Just a small one, put on by Emerald Sunshine. If your children like to make models or dioramas, or you just need a little motivation after all that turkey, check it out! You might even win some Usborne books, and who doesn’t like that?

In this lesson, you will have the opportunity to learn a little about the constellation Orion, watch a meteor shower and collect some space dust to analyze under a microscope.  Normally when I post a Saturday School lesson, I post it after the lesson and include pictures.  This one, however, is a little time sensitive.  But who wouldn’t jump up and down at the opportunity to collect some space dust and look at it through a microscope?

The Meteor Shower

The Orionids are an annual meteor shower which appear to originate out of the left shoulder of Orion, the Hunter.  Hence the name.  They are left over bits of dust and other particles from Halley’s Comet.  As the earth passes through the debris, it burns up in the earth’s atmosphere, causing bright streaks across the sky.  The Orionids are known for being rather colorful and producing 20 meteorites an hour for the observer.  They have been exceptionally active in recent years, and are expected to be again this year.

Best Viewing

This year, they peak on the morning of the 21st.  Unfortunately, viewers will also have the waning gibbous moon to contend with, so viewing may actually be better a few days later.  There will not be as many meteors, but the moon will be dimmer each day.

The best viewing hours are typically in the wee hours of the morning.  To contend with the moon, find a spot where natural obstacles block it from sight, or bring a large piece of cardboard to do the same.  Two toilet paper tubes taped together and used like binoculars will darken a small portion of the sky, but will also make it more difficult to catch meteorites from your peripheral vision.

Finding Orion

Orion is one of the most recognizable constellations in the sky, particularly in winter.  It and the Big Dipper (a commonly recognized part of the much larger constellation Ursa Major) are important “guidepost” constellation because you can use them to find many interesting features in the night sky.  Since these meteors appear to orginate from Orion, finding this constellation may be helpful for seeing more meteorites.

Orion should be relatively high in the Eastern sky at about 1AM.  It will look somewhat like he is laying down.  Here is a nice shot of the constellation in January.  Rotate it counterclockwise in your mind and you have more or less what it will look like in the sky.

And a drawing of the constellation:

Project One:  Recognizing Orion

You can begin by learning a bit about Orion and the mythology behind this famous constellation.  Following is a simple craft which will help you and your children more readily recognize Orion in the night sky (and give younger ones a chance to “see” the constellation before bedtime).

Materials:

• Cardboard tube
• Push pin
• Print out of Orion (from drawing above)
• Black construction paper
• Rubber band

Procedure:

• Re-size the above picture so that it will fit over the open end of a cardboard tube and print it out.
• Cut a square of black construction paper (larger than the opening of the tube.)
• Place the picture of Orion on top of the construction paper and gently press holes through each star.
• Remove the picture, turn the construction paper over and place it over the cardboard tube.
• Fold down the edges and hold in place with a rubber band.
• Look through the tube toward a light source and you should see Orion gleaming back.

Just make sure when you look through the tube that Orion’s shield is on the right side.  If it is on the left, just turn the paper over and re-attach.

Project Two:  Collecting Space Dust

As the earth passes through the debris left from Halley’s Comet, large objects will burn up in the atmosphere giving you the normally somewhat spectacular display of the Orionids.  Tons (an estimated 100 tons per day!) of very small dust particles, called micrometeorites, will also enter the atmosphere, however, which are too light to gain the speed necessary to burn up.  Instead, they will gently float down to earth.  This occurs continually, but there is a marked increase in the amount of micrometeorites following a meteor shower, hence this is the best time to collect it.  All you need to do is collect a few materials and wait for the next rain shower to rinse the space dust out of the sky.  Of course, you will get quite a bit of regular earth dust, as well, but that can be separated out.

Materials:

• Dish to collect rainwater (a pie plate works well)
• Plastic wrap
• Plastic bag
• Magnet
• Clean pan
• Distilled water
• Aluminum foil
• Magnetized pin (A pin may be magnetized by rubbing several times over a magnet in the same direction)

Procedure:

• Cover the shallow dish with plastic wrap and rinse.  This will limit the amount of earth dust you start out with.
• Collect the rainwater.
• Place the magnet into the plastic bag.
• Sweep gently several times across the bottom of the dish.  Micrometeorites have a high iron content and thus will be attracted to the magnet.
• Cover a pan with aluminum foil and rinse.  Again, you are trying to minimize the amount of earth dust you introduce.
• Pour in distilled water.
• Place the magnet in its bag in the distilled water and remove the magnet.  Swirl the plastic bag around to rinse the micrometeorites into the distilled water.
• Now you need only to evaporate the water to leave behind a thin layer of “space dust.”  You can boil it away, but be careful not to let your pan burn!
• Run the magnetized needle across the dust to pick up your micrometeorites.  Place them on a slide and observe under a microscope.

