Blog Posts - The Cook Family Homestead

Astronomy-Earth Ornament

12/16/2016

This was a SUPER EASY Ornament Craft we put together for a fun Christmas time activity during our Astronomy Studies. Though this could be easily made at any time of the year or even during an Earth Day Lesson or a Unit on the Earth, we fit ours in at the holiday season.

**The kids really enjoyed making these. Another fun idea to go along with the Earth Ornament, is you could make one for each Planet you study and hang them up as a sort of Solar System display.**

We actually used those Round Coca-Cola Ornament Bottles they sell at Christmas time.

The kids were SOOOO upset to have to drink all the coke so they could have an empty round bottle to use for their ornament, haha (ya, not really).

This variety of paints was nice to have on hand.

Even though we only used Blue, Green, and White for this Craft, we had many opportunities throughout the Astronomy unit to use many of the other colors.

Supplies Needed:

Round Ornaments (1 per student)
Ornament String
Ribbon (for a bow if desired)
Blue, White, Green (other colors if desired)
Paint Brush
Black Sharpie

Here are the steps:

Fill Clear Ornament with a little bit of BLUE paint. Place lid firmly back on or cover with your thumb for loose fitting lids. Shake well to make sure the blue paint is distributed evenly on the inside of the bottle. (you can even add glitter if you'd like)
Next, We drew outlines of the continents on the outside of the ornament with a BLACK SHARPIE.
We placed ornament string in the loop at the top (or tied around the lid of the pop bottle tightly in our case).
The kids then took a paintbrush and green and white paint and filled in the continent outlines.
Let ornament dry. We hung ours up by the strings.
Once it was dry, we tied a nice bow around the top with some "Christmas-y" Ribbon.

ENJOY YOUR EARTH ORNAMENTS
& MANY BLESSINGS!

History Pockets

11/25/2016

We LOVE History Pockets! There are so many different ones you can do. Here are the options:

Grades 1-3

Ancient Civilizations
Native Americans
Life in Plymouth Colony

Grades 4-6

Ancient Egypt
Ancient Greece
Ancient Rome
American Revolution
American Civil War
Explorers of North America
Moving West
Colonial America

We've done a bunch of them both at home and at our local homeschool co-op. So far, the Civil War History Pocket has been one of our favorites.

We used Time Travelers to help supplement for the older aged kiddos and their lessons. Homeschool in the Woods has some amazing history lessons packets that can be used along with your history pockets!

Last year my daughter used the "Moving West" History Pocket. This was a very thorough walk through of the time era around the Gold Rush and the Oregon Trail. It covered in detail about the way of life and the hardships of living in the United States during this time.

Each week the kids covered facts, read descriptions and stories about the history, and then were able to put together projects to go along with the lesson. Each pocket has a different topic that they work on over a few weeks.

Incorporating field trips is also a great way to reinforce the lessons...we have a few one-room school houses in our area. Visiting one is a GREAT way to add to the experience!

You will definitely need a nice amount of construction paper for these; plus glue, scissors, colored pencils and crayons. It doesn't call for any supplies that are not standard, around the house art supplies except maybe for the occasional brad or kite string. :)

I do have to add that the scotch brand glue sticks work by far the best of any I've found in the stores...
they are worth the little extra in price!

Here are more pics of some of the fun and creative activities for a few of the pockets with the "Moving West" book.

I hope you thoroughly enjoyed our review of the Evan Moore History Pockets! We plan to continue using them over the years and as my younger kiddos start school, I will get them started on them as well! They make the historical facts so much more fun to learn and much more memorable!

Plus, going back over them year after year is very rewarding for the kids. They love sharing their creations with family and friends as they explain everything they've learned from the lessons!

Check out our YouTube Review on the History Pockets Below!

Happy Homeschooling!!!

Homeschool Tracker Software-Basic Edition

11/14/2016

I decided to try something different this year to help keep track of the kids daily assignments. I noticed it on another blog so I figured I'd give it a try. It is called HOMESCHOOL TRACKER.

To be honest, it looked a tad overwhelming at first, but once I took the time to play around with it and figure out how it worked, it has made my life so much easier!

I feel more organized and more on top of the kids' assignments. The kids enjoy having a list to go through each day with their assignments and they can keep track of how well they are doing.

Here is an example of my daughter's assignments that I entered in for a day. Once you click "add new", you can modify the subject, description, items needed, date and student's name.

