Mohr Adventures in World Schooling

How to make your own "Milky" Way Galaxy. Pour some milk in a shallow bowl or saucer.  This works best with any milk other than non-fat.  Add a few drops of liquid water color or liquid food coloring.  Use a toothpick to move the color about as you wish.  The real fun happens when you add a drop or two of liquid dish soap, or put soap on the end of your toothpick.  The fat in the milk is repelled by the soap, so you should get some fun movement in your liquid, swirling about like a galaxy.

Objective: We continue my daughter's requested tour of the ancient world, this time into the world of the Celts.  This was a fun diversion from the paths typically taken by schools, but there was a challenge finding age appropriate books to read along.  We chose to study this in March, to tie in with St. Patrick's Day.  While exploring the ancient world, we wanted to examine some myths, and learn about some of their contributions to science, math and the arts.  I create daily worksheets dealing with the days topic and a daily chore.  My daughter gets five or six questions while my son gets three or four.  If there is room, I may include some math (simple equations or word problems) or language arts questions (like rhyme, syllables, synonyms). Spelling List and Sentence of the Week for K/1st grader : Language Arts lessons include some simple questions about the spelling list, like finding the nouns, making rhymes or counting syllables.  We read and ...

Home Science Tools is one of my favorite sites to look for science projects to do with the kids.  They have a number of science curriculum available, guides to help you select the best curriculum for your needs, and kits to help provide some of the tools needed for experiments.  They have also created their own topic specific curriculum for early elementary.  Topics include scientific skills, animals, plants, seasons, space and states of matter.  Guides include adaptations for advanced/older students, younger students, special needs students, and small group settings.  We tested out space and plants. Explore Science: Space This teacher's guide creates four lesson themes.  Some supplies are provided including an inflatable globe, and activity pages are included in the back.  Topics covered include the relationship between the Earth and the sun, revolution versus rotation modeling (year and day), lunar phases, Earth's layers, and the solar system....

For a fun little experiment with light, gather a red apple, a white piece of paper, and a flashlight.  How do our eyes see color?  The first thing we need to know is that white light is made of lots of colors.  Whenever we play with a prism or see a rainbow in water droplets, we are witnessing light being broken up into its spectrum of colors.  Issac Newton experimented with prisms and discovered the colors of the rainbow - red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet.  When we see colors, we are seeing the broken spectrum.  Newton believed the color we see is reflected off the object, while the others are absorbed.  To demonstrate this, place the red apple on the piece of white paper.  Shine the flashlight onto the apple.  If you move the light in the right way, you should see a red reflection on the white paper.  The red might be faint but should be there.