And then sit back and wonder at how many miles these little particles have traveled and that they were once in outer space!

If you have any questions about the directions, please don’t hesitate to ask.  Also, if you try this out, please let me know!  I have not done this before and only just discovered the project in one of my old astronomy books I have had since junior high.  I will try to get some pictures and share them after our activity…sometime after the next rain!

Also, if you have shared a lesson plan recently, please leave the link and I’ll add it to the post.

__________________________

Cindy Rushton posts about tea time with children.  Mmmm…we sort of fell out of doing this with regularity, but it is back on the schedule.  We host book talks during tea time, which is oh so enjoyable.

The Homeschool Blog Awards are accepting nominations through October 24th.

Sallie of Seaside Tales is hosting a Pilgrim’s Progress Curriculum giveaway on her blog through the 28th.

And of course there is my little science giveaway which will close Thursday at midnight so I can announce a winner Friday morning.

homeschool homeschooling lesson plan orionids

Welcome back to Saturday School! I hope you didn’t enjoy the lack of referrals too much, because I sort of enjoy sharing what we are working on now and again. As always, feel free to share links to your practical side in the comment box! This week, in honor of the falling temperatures, I am going to offer instructions for making your own snow globe.

These simple little objects first appeared in France in the early 1800s and finally crossed the Atlantic to delight American consumers a century later. They captivated my imagination as a child as I peered in at the tiny worlds forever suspended in a winter wonderland where snow fell with a whirlwind effect. Watching them both relaxes and stimulates the imagination. Building them yourself adds a bit more creativity and satisfaction to the process.

Materials:

• An empty jar with tight fitting lid. Canning jars work very well for this.
• Sculpey clay.
• Caulk/sealant (like what you would use on a bathtub).
• Glitter.

Procedure:

1. Create a miniature scene with the clay that will fit on top of your jar’s lid. Make it as simple or elaborate as you wish.
2. Bake the clay scene in your oven at 270 degrees Fahrenheit for approximately 20 minutes.
3. Allow this to cool thoroughly before handling. The clay strengthens as it cools and early handling can damage it.
4. Attach the scene to the lid of the jar with the caulk. You may also want to seal together any pieces in your scene. Our snowman fell apart the first time we shook the snow globe, but since sealing it with the caulk, he has happily endured many a blizzard.
5. Allow the sealant to dry (according to the directions on the bottle).
6. Fill the jar with water.
7. Gently place the lid on the jar to force out the excess water.
8. Remove the lid, add some glitter and replace the lid.
9. You can seal the jar with the caulk if you wish, and a few drops of bleach in the water will keep it from turning bad for some time.
10. Shake it up and enjoy the blizzard!

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A few more practical posts I noticed:

Not the least bit practical…more of an object lesson, really…but Renae from Life Nurturing Education has a “must read” post involving snow globes.

The Homeschool Lounge just launched as a sort of sister site to Heart of the Matter. It is an online community of homeschoolers where we can just hang out and chat about whatever. And there is a group for crafty homeschool mamas, of course. I joined early so I could be me, Dana. Look me up if you sign up!

Camp Creek Blog shares an art lesson:  blind contour drawing.

Natural Moms Blog has an interesting tip for storing games and other homeschool supplies. And that art issue. That reminds me…well, I’ll save that for next Saturday.

You can find out where people homeschool by following the links at Heart of the Matter’s meme for this week. At home, in the car, at the zoo…actually, it would take less time to write about where we don’t homeschool. But blank entries do not really provoke much conversation.

Homeschool Hacks shares a tip for teaching current events to children.

And don’t forget about the Great Backyard Bird Count, going on through Monday! (Hat Tip: Corn and Oil.)

