Homeschooling Outdoors

This is my absolute most favorite time of year, here in Florida. It is warm, but not too warm, and being outside is not uncomfortable. No bugs, no snakes, well mostly no snakes. We did see a Water Moccasin sunning itself on a big log, but we were nowhere near it. We used to do outdoor homeschooling all the time. Then, when my son hit is Junior and Senior year, it just became almost impossible with the amount of time needed to do his school work. He is a Senior this year, but has a much better control of his time spent on classes, plus he needs volunteer hours. Even though we volunteer all the time, I often forget to get signatures, so it doesn't really help. Take that into consideration if you are logging volunteer hours. Get the forms signed. Anyway he is volunteering every other Thursday. So, Caitlin and I get to explore some of our local springs while we wait for him to finish. So many things to see and learn about. I have missed our Outdoor Homeschooling days. So peaceful and relaxing. We always try to learn something new, either about the spring we are visiting, things that go on there, such as diving, wildlife, or plants. This week we are just going to the springs for fun, no school, just fun. Can't wait. When we get towards the end of the school year, I am plenty ready to relax, lol.

Using OpenEd for Math Lessons and Turning Some of Our Favorite Nature Photos Into Awesome Gifts

Well, it has only been a week since my last post, lol.  I just don't have as much time, it seems, to blog.  I have been using OpenEd, the Math lessons, with my 6th grader, and right now it is going well.  She does the lesson, then plays a game, and watches videos.  Then we do Math flash cards, on an app, and she is finally getting division down.  I would still like her to be a little faster with her multiplication facts, but I wont quibble that.  With more practice she will get it. 

Since it was a little bit warmer today, I went out and got a lot of gardening done.  We are putting up a privacy fence, in the back yard, long story, so I had to dig up several plants.  They were successfully relocated, and I got to pick a spot for Caitlin and me to plant our 3 Sisters garden, in the Spring.  I got it dug, and added some good soil to it, and I will start composting it as well.  If you ever decide you want a privacy fence, do one panel a paycheck.  We didn't do it that way, but I wish we had.  Buying it all at once is extremely expensive. 

If you have been reading this blog, for any length of time, then you know we love to be outside.  We love nature, animals, visiting all our local parks and zoos.  Though, we have by no means visited them all, it takes a while, lol.  We also love to take pictures of all the beautiful, and fun things we see, and find.  Some of you might even recognize this picture.  The male lion, who let us take his picture several times.  Now, you can purchase some of our favorite, and best photographs, by shopping at my new Society6 Art store.  You will also find my paintings.  You can buy prints, canvas, or lovely gifts.  So far, along with this lion, I have uploaded flowers, manatees, deer, dolphins, springs, and other beautiful pictures from our travels around Florida.  I do not have all of them loaded, yet.  It takes quite a long time to edit and load them.  Plus, I have to find them in all my storage places.  We have been doing this for 9 years after all.  These make great, quality gifts.  You can also just click the Society6 banner, at the top corner of this blog.

Pinterest Boards for Homeschool and Education

Today, I am sharing a few of my Pinterest boards that are related to homeschool, or education.  Check them out if you want.  There is tons of info there.  It is easier to do it this way, then for me to sift through, pick and choose, and then you sift through my blog to find them all.  I love Pinterest!  It is a giant filing cabinet.

https://www.pinterest.com/iaminterested/eclectic-homeschooler/
https://www.pinterest.com/iaminterested/books-worth-reading/
https://www.pinterest.com/iaminterested/upcycling/
https://www.pinterest.com/iaminterested/artsy-fartsy/
https://www.pinterest.com/iaminterested/earths-kids-club/
https://www.pinterest.com/iaminterested/fun-things-to-do/
https://www.pinterest.com/iaminterested/volunteer/
https://www.pinterest.com/iaminterested/higher-education/