For multiple, repetitive assignments, you can copy them and have them entered repeatedly each day for all the students. I'm pretty repetitious with some subjects such as:

Devotional (we use Keys for Kids)
Daily 30-minute chapter book reading
Journal Entry
Folder Work

There are some assignments we keep repeating over and over on our daily list just so the kids can see it and mark them off on the printable reports I give them each week.
Scroll down to see the actual report being used by my daughter

Here is the page showing my daughter's Grammar lesson's for the week. (We have our homeschool co-op on Fridays so we do our other subjects over 4 days at home.)

You can view them by student, by date, or by subject just to make sure I have it all entered in correctly.

There are so many options you could use this program for. I am just doing the basic now and I'm always learning more as I go. Above is the page you go to once you click on REPORTS.

I set the dates I want printed out and check the student I'm printing for then I can either preview it to make sure it is all correct or print it directly from this page.

It's been pretty handy!

Above is a picture of my daugher's weekly assignments. Homeschool Tracker has a printable Reports option. I print these out each week for each kiddo. Each day, as they finish an assignment, they cross it out with a highlighter.

Below is a picture of my daughter marking off an assignment that she has completed from the Weekly Reports of the program. The other one is a closer look at her assignments for the day.

This program has been super helpful for our homeschooling adventure this year. I've actually enjoyed using it and I feel so much more on top of the kids' assignments.

Yes, it is a bit time consuming.
Yes, I need to stay a step ahead of my kids to make it work.
No, I do not know all the features of this program yet.

There is a ton more it can do that I am still working to figure out; but, it has lots of options that can only improve my record keeping and organization as I homeschool multiple grades and learning levels.

So overall, I'd say that for a FREE Homeschooling planning program...this is fantastic. Maybe I'll upgrade to the next level someday but for now, living on a budget, this one does the trick.

Check out the link to see what else this program can do or to get the more advanced version.

Download HOMESCHOOL TRACKER today and give it a try!

Happy Homeschooling!!!

Sea Creatures-Mollusks

11/7/2016

Chapter 9 was all about MOLLUSKS. Mollusks are soft slimy creatures with squishy bodies. Snails and slugs are mollusks we find in our yards! The kids thought it was fascinating that mollusks MAKE their shells! When we study Hermit Crabs, we learned that they live in the shells make by these Mollusks.

Mollusks are broken down into 3 GROUPS:

Gastropods-these are snails that usually live inside a shell! They make a variety of shells in different shapes and colors. The study of shells is known as CONCHOLOGY! (except for the Nudibranch...these gastropods don't make shells at all but are very beautiful. They have many colors that glow int he dark with bioluminescents! So Amazing!
Bivalves-These Mollusks have 2 shell halves. Mussels, scallops, and clams are examples of bivalves.
Cephalopods-We'll study these in Chapter 10!

WEEK 1:

For Week one, we worked on our Notepage after reading the first half of the chapter prior to class. We passed around a variety of Mollusk shells for the kids to examine.

We then began our folder activity page. The kids matched up a variety of shells with a picture of each and a description to make a flap book of Mollusk shells.

WEEK 2:

We began this week by filling out our 2nd notebook page on Mollusks. I passed out these paper rulers from Printable-Ruler.net and the kids were able to measure the rings on each shell they were passed and decide how old the shell was.

Growth lines on Mollusks indicate age similar to the growth rings in trees. As the Mollusk grows, it builds another layer on to of the other layer, leaving rings.

This shells shows growth lines indicating the Mollusk is 3 years of age.

Lots and lots of shells for this chapter! It was fun sorting through them all and trying to figure out what kind of Mollusk it was and then how old we thought it was. Having a nice variety is really helpful!

Since we don't live by the ocean, we asked families within the co-op and found many willing to bring in shells to share with our class for observation and our Conchology Research. We had about 3 gallon sized bags full of different shells and a bunch of large ones. It was nice having the large Conch Shells & listening for the ocean!

It was really fun to also see the many shells with holes in them that the kids all immediately said were eaten by a predator. Some predators will drill holes in the shells to eat Mollusks.

There are some neat videos on youtube on Mollusks!

Happy Homeschooling!

Apologia: Exploring Creation with Zoology 3-Land Creatures

11/3/2016

Well! We finished up Sea Creatures last year and are moving on to Land Creatures! We just LOVE Apologia Science! I still have a few chapters left to add for the Sea Creatures study but I wanted to go ahead and show you our set up for this year's classes.

