Sassafras Science

Sassafras Zoology has been sitting on my shelf since the last Rainbow Resource order came. I made a plan for its use last weekend, and now we are back to doing science on Tuesdays and Thursdays (after a longer break than I am going to admit to).

We did the first chapter, "The Adventure Begins," on Tuesday. It introduced the main characters of the book and (for people who didn't buy the logbooks) instructed parents on setting up the SciDat logbooks. It also introduced the concepts of classification and observation. One of the assignments was to go on an Observation Walk, which we did. I gave the kids the ipad to use for a camera and we went on a roughly 40 minute walk in the blocks around our house.

Delilah was not initially impressed with this plan.

I gave her the camera first and she found some pretty cool things growing out of the sidewalk on the way to the elementary school.

There were some very cool plants at the elementary school (which has a garden and greenhouse). The gardener let the kids each taste a stevia leaf (sweet!) and gave us an impromptu tour of what she was growing.

Today we started chapter two "The African Grasslands," in which the main characters have traveled to the African Grasslands and are on safari. I read them the first section, "Look! A Lion," and they wrote about lions in their logbooks. Right now, they're watching the Meat Eaters episode of The Life of Mammals series on Netflix. This afternoon, we're going to go to the Lebanon library and try to find some of the recommended books for this chapter. The Sassafras activity guide book gives lists of recommended books for each chapter, along with activities and experiments.

Not the End of the School Year Here

For our neighbor kids who go to school, today is the last day of their school year. For my poor children, who have a terribly mean mother, it's business as usual.

Today we finished ch. 33 of Story of the World bk. 3 (about Napoleon). They watched the first episode of Scholastic's "Horrible Histories," which just came onto Netflix. All of the kids have been spending lots of time reading because they signed up for the Lebanon library's summer reading program and want to get their prizes; the program is based on time spent reading.

They will have a two week vacation while I am in Haiti. Aside from that, we're going to continue with our regular year-round schooling.