Homeschool Science: First Month of School

By: Amber on 6:52 AM

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Science is another favorite subject for my kids. Each week at our CC meeting, they get to do an experiment with their friends and we follow up at home with science memory work and more hands on activities. Here is a quick look at what we covered in science during the first four weeks of school.

Week 1 - Biomes

During the first week, we looked at all the different kinds of Biomes. We found some great videos on YouTube and we've also made good use of Netflix for watching old episodes of "Magic School Bus" that corresponded with the biomes. I also used Classical Conversation's file sharing membership to find some great resources.

Week 2 - Carnivores, Herbivores, and Omnivores

Next up, we learned about different types of consumers. The kids each made a chart for their notebooks with different shaped teeth and they put animals in the appropriate category. Here is a picture of Walker's chart.

Next, they cut out pictures of food from the supermarket flyers. 

Then they glued them down onto three separate plates: one for carnivores, one for omnivores, and one for herbivores.

Then we rounded up all the animals we could find and invited them to come have lunch. Of course, they had to figure out which plate would be right for each animal. We let them eat and then put them in a pile and had a speed challenge to see how fast we could put them on the right plate again.

And just FYI, that My Little Pony is definitely an herbivore.

Week 3 - Food Chain

Our third week was all about the food chain. I didn't take a lot of photos of our science lessons in week 3, but here are a couple shots of the kids working on their notebooks. They colored pictures of producers, consumers, and decomposers. Then we glued them in the notebooks.

They also spent some time outside trying to find decomposers. So basically, I had earthworms EVERYWHERE for a week or so. Fun times, but it was all for the sake of science. ;)

Week 4 - Natural Cycles

During the fourth week, we looked at the natural cycles. Our favorite one was definitely the water cycle. We did a couple of experiments to watch the water cycle in action. 

For our first experiment, we put boiling water in a glass jar, then placed a baggie of ice on top. Then we waited and watched to see condensation form. We also saw evaporation when we lifted the bag of ice because the steam would quickly rise to the top.

Our next experiment was to find out how God creates rain. We learned how water evaporates and then the clouds become heavy with condensation until BAM - precipitation! So we started out by creating a little atmosphere with a glass of water. We added shaving cream on top to be our clouds.

Then I mixed some blue food coloring in a glass of water and we slowly dropped the water onto our clouds, one little drop at a time. At first, nothing happened. But as the drops continued to collect in our clouds, they eventually got too heavy and it started to "rain" in our glass.

So that's what we covered in our first month of science. What kind of projects have you been doing?