We set up our lesson in a very similar format to the Research Notebooking Journal we used for Sea Creatures. We used a larger binder this year since our binder last year filled up super fast. We purchased a 1 1/2" binder to hold all the file folders, notebooking pages and activities. There is one colored file folder for each chapter. Check out our YouTube Video on how we put our research notebook together!

We tried to break up each chapter over a 2 week period since we studied this subject at our homeschool co-op. Grades 1st through 4th had this class (each were taught separately by grade).
**Click on our weekly reading schedule to the right to see how we divided up our chapters.**

I am teaching the 4th graders since my daughter is in this class. :) I taught them last year for sea creatures too.
A great group of kids!

The lessons were designed and planned out by a group of talented teachers. I can add my own twist and supplemental activities to mold the lessons to my class though.

It is such a GREAT book to teach!!

Some handy items to have on hand would be: Map of the world (for animal tracking), stickers of a variety of land mammals throughout the world, and mammals of North America (or one for your continent) Field Guide.

**There are some great stickers included in the
Apologia Student Notebooks you can use for tracking on your world maps**

We also placed a Map of Each Continent on our classroom wall.

As we go about each chapter, we'll add animals found in those areas to our maps! I got this fun idea from this site. She provides some fun Land Animals additions to your study. Check them out:

You can print out colored land animal pictures right from this site and even a classification table. It was super helpful!

We used our Map book to print out our continent maps but she also includes links to websites where you can print out free outline maps.

http://amzn.to/2fIxvqX

We thought these items looked fun for designing our own Field Guides this year on Animal Tracks! We'll post once we complete this activity!

Come back soon to check out our
week-to-week lessons and activities!

Happy Homeschooling!!

Pizza Hut Book-It Reading Program

11/1/2016

If you have a Reader or even a child who may struggle with reading, The Pizza Hut Book-It Program is a fun way to push them towards a monthly reading goal.

The parent and child can set the goal they think is appropriate for each child, and there are many fun ways to track these goals each month.
Below is just one sample reading log you can print out. Click on the Calendar below to go to their site and see all the other options!

They have logs you can keep track by the minute or book, too.
Check out their website. Plus, it is FREE!

My kids love getting their FREE pizza certificates each month if they meet their goals and they love eating their FREE pizza even more!

I also LOVE how it is a great Homeschool Friendly program.

Check out the PIZZA HUT BOOK-IT Program today!

Happy Homeschooling!!!

Sea Creatures-Crustaceans

10/27/2016

Lobster, Shrimp, crabs, krill are all examples of crustaceans. This chapter was truly fascinating. When we can add hands-on activities in our classes, it is so much more enriching and fun!

Here a LIVE Lobster was brought in for the kids to learn and see the Anatomy. Our week 1 folder activity page was to complete a Lobster diagram. The Lobster was such an amazing visual...and yummy dinner for one of our amazing teachers.

You can find a LIVE Lobster at a local grocery store. Ours was purchased from Wegmans and they packed it up so nicely so it could stay alive and safe for the whole day at our co-op. This was very helpful.

**make sure you point out to the students that the Claws are very strong and powerful. That is why they must keep the tight bands on them to help prevent any fingers from getting injured.**

This cute Blue Crab Plush was added to our Ocean themed classroom. He was super popular amongst our plushies!

We finished out Week 1 with our Notepage on Crustaceans to follow up the kids' reading assignment from the textbook.

We had a few extra minutes at the end of class so we watch the fascinating video on the Christmas Island Red Crabs. Below is a link for a short version of one of the videos you could watch. It's quite amazing!

WEEK 2 was our first RESEARCH WEEK. I assigned each kid a different Crustacean to Research and they needed to bring back "Two Cool" facts to share with their classmates. We all recorded them onto our 2nd Folder Activity Page.

We also completed our 2nd Notebook page to finish out the chapter.

Here are the crustaceans that were assigned:

Lobster
Crayfish-these would have been fun to bring in as they are plentiful around where we live if we had studied them during a warmer season. :)
Crab
Hermit Crab
Barnacles
Shrimp
Horseshoe Crab

**Students were encouraged to share their 2 facts with the class. I wrote them on the board to help everyone have a guide when writing down the facts onto their folder activity pages.**

I hope you enjoyed the information we studied for this lesson! I'll be adding links to some of these activities soon so please be patient. Now go enjoy some yummy Lobster for dinner!

Enjoy and Many Blessings!

