Geography Project Presentation + Happy Halloween!

Zoey's choice for her Geography project this time around was to create a portfolio board and present an oral presentation covering fashion trends in the United States. She also created a quiz for her audience to complete.

We are wrapping up our current studies of North America and this fits in with that and incorporates something that she is interested in as well. She created a little red "runway" of sorts for her Barbie dolls that were in different styled clothing and took pictures of them all on the runway sharing the category their clothing style fit in to.

She is a very good speaker and she did an excellent job. She also shared some of her clothing that fit into each category of dress that she spoke about as well. You could tell that she had done her research as she knew what it was she was talking about and could field my questions when I asked her several. It was a fun project that she completely did on her own since I've been busy these past several days with library programming and Halloween festivities etc. through my job working at the library.

Sunday we finished up reading the book Walk Two Moons by Sharon Creech. Zoey cried and was pretty upset upon finishing it up because it was so sad. She's a pretty emotional and empathetic kiddo. She doesn't choose to read books that she knows will be sad so this was hard. We had a good talk about it though and I'm so glad we read it. So many important things to ponder over with that book. So many gifts to be had from it.

Hoping to press pause on our geography curriculum and start in on our election studies tomorrow!

And because it's Halloween...here are some silly photos of Zoey as a mad scientist!

Happy Halloween!!

P.S. In case you have some candy in the house that you would like to get rid of, why not try one of these leftover candy science experiments?

Echinacea Root Tincture (a project from the Herbal Kit by Learning Herbs)

Today was the day that we finally completed our echinacea tincture from the herbal kit by Learning Herbs. Zoey has been waiting forever and was so excited.

Such a simple first project, I'm glad that we started with it. Today all she had to do was strain the echinacea root (that had been sitting for over a month now) through a cheese cloth and then pour the liquid/tincture into the little dropper bottles.

This project was completed just in time for the cold and flu season that's upon us now here in northern Wisconsin!

Thank you Learning Herbs for putting this kit together that's proving to be perfect for beginners!

Karyotype Project & a Mini Break!

It's been a busy past several days! Sharing some pictures here of Zoey's completed karyotype project which she had to do a bit of research on. She had to determine if the karyotype was for a human, if it was for a male or female, if it was normal or abnormal and if abnormal, what she thought was going on.

I had some training and continuing education to take care of for the library earlier this week which meant our homeschool schedule was slightly disrupted, but we were able to throw in some other forms of learning while away from home which was fun. A visit to a couple of book store resulted in a book purchase or two for Zoey. Over our two day getaway she completed reading the book titled The Swap by Megan Shull and enjoyed it. It was nice for her to get some just for her reading time in I think. :) She also visited the Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum which currently has the Birds in Art exhibit on display. Lots of swimming at the hotel pool was done as well as lots of walking around the downtown square. Here are some of our fun pictures from our little mini-break...

Downtown.

In front of The Grand Theatre fountains.

At Sweet Lola's Cupcakery...YUM!

It was nice to get out of town for a bit and have a little break with some fun included...almost made up for the full day of sitting that I had to do for my library training!

Science: Extracting DNA

For science we're still talking about DNA so for some fun we attempted to extract DNA from Zoey and from a strawberry.

This is Zoey's DNA organizing itself to the top...

And there it is all balled up on the stir stick...

We thought it would be fun to get a close-up look of it and put it on a slide. It was cool, but I think if we had a more powerful microscope on our hands it would have been even cooler. Ours is a pretty simple battery operated one but it still magnified it some.

This is our attempt at extracting DNA from a strawberry which ended up not being quite as successful for some reason.

You can see tiny globs of it stuck to the side of the jar below...

An easy and fun science project that definitely made learning about DNA meaningful!

Some Edible Science Fun

We've moved into talking about DNA and genetics now in science so this week we put together a little DNA strand featuring marshmallows, licorice and toothpicks. Pretty easy project and it's by no means unique but it really did a nice job of solidifying that certain chemicals within a DNA strand will only pair with certain chemicals. I found this specific project idea on the University of Utah's Learn Genetics site.

Adenine with Thymine
and 
Cytosine with Guanine

Zoey's still not feeling the best, her sore throat has now moved into her sinuses and she's all stuffed up along with having a gunky throat which meant today we still did school but it took us longer because we took our time BIG time. We ended our day with this project around 4pm. Our longest day yet but it didn't really seem like it because Zoey slept in a bit (so nice!) and we got started a bit later as well as took our time with things.

A pretty easy little project and now we have some treats in the cupboard for when she's feeling a bit better.

And a close-up of her finished DNA double helix.

Tomorrow is another library day (where she will come with me to work for a bit) and she also has ballet in the evening. I'm hoping she's feeling a bit better and this cold is fast moving!

Harvesting + Drying Herbs

Ever since Z discovered that we had lemon balm growing in our dry and barren garden plot (we have since tried to salvage most of it) she has been interested in plants, mainly herbs, and wants to identify them and find out what it is they are good for and how to harvest them, etc., etc.

I believe we may be a tinch late in the game when it comes to harvesting lemon balm because I read for the most flavorful oils you are to harvest before their first bloom...but we will see what we get with this little batch.

Since the lemon balm was essentially in our yard we ventured out a bit down the road to see what else we could find.

She was excited to discover some yarrow (another herbal plant that she identified on her own).

She also read in her book titled A Kids Herb Book by Lesley Tierra that you are to ask a plant if you can harvest them before you do so, so she was sure to put this practice into place.

Once at home we finagled a little place to hang them to dry in the basement...we'll see what happens! I'm learning right along with Z so it's an interesting little project for the both of us.

Books on herbs that we are using for our studies are:

A Kid's Herb Book for Children of All Ages by Lesley Tierra
Eyewitness Plant by David Burnie
Walking the World in Wonder: A Childrens Herbal by Ellen Evert Hopman
Rosmary Gladstar's Medicinal Herbs A Beginners Guide by Rosmary Gladstar
A Field Guide to Edible Wild Plants: Eastern and Central North America by Lee Allen Peterson