[tags]homeschool, homeschooling, snow globe[/tags]

Welcome to Saturday School, my weekly look into the practical side of homeschooling. Feel free to leave a link in the comment section if you have shared any practical ideas recently! This week, our Saturday School project fell apart. But rather than give a lesson on following directions, I am going to postpone it until we are not substituting materials that were apparently more important than we at first thought. This is not a lesson per se, but an idea. When my daughter lost her first tooth, she was so excited. All day she talked about it, and that evening she mentioned something about a tooth fairy. We had never talked about the tooth fairy, and had never really planned on doing the tooth fairy. By her own conversation, it was obvious she knew it was all a game.

But she expected there to be some cash under her pillow.

And I had none. Not so much as a penny. So I had to think fast. And wrote the following letter:

Little Mouse,

You are growing so fast. It was not so long ago you were running about, scaling cabinets and getting into mischief like Baby Bear. It was not so long ago you depended on us for everything like Baby Bug. I still remember when you got your first tooth.

Now you can do all kinds of things for yourself. You can cook and clean and even sew. Sometimes you get into trouble, but mostly you are a big help. You are beginning to put childish things aside, like it says in 1Corinthians 13:11. Including your first baby tooth.

So for your first tooth, I thought we could have a tea party. We can have fun planning it out together. Does that sound like fun?

Love,

Mommy and Daddy

We made scones and had a tea party together, using the tea set I had brought back with me from Germany. We have a regular tea time in our daily schedule. Every afternoon (according to my schedule, anyway), we sit down to tea and have a sort of book talk. Generally, this follows the traditions I learned as an exchange student in East Frisia, a part of northwestern Germany. It is what I know. But, for educational purposes, we have also had formal English teas, looked a little at the Japanese tea ceremony and had our own Middle Eastern tea.

It is amazing how much there is to learn about a culture just through talking about our reading while practicing a local custom.

Of course, now that we have tea time regularly (if not every day), my daughter is asking for something else for the next tooth she loses. So I’m going to have to start thinking some more. At least she doesn’t have any loose right now!

_____

I am thinking that the imminent threat of a major holiday has kept most of the blogs I follow from posting much practical insight.  That or I just missed them all while scrolling.  Either way, I didn’t find much in the way of practical posts to share.

I did, however, find this resource.  I am starting to incorporate more current events into our homeschool and think the New York Times Learning Network looks like it could be an interesting resource.  If nothing else, I am sure I can get some ideas from their ideas!

[tags]homeschooling, family[/tags]

Welcome to Saturday School, my weekly look into the practical side of homeschooling. Feel free to leave a link in the comment section if you have shared any practical ideas recently! This week, I am sharing a quick reading activity to help your child learn about a character in a book. The final result is a nice mini-poster worthy of storing in your child’s notebook, hanging on the refrigerator or storing wherever you keep your child’s nice work.

This is a simple “Wanted Poster” which the child fills out using the information in a chapter, story or book. To begin, you may want to look at some real wanted posters and talk about their purpose and design. Here are several. Please note, these are real wanted posters with real crimes listed. For a little history, you can also look through some old-time wanted posters of famous outlaws.

This is a nice format for a character analysis because it helps the child to collect a physical description, some character traits and, depending on the character and story selected, identify the central theme. There is room for creativity as well. My daughter made a “Lost Cat” poster for Benjamin and His Cat Grimalkin, for example. As a reward, she thought a portrait painted by young Benjamin would be appropriate.

A nice template is available from Education World and it downloads as a Word document so is easy to adapt to your specific story. Scroll down to “Ice Breakers” and click on “Wanted Poster.”

And when you are all finished with the serious school stuff, why not make a display of the little outlaws in your own home? Here is our little card shark, helping me win at UNO:

This was made with the free generator over GlassGiant.com. And as usual, feel free to leave links to your bits of practical homeschooling…or even just to your wanted posters since I know my baby’s picture is not going to be the only one run through the generator today.

And a few practical posts which I noticed in my Reader over the course of the week. For some strange reason, Christmasy things dominated the practical postings I read:

Standing on Isaiah 54:13 shares some pictures of the birds they have attracted for a bird study as part of Flying Creatures of the Fifth Day.

It Coulda’ Been Worse shares a nice idea for displaying Christmas cards. Even nicer than accumulating in my basket by the door.

