A Unit Study About Water

Our study on water began with a fascination with water towers and why we had them.  The boys and I played "I Spy" with all the water towers on our trip to Ohio.  Andrew had the idea that we could learn about them, so I took the opportunity.

[caption id="attachment_3178" align="aligncenter" width="180" caption="Click here for a good website on explaining water towers!"][/caption]

Learn more about them here where it includes this video clip from YouTube...



We did an experiment to show how pressure plays a big part in our water system.  We used a milk jug and designed it a little to be our water tower.  We poked three holes in it...one at the top, one in the middle and one toward the bottom.  We taped them off with duct tape.  Then we filled our tower with water and removed the tape one hole at at time.  They had a fun time doing that!



But because there wasn't a whole to do with just water towers, we enjoyed learn about water in general and how it important it is in our daily lives.

A great book we read was All About Water.  So we talked (or had a refresher) on the water cycle.  This book is also great for talking about the different properties of water.  There are all kinds of fun and simple things to do with that.  A few things we did from this book were:

Froze and boiled water.

Breathed on a mirror to show how our bodies contain water.

Cooked some apple and some cucumber on low heat to see how water evaporates from them...and talked about how much foods contain water.

Other books we read that were around the house:

Water Everywhere

Usborne's How Things Work

Discoveries How Things Work

Down Comes the Rain

We watched The Magic School Bus: Wet All Over based on the book.  There has been plenty of time this week to enjoy this water cycle God created!

We did a science experiment on removing salt from salt water.  Andrew really enjoyed watching this happen in the sun.  And it worked!!

We also read our All About Magnifying Glasses book, which tied into the water theme rather nicely.  I love this "Do It Yourself" set of books purchased from Half Price Books.  We did all kinds of fun experiments, including this little magnifying glass made with a paper clip and water to form a convex lens.

I think we actually did every experiment in this book!  They really liked it!

So a fun summer unit study!

Fireflies

Summer is a great time to learn about fireflies, or lightning bugs as I always called them!  We had a fun time during this unit study.  There isn't a whole lot out there for this study, so I hope I can help gather some information for you!

Backyard Nature has a fun page on fireflies.

The boys loved singing "Fireflies, Won't You Come Out Tonight" from this album.  It's really cute and it teaches some great facts about fireflies!

We had a lighting bug party for some neighbor friends.  I had scored a ton of free Ziploc containers a couple of weeks ago, so I put name tags on each of those and drilled holes in the lids.



I strung some lights around the back porch and around my pond plants.  It actually looks really fun!  The boys caught lots of fireflies.  I served ice cream.  It was a good kick-off for our firefly studies!

We made a life cycle wheel fromthis page from LapbookLessons.  I laminated it after we glued each piece on, then used a brad fastener to put it together.  This little booklet about fireflies' light is a good way to explain bioluminescence.  And some Firefly Vocab words here.

I printed some clipart and had the boys paint fireflies, with glow in the dark paint of course!

The verse for this unit study was Psalm 27:1.   I made The LORD is my light and my salvation printout for our school area.

I couldn't resist buying the Lightning Bugs Gummi candies I saw at Kroger.  The boys loved that surprise one evening!  And I always love those little surprises God gives to us!

Books we read:

Fireflies in the Night

Fireflies

Fireflies, Peach Pies & Lullabies

Fireflies, Fireflies, Light My Way

Ten Flashing Fireflies

Fireflies for Nathan

The Very Lonely Firefly

I am linking this post to Homeschool Creation's Preschool Corner for the first time!

Butterflies

Another fun unit study we are finishing up this week is Butterflies!  Here are some things we have done the last two weeks:

Complete Unit Study - A great resource.  We used several fun things from this!

This is from "Monarch Miracle" out of the book  More Five-Minute Devotions for Children:

"Who could imagine that a big, striped caterpillar would ever become a graceful butterfly?  Just like the caterpillar, we are becoming what God wants us to be.  Sometimes it's hard to wait to grow up, but we can trust that God will help us every day.  He promises He will always be with us and He tells us How to live in the Bible.  When we believe Him and do what He says, He helps us grow and change in all the right ways."

Our scripture verse for this study was Jeremiah 29:11, so I made this to print out and put in our school area.

We made a butterfly from a Chick-Fil-A toy I had saved from a while back.  The boys enjoyed the game we played.  We each took turns hiding the butterfly on different flowers out in the yard.



We used some great butterfly life cycle stages figures from a friend of ours.  She purchased them from here.



She also gave me some great worksheets and fun books to read on butterflies.  Thanks, Vicki!  I think we will do more of this sharing stuff!

I also had purchased some glow in the dark butterflies and bugs from the Target dollar section.  I hid these in the dark.  They loved the creepiness of finding them glowing in the dark!

