A parrot skeleton and some lizards that have been
preserved.

When birds are nearly done he wraps them in wool or
batting to help keep the feathers down, otherwise the
feathers stick up in all different directions.

Below are the freezers where he has lots of specimans
ready to be worked on. In there were birds, lizards,
snakes and all kinds of various animals.

A Hike at Standley Chasm

Before the weather becomes unbearably hot, I've been
trying to take the kids out a bit. We had an especially
intense homeschooling day on Monday so I felt great about
getting out the next day. On Tuesday I took the kids
hiking at Standley Chasm. The hike is gorgeous. The "fern"
type plants you see are called cycads and have been around
for millions of years. They survive here in the Outback
in the cooler gaps and waterholes.

We arrived at the chasm around noon when the sun lights
up the entire chasm.

Homeschool Planners

If you need to create a homeschool planner here are some websites you might find helpful for free daily, weekly and/or monthly planners:

http://donnayoung.org/forms/
http://dynamic2moms.webs.com/curriculumplanner.htm
http://holdthatthought.com/free.php

Plate Movements on Earth Cause Earthquakes and Volcanoes

Our last experiment (demonstration perhaps is a better
word) was on plate movements. We looked at a map of
the world's plates, then made our own out of clay. On
each plate was a continent (raised) and ocean (lower
parts).

We talked about how plates move around. Under each
plate we put some magma (corn syrup and red food dye).

When the plates are moving nothing happens to the magma
(picture 1)

Sometimes plates rub against each other or one plate
slips up and over another creating earthquakes.
Sometimes when the plates move against each other lava
come up (volcanoes!)

Sometimes the plates press against each other and create
mountains.

Then we talked about the ring of fire, where lots of
earthquakes and volcanoes occur. The ring of fire is located
along the edges of these plates.

Every few years, we circle around to cover basic material again. You may be interested in the Earth Science Unit we did more recently -- and be sure to check out our Earth Science Unit Study Packet! It includes worksheets about the solar system, the layers of the Earth, plate tectonics, the ring of fire, earthquake activity and volcanoes. I also included more than a dozen hands-on activities we did with this unit including activities about plate tectonics, using a compass, earthquakes, volcanoes, instructions on how to make a shake table and more!

Earth Science Packet:

See how to make a shake table here:

See our Gelatin Volcano Earth Science Activity here:

Se our Tissue Paper Volcano Activity here:

Hope you visit our new location at homeschoolden.com (the links above take you there!) or come visit us at our Homeschool Den Facebook Page. :) ~Liesl

Natural Disaster Book Complete!

Here's the cover of LD's Natural Disaster
Book. His book is over 30 pages long!

Natural Disaster -- Putting the Book Together

We've done a huge unit on natural disasters this term. LD
has been asking and asking when we could finally finish
up the lapbook (which we actually put together with a comb
binder). I got things ready and figured we spend the
week putting things together. LD decided he wanted to
do it ALL on Monday. He barely even let me get a quick
lunch together. He spent close to seven hours finishing
things up and getting it all together. Here are a few
samples of the things included in the natural disaster book
(though we also included photos from the natural disaster
experiments on the tsunami, volcano and hurricane --
you can follow this link to see more http://thehomeschoolden.blogspot.com/search/label/Natural%20Disasters%20Unit%20and%20Activities).

Natural Disaster Book

Here are some of the pages from LD's book.

The natural disaster picture cards are available at
www.currclick.com for $2.00 US.

We used some of the lapbook materials from
http://www.homeschoolshare.com/volcanoes.php and
http://www.homeschoolshare.com/earthquakes.php

The cute exploding volcano was from
http://printables.scholastic.com/printables/detail/?id=31815

All in all, LD learned a lot this term. He sure is
proud of the final product! I was amazed at the
energy and focus he had to put everything
together. He's been bringing it everywhere
we go (including to Standley Chasm!) just
in case there was someone there who might
want to look at it.

Flower Book

We finally put together DD's flower book. This is a bunch
of activities that we put together in a booklet using a
comb binder. Activities came from

http://www.play2learnprintables.com/Theme%20Page.htm
http://www.childcareland.com/free.html
and
http://kidssoup.com/

(and perhaps one more, but I can't remember off the top
of my head)

Flower Unit -- 2

The cute flower counting clothes pin cards were from
http://www.play2learnprintables.com/flowers.htm

For her booklet, I made a lot of pocket pages by stapling
two pages together.

Language Arts -- Spectrum Reading

We have a number of different ways we approach language
arts.

LD is a pretty good reader, so he's had "independent
reading" time each day for the past four or five months. He
chooses a book to read and reads quietly on his own. We
let him choose whatever he wants (not even offering suggestions
or comments about how easy/hard a book is).  We also
don't ask him anything about his reading except perhaps
what did you read, did you enjoy your book, or what was it
about? Not to prove anything to us, but just
conversationally.

Each day he also has to read aloud to me. We use the
Spectrum Reading books and we have three books for him
to choose from -- a Little Critters, Grade 2 book and the
general readers for Grades 3 and 4. These days he alternates
between the Little Critters and the Grade 4 book. He has to
read 3 or 4 pages of the Little Critter book, but just one
of the Grade 4 book as it has challenging words for him
such as "responsibility," "satisfying" or "aurora borealis"
(northern lights). These books have language arts questions
(such as arrange these words alphabetically, find the root
of these verbs, etc.) after every mini-story.

















LD also keeps a writing journal. This week I chose a sentence
from his reading selection and wrote it down in his journal
with various errors. He's had to be a reading sleuth and
find the problems in the sentence. The first day it was
challenging, but he's gotten the hang of it and found all the
errors today. It's a good way of reinforcing things like
capitalizing the first letter of the first word in a sentence
or placing a period/full stop at the end of the sentence.

Airways Exhibit

Today after ED's dance class we went to our local cultural
precinct (with various museums). The kids really enjoyed
the new airline exhibit and especially liked going into the
airplane and watching a bit of the video on how camels
came to be in the Outback. Camels were brought over
by Afghan trainers for use in the desert here. Now there
are lots of wild camels and interestingly enough, camels
are exported to the Middle East because the breed lines
are so pure.

The first picture below is one of the Royal Flying Doctor
Service's airplanes.  The nurse at our medical clinic spent
the last year serving with the Royal Flying Doctors.