Tuesday, December 31, 2013

Year in Review: Science with CC

Animals, rockets, planets, and even aeronautics are regular topics around our house--making science the favored subject.  This year with Classical Conversations science has been made easy for us.  Each week we memorize a science fact and then we can learn as much or as little about that fact as we want (or as much as time allows).   

We began the year with Ecology and spent 6 weeks learning important facts and information.  We read books about biomes, pretended to be carnivores and herbivores, drew pictures of food chains, researched the water cycle, dressed in pajamas and "hibernated", watched documentaries on pollution and took a nature walk to pick up litter.  

Our CC group visited Grand Bay Wetland Education Center and we had the opportunity to view animals in their natural setting.  Along with the alligators, we saw bobcats, snakes, owls, turtles, deer, lizards, and much more.  With its education center, boardwalk through the wetlands, and 54 foot observation tower, Grand Bay was a treasure!!

For the next 6 weeks our focus turned to Astronomy.

As we began learning about stars and the sun, we read many books and the boys drew pictures of different types of stars.  We also created Star Jars.

Next came the planets in our solar system.  We used sidewalk chalk to create the planets outside and watercolor paints for inside. :)

Food makes everything better (especially chocolate).  So we made a Brownie Solar System.  After we made the brownies and licked the bowl of course, we let the brownies cool completely.  We used yellow icing for the sun, white icing for the orbits, and M&Ms as the planets.  This was lots of fun!  Everyone named the planets in order--even Memphis Belle!  When Daddy came home, you know they had to see if he knew them all. ;)

The boys also created the solar system using paper cut-outs for the planets.  They enjoyed doing this with their CC group.

The phases of the moon came next in our study of Astronomy.  We talked about the how the moon is made of rock and found rocks we pretended were moon rocks.

We also made Moon Dust (a new twist to the Cloud Dough we made last year).  We made a new batch and the kids had fun pretending it was moon dust.  

Each night we watched the moon, talked about its shape and discussed how it seemed to be changing.  We read books on the moon phases and enjoyed making the phases using Oreos.

Asteroids, meteors, and comets made the list and we enjoyed researching the difference between them.  Lastly, we learned about US Space Missions.  The Military Channel devoted a day to space missions, and we were fascinated by the documentaries and hearing the names of what we were memorizing.

In the new year we will turn our focus to physical science.  We are excited to see what it has in store for us!

Happy New Year,