had lost some of its firmness.

This and more cool science experiments can be found at Janice VanCleave's Biology for Every Kid book. Just as a reminder in case you're wondering which curriculum we are using, here's a link to the Elemental Science website.

Here, Little V is working on the fish lapbook.

Hope you enjoyed our post, we surely had fun learning about fishes this week.

Today, is our last day of school before the Winter Break! Yay!!! We'll have 2 weeks to relax a little and have some fun! What about you? Will you have winter break?

Have a great day and thanks for stopping by!

Vanessa Z. Pawlicki

Parts of Speech Activities!!

Hello there!! We have been enjoying very much our homeschool activities! Little V is progressing very well and today I decided to share some of the cool stuff we have been doing for Pats of Speech. I'm using the Language Arts Grade 1 (Spectrum) as base of what she needs to learn and we are moving at her speed. I do however like to add lots of activities to make sure she gets it well.

So besides activities she gets from the book, we use our All About Reading student book and she practices coloring the parts of speech from the Fluency Sheets Sentences. There are some great activities also from Annie Moffat no prep packages.

I also created some activities myself and she used the Do-A-Dot Markers to color the different parts of speech.

I believe mastering these different parts of speech is an essential skill so I recently purchased an additional activity set of Parts of Speech from Dana Wonderland.

That's it for today! Hope you enjoyed our post about some of the cool stuff we have been doing for Parts of Speech.

Have a great day and thanks for stopping by!

Vanessa Z. Pawlicki

Animals Units - Birds!!

Hello everyone, we spent  four weeks learning about birds! Little V first learned general characteristics of the birds: warm-blooded, egg-laying, feathered vertebrate that also have wings. Then we started learning a little bit more about each of the birds the curriculum picked.
- Eagle
- Owl
- Parrot
- Penguin
- Chicken
- Duck
- Swan
- Swallow
- Hummingbird
- Flamingo
- Peacock
- Ostrich

Each week there was a cool Science experiment and for each animal there was some craft activity or research. She also had a poem about Birds Characteristics to memorize. For each bird, we also identified their diet type and habitat.

Here's a highlight of some of the great and fun activities we did during the four weeks Little V learned about birds.

We made a paper craft Swan:

We made also a funny looking Flamingo:

One of the Science experiments called naked egg from the Biology for Every Kid - 101 Easy Experiments That Really Work by Janice VanCleave.

Little V poured white vinegar into a Mason Jar with a raw egg inside and we observed it for 3 days:

Look how big it got after 3 days!!

Not only big but all the hard shell dissolved and it became very rubbery!

Hope you enjoyed our post, we had lots of fun learning about birds and wanted to share some of the fun things we did!

Have a great day and thanks for stopping by!

Vanessa Z. Pawlicki