Tuesday, May 24, 2016

Our 2015-2016 Homeschool Year Part 4

Our 2015-2016 homeschool year is now officially complete!

What a blessed, busy, and productive school year we have had!

Having quite successfully completed our 5th year of homeschooling, I thought it would be neat to do a series of posts looking back over our year!

We have been looking at our homeschool year one subject at a time for the past several days. Don't miss the previous posts in this series!

Part 1 - Spelling
Part 2 - English
Part 3 - History

Today, let's take a look at

Science


We used ABeka's 3rd grade science as our main science curriculum this year year. Big Brother completed reading assignments, quizzes, and tests. We also took time to do several interesting experiments from his textbook, although I do wish we could have done more. Check out a couple neat experiments we did here and here.

Honestly, simply following up on some of Big Brother's interests outside the textbook has probably led to the most fun and learning we have experienced for science this entire year!

His 4-H Cloverbuds Club has spent several months collecting plastic lids for a special recycling project, and his involvement in that project sparked an interest in learning more about recycling. Check out my blog post about how we have studied recycling here

I am proud to report that Big Brother's Cloverbuds Club (which is made up of six 5-8 year olds), has collected more plastic to be recycled than any of the other, bigger 4-H clubs in our whole county!

Over last few weeks of school, Big Brother has taken an interest in birdwatching. So we have been reading a lot about birds and identifying and photographing the birds that live in our yard. He even made a simple pine cone birdfeeder using peanut butter and oats which seemed to attract cardinals.



We discovered 2 different robin's nests in our backyard, and Big Brother has been fascinated with watching these nests and seeing how the adult birds care for their babies.





As another 4-H project, he also painted a goard bird house which he has placed in our front yard hoping to attract a family of birds.



He also enjoyed visiting a local park and taking some time to observe all the different water birds that made their homes around the pond.



Another recent fascination for Big Brother is forensic science. He is even tossing around ideas about a possible future career in this field. So we have checked out nearly every book our local library has related to the topics of forensics and crime investigation. He has learned about things like fingerprint, DNA & hair analysis; ballistics; handwriting analysis; and how scientific knowledge, methods, and equipment are an extremely important part of catching and convicting criminals.

We are looking forward to taking a fun approach to studying science with AWOA unit studies next year!

Don't miss the next part in this series! My next post will be looking back at math!

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