Shanan Trail shares her rather stylish, but homemade, display for her family’s Jesse Tree. It looks way nicer than the colored scraps of paper hanging from coat hangers in my kitchen.

Practical and delicious, Simply a Musing Blog shares some holiday recipes.

[tags]homeschooling, homeschool, reading, lessons, lesson plans[/tags]

Welcome to Saturday School, my weekly look into the practical side of homeschooling. Feel free to leave a link in the comment section if you have shared any practical ideas recently! A couple weeks ago, I shared instructions for making a circle book out of paper plates, and Julie of Shanan Trail noted she would probably forget before her children were old enough for that project. So here is one based on the same idea, but for younger children.

Also using paper plates, this simple project is perfect for teaching anything cyclical. My Pre-K kids made these while learning about frog metamorphosis and here, we are learning about the water cycle. With help, even a two year old can participate.

Materials:

Two paper plates
Coloring sheet(s) of four stages of desired cycle (optional)
Brad (optional)

Procedure:

1. Divide the paper plates into quarters. Set one aside.

2. Color the cycle worksheet, or draw the steps in order in each quadrant of the paper plate.

3. Cut out each step and glue them in the appropriate quadrant, if using a coloring sheet.

4. Cut one quarter of the second paper plate out.

5. Lay this on top of the other plate. Attach with a brad if desired. It will spin, revealing each stage of the cycle for your child to explain to you.

Nothing revolutionary, but all three of my children enjoy this project.

More practical posts I have noticed:

This was intended for Thanksgiving, but Mom is Teaching’s book idea could be easily adapted for any holiday or event.

Martinzoo is detecting starch in foods.

Maybe not educational, but certainly delicious: Santa pancakes! I wonder how any interesting things children could make with a bowl of berries, pancakes and some whipped cream?

Enjoy your Saturday, and feel free to share any of your practical ideas through a link in the comments.

Welcome to Saturday School, Principled Discovery’s weekly foray into the practical side of homeschooling. Feel free to add your links in comments if you have any lessons, projects or instructional strategies to share!

For my daughter’s ninth birthday, we took her, my parents and four of her friends to a little tea house downtown. The girls had a lovely time in their best dresses, drinking tea and conversing over scones, tea sandwiches and delightful little dessert items. Serving tea could be a Saturday School post of its own, but this week we are doing something a little less educational. I suppose we are learning about gratitude and showing appreciation to our friends through thoughtful thank you notes. But mostly I remembered making these as a girl and selling them at craft shows while my mom sold her items. I shared that with my daughter last week, and now I am sharing it with you.

How to make candy airplanes

Materials:

1 roll Smarties
1 Rubberband
2 Life Saver mints
2 Sticks of gum

Step one: Thread a rubber band through the two Life Saver mints.

Step two: Place the roll of Smarties between the two wheels.

Step three: Insert the sticks of gum through the opening on each end of the rubber band to make the wings and hold the plane together.

Note: If the gum has a paper wrapper around the foil, you only need one stick of gum.

Here is our little fleet:

I thought this was a nice, simple project to share for the holiday season. They make good favors, party activities for children, gift tags and ornaments.

And a few more practical posts I noticed recently:

Dawn of By Sun and Candlelight offers a unique, home made advent calendar of sorts. Making the wreath is a lesson in itself, and then you have 37 days of mini-lessons to share with your children!

Speaking of mini-lessons, Mimi of The Homeschooling News Cafe explains them well in Focused Mini Lessons.

And some cookie recipes from Who Said Learning Can’t be Fun? OK, so they are from last year, but Cathy is back! She was one of my first readers from outside my little Principle Approach “clique” and she took a long absence from the internet. I am jumping up and down for joy and therefore you get to visit her blog and make the cookies she made last Christmas.

You can click on the Saturday School category for more practical homeschooling from Principled Discovery and enjoy your Saturday!

[tags]homeschooling, lessons[/tags]

Welcome to Saturday School, my weekly series to share ideas, lesson plans and instructional strategies. Feel free to leave a link in the comment section if you have shared any of the above recently! Last week, we learned how to make a simple circuit and Renae from Life Nurturing Education shared Finding Life in Dry Lessons which is well worth the read if you have not already done so!

This week, I am sharing a type of “little book” that you can make with your child to teach some of the popular “circular stories” and begin teaching the interdependent nature of introductions and conclusions in a very tactile way.

