The Moon and the Oreos that go with it

During this last full moon we had a big fat moon unit study.  I tried to take decent pictures but since most of our work that was picture worthy was done outside at night you can imagine how that went.  I did get a couple pictures of the full moon… but even with a tripod and a timer you get this:

Or this:

Pretty… but not looking like this:

Via

However, we spent the next three days happily studying the moon in all her glory!

These were all the books we had from the library.  The one on the top labeled simply “MOON” was one of the best for fun facts and cool pictures!  Did you know there was such a thing as a ‘moonbow’?  I didn’t either!  But the shot in this book of the moons light reflecting off some mist near the horizon certainly looks like a rainbow and is clearly from the moons light!  How neat is that!?!

After this we talked about the different shapes of the moons light and what each portion was called.  They learned this well and fast… cuz I used Oreos!!

Thank you Pinterest!

After that we watched a video and had ‘eclipse toast’.

This video was amazing!  Simply done, so Logan could really understand it, this video explains all kinds of facts about the moon and it’s rotation as well as facts about what we see when we look at the moon.

After that, we switched gears to perspective of the human eye.  We talked about how when the moon is low it seems SO much bigger but if you look through a TP tube (which we did when looking at the full moon) you could see that it isn’t any bigger than it is in the center of the dark sky… there is just something to measure against.

Then we moved on to drawing with depth perception.

We are working through Commander Mark’s Draw Squad and the kids LOVE it!  If you have never seen this, it’s super duper old.  The dude has a mullet and everything… but he is just a great character and he is good at explaining things like foreshortening and depth perception with easy, kid friendly language.  Plus, he draws cartoons.  What could be better than that?

Our moon study was super fun… but we are moving on to photosynthesis! 

5th Grade Praying Mantis Lapbook

Cyan’s Praying Mantis Lapbook has several pages added.  I used this story starter page and these worksheet pages from ABCteach.com, and then a few pages from Homeschool Bin. 

I simply stapled the pages to the center portion of the lapbook so they worked like a flip up book.

She also made this: Praying Mantis Cutout (remember to print on cardstock!)

Under the pages she had tons of mini books with information on them. 

She did nearly all of the mini books from the HomeschoolShare.com Praying Mantis Animal Study Lapbook.

She also added some pictures and captions from our own mantis hatching experience. 

My favorite part of this lapbook was a few days after it was done.  I have a few friends that we gave baby mantis to when we had ours… one of them asked if Cyan could help her kids do a lapbook that was similar.  She was able to tell them ALL about mantis, their lifecycle, what they eat, their body structure.  It was cool to hear how much she retained from doing this project!  That is my favorite part of unit studies… the kids retain SO much!

Praying Mantis Preschool Lapbook

The preschool version was simple yet every time he looks at it he can tell me all sorts of neat things about the mantis.  Here is a walkthrough of his lapbook:

This is the outside of the lapbook. All of these resources were found at HomeschoolShare.com under ‘Praying Mantis Animal Lapbook’.

When opened it has pictures from our hatching mantis babies and Logan’s captions which I wrote out under each picture.

The flap in this section has the largest and the smallest mantis fold out.

This section holds the most fold outs.  The anatomy of a mantis, complete with all sections of an insect which goes along with this song:  (To the tune of BINGO)

I am an insect in my life,

and this is what I look like,

two antennae, compound eyes,

one, two, three, four, five, six legs,

Thorax and an abdomen,

and this is what I look like!

The other flaps are what mantis eat, where mantis live,

and the life cycle of a mantis.  (All dictated by Logan, but written by me.)

THe other side has two flaps that are simply named “Fun Facts” and Logan got to add whatever he wanted in there.  We had just watched Kung Fu Panda and the video from here so this is what I got for the first one:

Lol!

Next up is Cyan’s lapbook for the mantis (5th grade) which is much more detailed, but this one was just a lot of fun!

Titlow Beach Tour - Staycation day #5

Yesterday we took a tour of Titlow Beach! 

The tour started with everyone splitting into groups and talking about the types of things they were looking for on the beach at low tide.

We all headed down to the beach and started looking for specimens of beach wildlife.  They started at the top of the beach and headed down towards the water. 

