Meant To Teach

The youngest is learning about the human body this year. In the past, we've done a lot of experiments with the human body, but this one experiment was really fun learning about blood types. Here is another activity we've done on blood:  http://meanttoteach.blogspot.com/2014/04/blood.html I'll eventually get a chance to group all of our human body activities because I have more on my blog. There are 4 blood types: O, A, B, and AB. We discussed what a donor was, what a receiver was, and why it matters for doctors to know if the blood types are compatible when someone donates blood. We talked about antigens and how a patient could become very sick if their body rejects new blood. This experiment was simple. All you need is: Two colors of food coloring (Red and Blue work best, but I only had yellow and blue. So that's what we did.) Water Dry Erase Marker 1. Fill each cup halfway with water. 2. With the dry erase marker, label each cup with one blood type. 3....

The oldest is doing Oceanography this year. She had a reading on " Why is the Sea Salty?" from Wonderopolis. At the end of her reading we completed a lab on making an egg float. From Wonderopolis, "You don't have to travel all the way to the Dead Sea to become an egg-spert  on salt-water buoyancy. Try this  fun experiment to learn how to make an egg float using nothing but salt and water !"    Of course, I made her do a write up on her lab for portfolio purposes.  We've done a similar experiment in the past called Sink or Float. You can find that here . 

Well, they say when it comes to schooling that history and science will repeat every 3 or 4 years. We've done ancient history before and we are back at it again. Since the start of the school year, we've had plenty to do with Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia. With Ancient Egypt this time, we did a lapbook from Homeschool Share . We also took virtual tours of the Sphinx, Great Pyramids, and tombs. You can do that by going here . And of course, you can't forget to write your name in Hieroglyphics ( cheat sheet ). We also studied some Egyptian Art and tried to do our own sculptures. My youngest is pictured below with her pyramid of modeling clay.   In the past, we baked a cake and decorated it with Egyptian Pyramids and the Nile River. You can see my previous blog post on Ancient Egypt here . We've also covered some of Ancient Mesopotamia. It was fascinating to see the kids learn about the Code of Hammurabi and then to compare and contrast some of those codes with ou...