Sea Creatures-Sharks & Rays

10/25/2016

Sharks and Rays was one of those chapters the boys couldn't wait to get to. I just love the massive and beauty of the Manta Ray! We hung this cute little guy from our ceiling to add to our "OCEAN" Room.

We started out by watching some super neat videos on Manta Rays. There are a few from "Jonathan Bird's Big Blue World".

Here is one below you could watch:

We then moved onto our note page and folder activity page.

We designed our Manta Ray by hand (you can make a
quick pattern by hand if you need to) and label the parts
that we learned:

Pectoral Fin
Pelvic Fin
Nares
Mouth
Gill Slits
Tail
Dorsal Fin

We glued the back of the Ray onto our first folder page and folded in our Pectoral Fins and folded up the long tail so it all stored nicely into the folder.

The second week we did our notepage and then moved on to our Folder activity on Shark Teeth. We did have a student bring in a variety of shark teeth he had collected. The kids enjoyed passing those around and examining them.

You could also view another video on sharks if there is any time left or have the kids research different sharks. I have added a free shark stationary to use for a fun addition to your writing project.

Below is our second Folder Page for our "Sharks and Rays" Chapter.

We glued 2 standard sized pieces of yellow paper together to make a fold out.
Then we matched up the pictures and descriptions on the Shark Descriptions printout to the box on the Shark's Teeth page.
We then cut out Teeth based on the average size of the ones recorded to have been found.

These are just Average lengths:
Megalodon 7.5 inches
Great White Shark 2.25 inches
Mako Shark 2 inches
Tiger Shark 1.25 inches
Hammerhead Shark .75 inch

Click on the pics or link to download your copy of the Shark Teeth and Descriptions Files.

Enjoy and Many Blessings!

**Just a Note: Our "Swimming Creatures of the Fifth Day" Research Journal Notebooking pages are not ready for purchasing or download yet.
I am sorry for any inconvenience.**

These Ocean Life Trading Cards were a HUGE HIT!

10/24/2016

Trading Cards are everywhere: Baseball, Football, Basketball, Pokemon, Littlest Pet Shop, etc....you name it, there are trading cards.

We purchased these at the Teachers Pay Teachers site and divided them up in our classes. The kids loved going off and trading them for their favorites. My class even asked if they could do more work to earn more trading cards! Teacher for the WIN! :)

It was a simple and fun way to close out our awesome year-long unit of Sea Animals!

Here is the link to the Teachers Pay Teachers site:

Ocean Life Trading Cards

***************************************************************************************************

Thanks Apologia for an amazing homeschooling curriculum and making our year
enriching and full of ocean fun!

Enjoy and Many Blessings!

Sea Creatures-Fish Ornament

10/23/2016

Who doesn't love a good CRAFT!? We try to add a variety of different lessons and crafts into our science curriculum. As we moved closer to Christmas time, we found a few fun ideas for sea creature ornaments on the internet. We took a few of the ideas we found and came up with this version.

Since I kept forgetting to take pics throughout the process, I will have to walk you through it.

Here are the supplies we had on hand:

Clear Plastic Fill-able Ornaments
Plastic Sea Animal Figures
String of any kind for hanging
Blue tinted Glue (or glitter glue to add sparkle)
Yellow or any color Sand
Thin thread (for handing sea creature)
Scotch tape
Green Sharpie
Paint brush
Scissors

First thing we did was tie the sea creatures on thread long enough that we could trim the string after we were all finished up.
The kids took green sharpies to color green sea grass on the outside of the ornaments for extra affect.
We painted the inside of the ornament (you can take the ornaments apart to do this easily) with the blue glitter glue.
We were able to sprinkle some colored sand on parts of the inside bottoms of each ornament to represent the ocean floor.
Then we place the thread between the 2 open sides of the ornament (this took 2 people; one to hold both sides of the ornament and one to hold the thread in the spot where you want your sea creature to hand inside the ornament.)
Once the 2 ornament sides are snapped into place, we placed clear scotch tape over the seams to just give it an extra seal.
Last step is to put pretty string in the hole at the top of the ornament so you can hang it from your tree! (Or on your kitchen cupboard knob where mine is currently hanging, ha)

After we finished our ornament, we had a nice relaxing movie time with this DVD!
Ocean Adventures, Volume 1

Enjoy and Many Blessings!

Ephesians 3:20-21

20 Now unto him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us,
21 Unto him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus throughout all ages, world without end. Amen.

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The Cook Family Homestead