Remember the candy classification post from a couple months ago?  My logic classes at co-op did a similar activity with 15-bean soup mix.

Before jumping into the activity, we talked about plant and animal classification.  I showed them a pictorial example of how animals are classified and then further classified until each animal is eventually in it’s own category.

Each student was given a small pile of beans – approximately 50-60 beans with at least one of every variety in the pile.  (I allowed my middle school group to work in teams of two or three students.)

I challenged them to create a classification system for their beans, making sure each bean ended up in its own category in the end.  They were asked to use any characteristics they wished to separate the beans, with only two rules:

• use creative characteristics (not simply colors)
• don’t break every bean down into its own group in the first step

With each new separation based on a new characteristic, they were expected to note it on a chart so that, in the end, they could tell me the full “taxonomy” of each bean.

Ex: Bean -> small -> round -> flat -> green -> split pea

Each classification chart was unique because each student (or group of students) began with different characteristics of separation.  So, when one person first separated the beans into large and small groups, another student might have used the categories of dark and light or oval and round.

I used this opportunity to discuss how Carolus Linnaeus “invented” the modern classification system of plants and animals in the 1700′s, but scientists even today don’t always agree about exact placements in the taxonomy.

We decided to create a “scientists roundtable”.  Everyone went around the table and told the first characteristic they chose to separate the beans.  If four out of five people (or groups) all used the characteristic of shape, we voted to make that the “official” first level of characterization.  If two people used one characteristic and three people used another, each person had to “argue” their case for using that characteristic and then we all voted as to the “official” characterization.  We continued through each level of the taxonomy in this manner until we came up with an “official scientist certified bean taxonomy”.

The kids all loved this activity!  Besides science and logic, it was a great lesson in chart making, debate and cooperation!

Through Pinterest, I found (and archived) some fun leafy art lessons to go along with our botany studies this autumn.

While we didn’t get to all the wonderful ideas – this autumn – we found time for two of them.  The first was a lesson about layering oil pastels from Art Projects for Kids.

And the second was a fun shaving cream transfer painting from Little Wonder’s Days.

Speaking of botany, the last couple of weeks have been full of wonderful botany related field trips.

At Hallway Feeds, we were able to view the creation of specialized animal feed from start to finish.  What an amazing and utterly detailed process.  The kids were even allowed to EAT some of the feed!

At Color Point Nursery, we walked through state-of-the-art greenhouses and learned the process of growing and shipping plants on a very large scale.  At the time, there were 600,000 poinsettias set to ship out soon.  This place was huge!

I’ve lived in Kentucky my entire life and have never been to Churchill Downs.  My father-in-law owns a thoroughbred racehorse that happened to be racing at Churchill Downs last week.  Even though “our” horse came in 6th, we had a great time taking in all the sites and sounds – which can certainly count toward biology hours, right?

Enjoy your Thanksgiving week!

What is this??  A bowl of wonderful, living pond water!

Even though you can’t see anything living with the naked eye, there’s a world of life waiting to see under a microscope!

Mahayla has been studying about the Kingdoms Monera and Protista in her biology.  And, as you know, Caleb has been studying all sorts of plants, including pond plants.  We were amazed at all the life we found in that small bowl of pond water!  If you have a microscope, create a few slides with “fresh” pond water and see for yourself!

When studying pond water, you might also enjoy the other activities suggested in the NaturExplorers study, Peaceful Ponds!

I told you I’ve been slacking on my posts!  Four botany study posts in four days doesn’t mean we’ve been studying botany in such depth every day.  In fact, each topic took us at least a week to cover.  Today’s post is about one of the lessons spent learning about fungi.

Besides science and photography, this lesson was stretched to include writing and computer skills, too.  I posted last week about the notebooking page he created.

Of course, with boys, a nature walk never ends up being entirely about the topic at hand.  They always find exciting extras…

What nature studies have been keeping you busy this autumn?

Math

My preschooler made a concrete graph with his candy.

He had to sort the candy into groups before we could graph them and he created the group names all by himself – gum, chocolate, suckers, crunchy, chewy and hard.

After completing all sorts of averages based on different groupings of the candy, Caleb (6th grade) created this graph using Excel.  (This is another great computer integration activity for those of you who’ve asked me to share more about how we use the computer in our homeschool!)

Science

Not a great picture, but I wanted you to see the entire concrete classification system my 6th grader made with his candy.  {A classification system is otherwise known as a taxonomy, which we compared to the classification system for plants and animals.}

Beginning with the main group of ‘candy’, Caleb decided how to break the large group into two smaller groups. He came up with ‘chocolate’ and ‘non-chocolate’ as his descriptions.

For each new category, he continued breaking the groups down into two new categories until he ended up with each specific type of candy in it’s own pile.

Finally, we walked through each candy’s “classification”. An example from our taxonomy chart -Candy; chocolate; bright wrappers; made with peanuts; made with peanut butter, crunchy, Butterfinger. Besides being a science activity, this also fits into the category of logic!

Check out some other candy math lessons we’ve posted in the past, too!

• M&M Math
• Candy Heart Math

Gymnosperms are plants with “naked seeds” that aren’t housed inside a fruit.  Conifers (cone-bearing plants) are an example of a gymnosperm.