4H Volunteer Day at Otter Springs

Today was our volunteer day, with our 4H group, at Otter Springs. We only had one real young child show up, and her mom was with her. So, this time the kids were given a little bit of a harder, and more adventurous task. We walked to nature trail, and the area around it, in search of trash. We found quite a bit of it, unfortunately, most of it glass bottles. We probably walked a good mile, out, and then back of course. We were able to find, and take pictures of some animal tracks a deer, and possibly a bear or fox, for Caitlin's project book. You can see common Florida animal tracks here. We had a lot of fun, and the kids got to swim in the camp pool after, for half price. DJ does not like pools, so he wanted to go and see if the springs were in fact cleaned up. As we got closer we could see people swimming, so we were optimistic. They in fact had been cleaned up quite a bit, and were quite lovely. There was quite a few people swimming in the spring. We did see one snake, it is in the last picture. Everyone cleared out of the water real fast, lol, and it didn't bother anyone. They were saying it was a Water Moccasin but I was not where close enough to tell. Everyone got back in after it went on its way. All in all a fun, and productive day.

Earth Kids Meeting: Mediterranean Monk Seal and Making Water Colors

Well all my pictures would not load again, but you will get the idea. When we do Earth Kids, we have two teens, and then two younger kids. So I try to do an experiment one month, and then an art project, or craft the next month. This month was both an experiment, and an art project. DJ picked the Mediterranean Monk Seal, as the marine topic. You will find links below, to learn about them and repeat the project too.

2 days before the meeting, we collected some flowers of different colors. We already had some daisies that we had bought, and put in a vase. So we saved a couple of them. They were already colored enhanced, so they were very vibrant. There was blue, purple and green. Then I got a hot pink Azalea and a light pink Camelia, from my garden, and one yellow rose bud, also from my garden. We had no orange, those roses had not opened yet. Then we crushed them up a little, using a rolling pin, put them in a zip lock bag with hot water, and let them sit until the meeting. Each child was supposed to guess which color they thought would be the most vibrant. Two picked the blue, one green, and one purple. You can see from the paintings that the blue definitely one. Of interest, the hot pink Azalea actually turned an orange color, very pretty, but definitely not pink. The light pink Camelia, released no color what so ever, and the water was clear. The green, and purple, though they looked very vibrant in the bag, were not so vibrant on paper, and the yellow rose bud was a very pale yellow.

All in all, a fun activity, and good learning experience for all. We also discussed who would have used this to paint and went over vocabulary terms in the reading.

The kids don't know it yet, but I am picking the topic next month.  We will be going to Cedar Key and we will study the Horseshoe Crab, and then do an experiment on properties of sand.

http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov/pr/species/mammals/pinnipeds/mediterraneanmonkseal.htm

Earth Kids Meeting: The Mantis Shrimp

Today, was our monthly Earth Kids meeting, and thank goodness it warmed up.  We learned about the Mantis Shrimp today, a peculiar critter.  It has a punch so strong it can break glass.  That is what stood out to me the most, and they get fairly large too.  The video below shows their beautiful colors, plus reading material can be found by clicking the highlighted link.

We usually do a craft, but this time I decided on an experiment, that actually was two experiments in one.  The one thing about experiments is sometimes they take longer than a few hours, and this was one of those. If you leave this experiment for about a week, it will go all the way to the leaves. To help learn about how plants get nutrients from their roots to their leaves, you can do this celery experiment.  You could actually use white roses or carnations, which would be really awesome, but we didn;t have any of those.  The second part of the experiment, which we have actually done before so we sent it home with the other family is to take the bottom of the celery, the root basically, dig a hole and plant it.  It will magically grow back.  This actually works for onions, potatoes and lettuce as well.  We even had broccoli and cabbage grow this way.

We got in a nice nature walk too, and lots of play time at the park.

Rum Island on the Santa Fe River Natural Springs

If you plan to visit Florida, then you need to visit the N Central part where there are tons of springs. The springs are 72 degrees all year, and there are hundreds of them. Some are very isolated, and I would not say safe for novice nature explorers or very small children. But most of them have camping via tent, or cabins, and are quite lovely. We were supposed to end up at Poe Springs today, which is in High Springs. They were closed, so we went ten miles down the road to a small park called Rum Island. I tried to find out why it got that name, but can not find anything online. The friends who went with us grew up here, and she might be able to tell me. It is isolated, and small, but so peaceful and beautiful. The swim area is small, and mostly pretty shallow, but it does get deep so you have to pay attention. The spring feeds into the Santa Fe River. I didn't think the kids would want to swim, so I brought no swimming apparel, but they got in in their clothes. It was almost 80 degrees, so they were not freezing when they got out. I will have to plan Poe Springs on a Friday next month, because that is when they are open this time of year. You can canoe and fish also. I won't go into detail about the geology of this area, because DJ is going to do a report on it, but it is truly fascinating.