Q: What is a circular story?

A: Essentially a story that goes around in a big circle to end up where it started. Laura Joffe Numeroff has become famous with her circular stories, including If You Give a Mouse a Cookie.

Materials:

Two paper plates (I’m using card stock cut into a circle for this.)
Scissors
Tape
Pen
Circular story

Procedure:

1. Divide the story up into seventeen segments. The first and last have to be the same sentence. This will be a summary and it is ok to leave out some parts of the book.

2. Take your two paper plates and fold them in half and then in half again. Open to reveal the quarters.

3. Cut along one of the fold lines to the center of the circle on each paper plate. Position the plates so that cut is facing down. The markings A and B are for your convenience in these directions and are not necessary to mark on your plates.

4. Tape the B edge of the top plate to the A edge of the bottom plate. This is your book. You will put one of each of the segments onto each “page.” As you turn pages, the book will turn itself over twice and you will end up back on page one. Here, you can see the spiral you have created.

To demonstrate how the pages turn, I have them numbered here:

Extensions:

1. Encourage your children to make up their own circle stories. They can include illustrations to take up some of the pages if a sixteen page book is too long.

2. Talk about how other stories could be adapted to fit onto the circle book. Pay particular attention to the introduction and conclusion. What is similar? What is different? How does the beginning of the book relate to the end?

3.  For an older child, examine some examples of circular reasoning using this as an illustration of common reasoning flaws.

And with that, your child has had the opportunity to make a physical connection between the beginning and the end of a circular story, practice this unique story type in his own writing and been provided a sound, kinesthetic introduction to one of the most difficult aspects of writing: the relationship between the introduction and the conclusion.

I hope you enjoyed this week’s Saturday School. Feel free to leave links to any lesson ideas you have had recently and would like to share.

[tags]homeschooling, homeschool, little books, reading, writing[/tags]

When I first started this blog, the intent was to share ideas, lessons and instructional strategies based on my developing knowledge of the Principle Approach. That faded pretty quickly and now I rarely share anything quite so concrete. Since I miss it and these sorts of things are supposed to be alliterative, I’m assigning you all to Saturday School, my very own, because-I-feel-like-it, bloggy thing.

This week’s project combines some rudimentary circuitry and any subject your child needs a little extra practice in. I would file this with my “Better Than Worksheets” instructional series on drill and practice had I ever created such a series.

The word circuit is obviously historically related to the word circle. Webster’s 1828 defines it thus:

The act of moving or passing round; as the periodical circuit of the earth round the sun, or of the moon round the earth.

Modern technology may have brought some more specific application to the world, but the meaning has not changed much. Circuitry allows electricity to travel around in a circle to do work. Here, we are going to make a simple circuit board that can serve to allow your child to practice any skill that can be answered in a yes/no or multiple choice format. In this case, it will be multiplying by four.

Materials:

file folder (with the open edge trimmed so both sides are th same size and shape)
hole punch
marker
masking tape
aluminum foil
circuit tester

1. Punch holes. You will need two rows of holes. One for each question and one for each answer.

2. Write the problems along one side and the possible answers on the other.

3. Open the folder. On the back side of the side you wrote the problems and solutions, lay a strip of foil between a problem and the correct answer. This is the basis of your circuit board. Fold the ends over the hole and make sure the hole is completely covered by the foil. Insulate with masking tape. Make sure none of the foil is showing on the back side.

4. Continue until all the answers are connected to their problems by a strip of aluminum foil insulated by masking tape. The back will look kind of messy, but that is ok. No one will see it, anyway.

5. Close the file folder. We do a set of problems on each flap, make the circuit board and then tape the folder closed. This helps protect the work.

6. Use the circuit tester to work the problems:

Oops. The circuit was not completed, so the tester did not light up. Try again!

Yeah! She got the problem right, the circuit was completed and the tester lit up.

Caution: When you look for a circuit tester, some contain lead. These are not intended as children’s toys. We searched and found one without lead, but still require our daughter to wash her hands after using it.

If you have shared a lesson this past week, feel free to leave the link in my comment box. This blog is actually a do-follow blog, meaning that links in comments are picked up by Google and Technorati if you care about that sort of thing.

[tags]homeschooling, homeschool, lesson, activities, math[/tags]