We read the book God's the One Who Thought of It First.   We love this book!  "You can use a straw to drink from a glass.  But God's the one who thought of it first!  He made the Butterfly.  The butterfly's mouth forms a long sucking tube for drinking nectar from flowers."  So we drank through straws just like the butterflies do!



We painted wooden butterflies purchased from the Dollar Tree.



We colored some butterflies from a little Stained Glass Coloring Book.  We hung them in the window.  So pretty!

More books we read:

Are You a Butterfly?

The Crunching Munching Caterpillar

The Beautiful Butterfly Book

Millions of Monarchs

When A Caterpillar Grows Up

Butterflies

Bugs! Bugs! Bugs! with audio CD

I'm a Caterpillar

Andrew has asked to learn about lightning bugs next!

Honey Farm Fieldtrip

We took a trip to Hunter's Honey Farm today to go along with our Honey Bees Unit Study.  We had a great time!

Honey Bees Unit Study

I thought Spring would be a great time to learn about honey bees!  It has been fun!  Take a look at some things we did...

Fun Activity Sheet - 2nd page

Coloring Sheet

Bee Maze

Made Honey Peanut Butter Dip for Apples and had Honeycomb cereal for breakfasts!

We watched the video The Magic School Bus - Inside a Beehive. They really enjoyed that!

Also, this YouTube Video...



Our theme verse for this study was Colossians 3:23 - Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men.

We also looked at the "Bee-Attitudes" in Matthew 5:3-12.  To learn these, we listened to the song and read more on the Beatitudes from the 100 Bible Stories and Songs.

I made this for our reference:

We pretended to have a beehive of our own.  I was the Queen Bee, Andrew the Drone, Ethan the Worker Bee and Samuel was the Pupa.  The best part was watching Ethan fly around the house, find flowers, and come back to regurgitate it back to us.  Their dances were pretty funny, too!

We made a Thumb Print Bees Craft.  They turned out pretty cute!  We used chopsticks to make our stripes!  Ethan and Sam went a little thumbprint crazy, but they were all cute!



In our bookshelves:

Gran's Bees

The Bee Tree

The Queen with Bees in Her Hair

Busy Buzzy Bee

Life Cycles - Bees

Bees

The Fascinating World of Bees

On Beyond Bugs - All About Insects

and a lot more from the good 'ole library!

We will be taking a trip to a honey bee farm south of Indy next week.  That will be exciting!

Hermit Crabs Unit Study

Andrew received a hermit crab for his birthday.  Instant unit study!  We needed to learn a lot about them.  So we did!  We mainly focused on land hermit crabs since that is what we have.

Meet Luke the Crabi (like Luke the Jedi)...



This is the "crabitat"



We are learning how to care for them...

Our book list:

Moving Day

A House For Hermit Crab

Is This a House for Hermit Crab?

How to Care for your Hermit Crab

Keeping Unusual Pets - Hermit Crabs (older version)

Hermit Crabs

One of the facts we read in a book that the boys really enjoyed was how hermit crabs  in the ocean and sea anemone work together.  Sea anemone will attach themselves to the shell of the hermit crab.  Then they protect and camouflage the hermit crab, and in turn, may share the hermit crab's meals.  Plus they get a ride around the ocean!  How amazing and creative is our God!!  Read this article from Answers in Genesis.

I had made this cute color matching file folder game for Samuel a few weeks ago.  As you can see, he really enjoyed it!



I made some Hermit Crab Upper to Lower Case Matching Cards for Ethan.  They were a big hit.  I laminated them to make them nice and sturdy.  We used clothespins with them.  They were the "pincher claws".



We did a dot to dot Hermit Crab

We made a pretty simple lapbook.

I made these files.  Nothing fancy, just a way to get some info in the lapbook.

Lapbook Cover and Anatomy of Hermit Crab

Misc Hermit Crab Booklets

Caring for Your Hermit Crab checklist

Hermit Crab Vocab Words With Pocket

I used these files from HomeschoolShare.com:

My Address

Wise Man/Foolish Man Bible Story We read this from the Bible and sang the song over and over again!  It was a great discussion on the importance of building your life on the Rock of Jesus Christ!  This cd was used to sing the song!

There is a series of videos on YouTube that was really helpful on taking care of hermit crabs.  Here is one of them:



We painted some crabs using a potato.  The idea came from the The Usborne Big Book of Playtime Activities.







Ethan thought he needed one too, so we went to the pet store for another one.  This one's name is Pinchers Hermie (our last name), according to Ethan on our way home.



This is how Samuel feels about the hermit crabs...

And yes, I made the picture black and white so you couldn't see my dirty chair!  Really, it's that white wash that just looks dirty sometimes!  Anyway, isn't this the funniest, yet sweetest thing you have ever seen?!