Earth Kids Meeting: Make Bird Seed Dough

We finally got our Earth Kids meeting done. It has been cold, and with kids having colds, we just have not been able to do it. We did do it at the house, rather than the park, this one time because it was raining and I did not want to cancel again. We only have four active kids in the group right now. So, if you live in the Gilchrist County, FL area and you want something fun to do drop me a message and I will let you know when our Feb meeting is. We are on Facebook too at Tri County Earths Kids Club. For this meeting DJ practiced his 4H demonstration, for this weekend, on the Leatherback Sea Turtle. Then we made these very interesting bird feeders. This was an extremely messy craft, but it did work and we have them outside to see if they birds will love them. I followed all her directions for making the bird feeders, and you can too by clicking the link.

Earth Kids: Leafy Sea Dragom

Friday was our Earth Kids Meeting. We were meeting bi-monthly, but for now meetings will be once a month, on a Friday. There are several reasons for needing to do this. If it becomes feasible to go back to bi-monthly we will.

This time around, the kids learned about the Leafy Sea Dragon. The Leafy Sea Dragon is found only in Southern Australia. There are very strict laws about catching or hunting them. There are several aquariums that have been allowed to have them. They are related to Seahorses, but they don't have the tail that allows them to curl around plants and hang on. They have leafy appendages to help them camouflage themselves. The Leafy Sea Dragon is a perfect animal to teach camouflage to kids.We made a Leafy Sea Dragon pizza.  If you thin your dough out more, because it rises and swells when baked, it will look a little more realistic than ours.  We used lettuce tears to make the leafy appendages.  One of the kids, and I each made a Seahorse wire and pearl piece.  Mine will become a Christmas ornament, and I am not sure what she will decide to do with hers.  The two little ones did a coloring page, and DJ is working on a drawing.

Australia for Kids

About Leafy Sea Dragons

Wilderness Survival School

We have two weeks of Summer Vacation left. Public school begins school tomorrow, but we don't start back until the day after Labor Day. Since I am constantly searching for new and interesting websites, that will help us achieve our goals, I found Wilderness Survival School. I was not technically looking for that subject, but was searching for Earth Kids stuff. This Wilderness Survival School website is awesome! You can sign up for a free ecourse, which of course I did. The kids will be doing the first ecourse together, as a part of their Science school work. If your kids love nature, or you just want to get them involved in nature more, then check out Wilderness Survival School.

Did You Know?

Did you know that most lipsticks contain fish scales?  Yuck, I knew I didn't wear lipstick for a reason.  I am sure there is a good reason why.  Check out the links below to learn more about fish and their scales, with some fun games, books and websites.

http://kids.nationalgeographic.com/kids/stories/spacescience/facts-on-fish/
http://myfwc.com/fishing/freshwater/fishing-tips/scales/
http://www.ask.com/question/does-lipstick-contain-fish-scales
http://petgames.my-pet-care.com/pet-games/fish-games-for-kids
http://www.coloring.ws/fish.htm
http://www.allkidsnetwork.com/crafts/animals/fish/
http://www.fs.usda.gov/detail/r6/learning/kids/?cid=fsbdev2_027478

Did You Know Nature Facts

Did you know that giant Water Lilies in the Amazon can grow to over 6 feet in diameter?  To see images of the Giant Water Lily go here.  To watch a video and learn more about Giant Water Lilies, visit Science Kids.  To learn about how to figure out the diameter of something, visit this page.  I plan on using these Did You Know posts throughout the next school year, and over Summer Vacation to keep schooling interesting and fun.  You can use them too!  I will try to post a new one each day with some fun lessons to go with each one.