It was amazing the difference between the upper shore critters and the tide area critters! About the same amount, but completely different needs for life and comfort.

This is a Chiton.  Two different kinds actually.  One is a Banded Chiton and the other is a Spiny Chiton.

Isn’t the banded one beautiful!?!  It is even more brightly colored than it looks.  Green around the edges and almost purple/brown in the middle with bands that look iridescent in the sunlight.  Beautiful! 

We saw all kinds of critters from giant Sea Stars, to tiny Sun Stars with only three legs (the rest, which they can have up to 20 or so, must have gotten eaten off by curious and hungry birds). 

By the end we had identified 7 different kinds of crab and one of them was the tiny hermit crab like this:

We had to leave early because Cyan was sick.  But it was a beautiful time at the beach!

Mantis, Mantis, Baby Mantis

We can spend hours watching the baby mantis go around their enclosure.  We have also put a few in a jar and they are hanging out in a clear container so we can see them better.  And this morning I let a couple out on a stick while I was feeding the rest.  I am sure they would have moved faster if they had known I it was feeding time, but as it was, they were sluggish enough for me to get some pretty good shots of these tiny TINY creatures. 

At almost a half inch long they are really cute!  But really cute like baby tigers are cute.  You know, something that would gladly eat you if they had the chance.

This is pretty much the coolest bug study yet.  I have done butterflies, lady bugs, frogs… but I think the mantis take the cake.  They are the coolest creatures to watch!  It’s pretty neat to watch a bug that will turn it’s head and watch you back.  lol!

The things we learn (the next day):

So I went all Hunger Games on my mantis today. I dumped in a bunch of tiny sugar ants thinking 'breakfast' but what I really got was 'war'. It was not so awesome. Two dead, one with only 5 legs. I rescued them before the ants took out any more mantids.

Man! And I even said "May the odds be ever in your favor" before dumping the ants in. Little did I know... the odds WERE in the ants favor. They are like the careers of the bug world. Must go get baby fruit fly larvae now. No aphids to speak of anywhere. Who would have thunk I would be WISHING for aphids on my roses!?!

Theo Chocolate Factory Tour

This year, our vacation is a low budget one… so instead of going somewhere for our two weeks off we decided to have a ’staycation’ in which we go on field trips every two days!  The Theo Chocolate Factory Tour was Staycation Day #1!

The first thing we had to do on the Theo Chocolate Tour was put on a hair net.

 

Everyone had to wear one.

Dad even had to wear one on his face!  Logan decided he needed a beard net too:

Did I mention everyone?

They sat us in a room and the chocolate eating began.  They started by describing how chocolate is processed and grown.  And in fact, I found it interesting that the tree that first grew their chocolate is called the “Theo Cocoa Tree” which is how they got their name!  I always thought it was a guy named Theo.  lol!  But in fact, it’s named after a variety of cocoa tree.

We started tasting with the very darkest chocolate (91%) and moved to the sweeter stuff.  Kind of like a wine tasting, we could taste the differences between chocolate grown in different places and climates.  It was VERY interesting! 

After that, we went into the actual factory.  We were blessed to have two workers on our tour… a tour guide and a former coco roaster!  Something else I didn’t know is that Theo is one of the only factories in the USA that actually roasts it’s own chocolate.  Most places that claim to ‘make’ chocolate actually only ‘melt’ chocolate. 

This flow chart shows how it’s done and which machines do what:

Cyan really loved watching the ‘coco liquiour’ come out of the machine and mix with the milk powder and sugar.

Then we got to go into the ‘confection room’.  With no Oompa Loompas in sight, we watched real people make chocolate bars and confections right before our eyes as our tour guide told us what was what and who was doing which chore:

This was one of the 5 bar guys.  Making the actual chocolate bars is a HUGE job.  This room is where all of the add in’s for the bar chocolates are added:

He’s making cherry almond bars in this picture.  YUM!

Our tasting time was well from over though.  When in the confections room we got to taste quite a few different confections and then went into the gift shop where all of the bar seconds were broken up and we could taste them ALL.  By the time I left I was chocolated out… for probably the first time ever!  lol!

It was a wonderful tour and a great start to our staycation!