They have been quite interesting to watch.  They are nocturnal, so a lot of their activity happens when we are about to go to bed.  We feed them fruits, vegetables or a cracker or chip sometimes.  It is chomped on during the night.  We have experienced Andrew's crab change shells.  That's a pretty neat thing to see.  Andrew has been pinched by each one of them.  Poor thing.  I know it hurts, but I don't think he has been as careful about it as he could have been.  Lessons learned!  They've put them out for exercise only to lose each of them at different times.

Did I ever think we would have such an odd pet?!  Never!  But I have boys, and boys like strange things.  They are kind of creepy to me, still.  But we have all learned a lot about them.  So I will take the creepy if we can learn something together!

Psalm 91:1

He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will rest in the shadow of the Almighty.

Frogs

Andrew received a frog pet from a friend of ours.  They have a lot of them out at their creek and have kept many of them as pets.  So Andrew took one home one day.  I wanted to do a study on frogs, so this was the perfect time!  We thought he was fun, and didn't really know what to do with him.  Andrew didn't know what to name him, so Ethan named him "Puppy".  He really meant to say "Froggy" but the name Puppy stuck.  Well, Puppy didn't last but a couple of days in his little container.  He escaped.  I wanted Andrew to put him out in our pond, but he wanted a pet.  No more Puppy. But he was a good study for those few days we had him.

We read a devotion in the Five Minute Devotions for Children book.  I love this book and the other one that follows this one!  It talked about Eggs, Polliwogs, and Frogs and how they change.  "God makes all things grow and change.  Just like the polliwog, you will get bigger and grow stronger.  One day you may even be as tall as your Daddy and Mommy.  Every day you are learning new things.  God has wonderful plans for you as you grow up."  It references Luke 2:52.

We made a lapbook on frogs.  It turned out well.  All my information came from Homeschool Share's frog lapbook.  That's such a great resource!







Most of our learning was reading books.  Frog books we read:

Frog Counts to Ten

One Frog Sang

Froggy Series Books

Frogs

Frog (Watch Me Grow)

Growing Frogs

From Tadpole to Frog

and more!!



I also made a Frog File Folder Game for Samuel to play.  I laminated the pieces so they will be good for a while!





We watched some Discovery Education videos on frogs.

And we played Leap Frog, of course!  I got these little round place mats at a garage sale...5 for $1!  Perfect for little lily pads!



So we started about 3 weeks ago.  We did most of it in the first few weeks.  It has continued somewhat lately.  We were supposed to go to  a class on frogs at the library.  A naturalist from a nearby nature park was going to be there to do some fun things.  But...we have all had an ugly stomach bug and missed that and the Frog Fest at the park.  Boo.

So all in all we had a hoppin' good time!

Plants Mini Unit Study

We did a mini study on plants this past week.  I didn't go all out, but we did some fun things.

As with any study we always have lots of books!  I didn't make a trip to the library, but just used what I had in our own library.

Book Suggestions:

The Berenstain Bear's Big Book of Science and Nature - This is always a good one to pull out!

Plants In Winter - A book Chad had when he was a kid (love those!)

Zinnia's Flower Garden - They love this one we got from a free book club a few years ago.  Maybe because it is so colorful.

A Sunflower Grows Up - "Now I Know" Scholastic Series

A Tree is Plant

From Seed to Pumpkin

One evening we planted the seeds they received in their Easter  baskets.  Andrew planted green beans, Ethan planted cucumbers and Samuel planted zucchini.  We will transplant these to our garden later.



We watched a couple of videos on plants from Discovery Education.  Andrew wanted to do a "test" after watching one of them.  He got some of his bean seeds and put them on a wet paper towel, put it in a Ziploc bag and then put it in the sun.  He wanted me to do mine a little different.  We have had fun seeing the difference.  His is doing much better than mine!  You can read about doing that simple experiment at this blog I enjoy reading.

We made some pretty flower art from an idea in an Usborne art book.  It's hard to see how pretty they really turned out.  You cut out shapes for a flower from a card material and glue them on a piece of paper.  Then you take the paper you want to color on a place it on top of the flowers and rub your crayon over it.  The boys called them magic flowers!



We looked at a lot of flowers and plants around our yard.  There is plenty to look at around here, and I love that they are interested in them!  I love talking to them about how incredible and how very interesting God has created plants.  Each of them are so unique and they do exactly what God created them to do every spring.  We talked about perennials because I have a lot of those around.  Their favorite was the uncurling of the fern.  We talked about annuals, ground covers, flowering trees and all the other beautiful wonders.



We finished off the week by watching Jack and The Beanstalk during our Friday night pizza and a movie.

So it was a throw together kind of unit study, but sometimes that's the best kind!