During this lesson, we had collected various twigs and cones from trees at our local cemetery.  We don’t have very many conifers at all on our farm, but the cemetery has several varieties.  We tried to only to collect specimens that had already fallen off the trees or seems to be part of a dying branch.

We compared the leaves of different trees. How were they alike/different? How were they attached to the twig?

We identified the parts and observed their characteristic and functions.

We pulled apart cones as an informal dissection. We were looking for seeds inside the cones, but all ours had already dropped their seeds.

Cones close in cold, wet weather to protect the seeds. We placed open cones in cold water and watched as they completely closed after a few hours.

Conversely, cones open in warm, dry weather. We set cones that were tightly closed in a 250 degree oven for an hour or so and watched as they opened completely.

While this wasn't part of the same lesson, our weekly art lesson used conifer samples as models for some practice with pastels.

If you’d like to find all sorts of detailed lesson ideas for studying conifers, check out the NaturExplorers study, Constant Conifers!

One super-interesting nature walk activity was finding the tap root (main root that grows straight down), lateral roots (large roots that grow outward or laterally) and fibrous roots (fine roots that grow downward from the lateral roots) of trees.  We took a walk near a creek where we were likely to see root systems due to erosion.  Our findings were way cool!

Exposed roots were everywhere making it easy for us to make plenty of observations.

As we walked the dry parts of the creek bed, we were able to find shelves of erosion showing grass and wildflower roots from above, too!

(The Everchanging Erosion NaturExplorers study would be great for this topic, too.  I’m just sayin’.  )

After plenty of experiences along with lots of living science literature, I gave Caleb a “test” of sorts.  He had to complete the file folder report below to prove his knowledge of trees.  (The file folder template came from Easy File Folder Reports, Grades 3-6.)  As a review before the “test”, I had him read a wonderful little book called A Tree is Growing by Arthur Dorros.

And I can’t forget the ever-so-interested preschooler who loves to be part of our botany lessons.  He gathered some leaves on our walk and created some simple, but pretty, leaf prints when we returned home.

Actually, I’m a little late in posting a lot of things.  My goal this week is to polish and publish as many posts as I can before The Heart of the Matter’s 10 Days of …. Series begins next week.  Did I mention I was taking part in that again?  I know I mentioned it on my Facebook page, but just in case you missed it, I’ll be writing TEN days of posts on the topic of Values Training beginning next Monday, Nov. 7th!  There are lots of wonderful blogs participating, each with exciting topics!

Anyway, off to today’s post – a living math lesson with pumpkins!  All our children participated according to their abilities – from the 4yo to the 14yo.  The 11yo and 14yo were expected to measure with complete accuracy, while the 4yo dabbled in learning how to measure.  He used standard (rulers) and non-standard (blocks) measuring tools.

We measured the height and width of each pumpkin.

We measured the weight with our bathroom scale. A nice kitchen scale (which we don't own) would've provided more accurate measurements.

We measured the circumference and the big kids used formulas to determine the diameter and radius.

Here's the beginning of Mahayla's record keeping.

When Eli saw his big brother and big sister keeping records, he insisted that he have a record keeping sheet, too. W = wide and T = tall.

We did a water displacement activity to find the volume of our pumpkins (you'll see below), but we didn't have a big enough container marked with measurements to make the pumpkin displacement accurate. To demonstrate the correct way to find volume, we used a measuring cup and potato. At least this gave them a better idea what we were doing wrong in measuring the volume of our pumkins.

In measuring the volume of our pumpkins, we made our own measurement bucket for estimations, but realized our measurements probably were not perfect, nor could we see through the bucket to see exact water levels. At least they have the experience and understand the flaws in our trial.

Of course, we couldn't end the lesson without carving our pumpkins! Through this process, we continued to measure width of the skin, depth of the cavity, and such. We also talked "science" as we discussed the pumpkin parts and their functions.

And, we couldn't end the lesson without a pumpkin treat. These are simple pumpkin bars that are so moist, they don't even need icing!

I hope you’ll find a few leftover pumpkins at the market and have your own living math lesson!

Writing is something that Caleb does NOT like.  But, when the writing is (at least somewhat) hidden, I get way fewer complaints!  Using the newsletter program that came with Office 2010, I asked Caleb to create a keepsake page about his summer’s experiences with baseball.  Besides the obvious skills of writing and word processing, he practiced page design and inserting photos and clip art.  (There was a little more on the bottom of the page, but it included personal info that I didn’t care to share, kwim?)

Mahayla was given an assignment to create an informational newsletter about horses.  The topic was her choosing and I was completely floored by her final product.  What you see below is only the first of a two-page newsletter.  I couldn’t figure out how to copy the 2nd page as a jpg!

Just this week, Caleb has been learning about non-vascular plants during science.  We went on a fungi photo walk where he was supposed to find as many fungi as possible to photograph.  (We found more than 20 varieties!)  I asked him to create a notebooking page about the fungi using some of the photos  from his walk.  This proved to be a great learning opportunity for him in science, writing and computer skills – typing, fonts, tables and inserting images.

How do you use computers in your homeschool?  I’d love to see some of your projects!

By the way, now is the perfect time for studying fungi in most parts of the USA.  Check out A Fungus Among Us!