Homeschooling Archives - Page 2 of 18

Homeschooling During Difficult Seasons

The start of a new semester is a great time to step back and assess how things are going with homeschooling. We’re in the midst of some challenges right now, and the Christmas break has provided a good opportunity to re-group.

A Difficult Season

Our lives were uprooted this fall when my husband found out in late October that he might lose his job. He did in fact lose his job – on the Friday before Thanksgiving. By that time, he had already accepted another job in the same field, but because of the structure of his

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Raising a Hatchling Box Turtle

Yesterday we gave the boys an early Christmas gift…

It’s a baby box turtle!

Our science curriculum, Exploring Creation with Zoology 3: Land Animals of the Sixth Day, recommends raising a pet turtle as part of the science experience. I was interested in a box turtle because water turtles, such as the red eared slider (popular pet store turtle) need an aquarium with a pump and filter and all that, and they can spread salmonella. Land turtles can still spread bacteria as well (although the risk is lower), so we’ll be careful to

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Easy Science Experiments with Momentum

Lately, I’ve been doing a unit on physics with my boys that I prepared years ago when I taught science classes for homeschoolers. Of all the physics experiments we did, these ones on momentum are some of my favorites!

Momentum is a fairly easy concept for kids to grasp. Kids know that if they are riding their bike down a hill, it’s harder to stop because of their speed. Momentum is “mass in motion.” Inertia is a related concept (the resistance an object has to a change in its state of motion), but they differ in the fact that still

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Simple Science Experiment with Inertia

We had a lot of fun exploring Isaac Newton’s first law of motion with a simple science experiment!

Newton’s 1st Law of Motion states that an object at rest tends to stay at rest unless acted on by an outside force, and an object in motion tends to stay in motion unless acted on by an outside force. The boys knew from our previous lessons that a force is a push or a pull. We learned that inertia is the resistance an object has to a change in its state of motion.

To demonstrate inertia, we carefully loaded our toy

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Turn Catalogs into a Christmas Collage

We can tell it’s the Christmas season, because lately our mailbox has been looking like this:

Before taking a pile out to the recycle bin, I had the idea of having the boys cut them up and make collages!

Who doesn’t enjoy a chance to cut things up?

(I did not give them any toy catalogs because I didn’t want the collages to be about the toys they want, but more about all types of things that are associated with Christmas.)

We used white school glue

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