From Head in the Clouds to Paws in the Grass

Science is one of our favorite subjects. There are so many options when it comes to science curriculum's. This year we chose to use Apologia. We are studying astronomy. With the Apologia curriculum, the focus is on one subject for the whole year. So, instead of 50 different subjects, they study one and learn it well. However, some times we do get tired of having our heads in the clouds, literally. So we took a few weeks off to do something else.

I let the boys decided between an animal project, a human body project, or 'disaster' project(earthquakes, tsunamis). At this time, we had been at the zoo about once a week. Naturally, they chose animals. I did not want them to study an animal only out of a book or off the Internet. I wanted them to be able to see and watch the animal up-close. So we visited the zoo website. L9 picked the cheetah. M6 chose the penguin. We scheduled a trip to the zoo and we were able to study both animals for quite a while. We stopped and read all the information that was available. We took tons of pictures and we brought paper and recorded their behavior as well.
As for project work, my 3rd grader completed an essay. My 1st grader took his 3 main points and we found magazine pictures to express them and glued them into a collage of sorts. They both filled out animal record sheets. You can find this sheet in the made by me section to the right. I also had my 3rd grader fill out a pre-essay paragraph set-up sheet. This is also in the made by me section.

Not long after we completed all this, I remembered that we would be having a 'zoo show' at the library for the home school program. So we took all of our pictures, mini-books, and coloring pages and made a poster.

They have really enjoyed doing their presentations for us and for their grandparents. To be honest, I think the grandparents enjoyed it more.

Sorry about the picture quality. I had to take them on my phone.