Announcing a New Home For The Hands On Carnival

Hi Everyone!
As you can see, I haven't been blogging much lately. I felt that my lack of attention to the blog world was doing the carnival a disservice.  Because the carnival has had regular entries each month, even without my attention, it seemed to be a waste to just shut it down.  Fortunately there's another blogger out there who loves hands on school as much as I do and wants to keep the carnival going!!!

Soooo, without further ado, I'd like to invite you to visit the new home of The Hands On Homeschool Blog Carnival!





Please join me in giving Shannon a hearty welcome.  She is going to do an awesome job getting the best hands on activities out to you lovely bloggers.  In fact she has hosted the carnival in the past so she is already familiar with it.  The Hands On carnival was hosted at Mountaineer Country most recently in March.  It would be great if this next issue of the carnival were packed with your great ideas!  So please hop on over to the blog carnival to submit your entry!  I know Shannon will be encouraged and of course it is that time of year to get going on school again!

The Carnival is Up

Hey everyone, there is a wonderful new edition of the Hands On Blog Carnival up at Harmony Art Mom!

Enjoy!

Hands On Homeschool Blog Carnival ~ June 2011

Yes, I know, I'm super late with this edition.  I'm so sorry.  But given the size of this edition, I'm thinking I'm not the only one who is tired of school and happy to be enjoying summer vacation.  For those of you who are still plugging away and perhaps need a bit of inspiration, here are a few welcome blog articles to keep you going.

Z-Dad presentsWhere the Mountain Meets the Moon posted at Bookie Woogie.

I'm going to go away from the norm for a bit here and include this lovely article from Kerry at Creek and Mesa Web Journal.  This is not an article about a hands on "project" that Kerry has done with her kids, rather it is an article about living and I thought it seemed very "hands-on" so I'm including it here for your enjoyment and encouragement: Growing Wild.

Ann presents Outdoor Hour Challenge Spring Series #4: Wildflowers-Dandelions and Playing the Harp and Piano as Part of Homeschooling posted at Harvest Moon by Hand.

Zoie looks like she's having fun in her post Kid-Dyed Silk Scarves posted at TouchstoneZ.

Susannah presentsa much easier way to make paper in her post Making Paper the Quick and Easy Way posted at The Five of Us.

Barb at Harmony Art Mom will be hosting our next carnival on July 11th.  Hope to see you there!

Last Days

We have been enjoying these last days of school.  Our school year officially ends Friday although I do sneak a few weeks in during the summer when my kids aren't looking.

In fact we are already looking forward to one more week of school when we go camping in Maine.  It doesn't seem like school but it is our opportunity to finish up our weather unit with a big finale and focus on survival skills a little, nature journaling, hiking, some life skills and cooperation as we work together to set up, keep and then break down camp.  We are praying the WEATHER will cooperate with us this year.  LOL Last year when we used this trip to finalize our ocean unit we had rain all morning while we broke down camp.  It was a sad state of affairs to say the least.

So very soon we'll be preparing for our trip.  We'll be looking at the weather maps and forecasts.  We'll be deciding what kind of weather gear we should bring.  We'll be making lists, grocery shopping, checking the camping gear, baking and packing.

The Greenhouse Effect

My daughter describes the greenhouse effect to me as follows:  "Water vapor, carbon dioxide and methane surround the earth and trap the sun's heat which keeps the earth warm and keeps us alive.  Without these, the earth would be a very cold place."  She just finished up module 10 in Apologia Biology and conducted a cool no, hot experiment to help us visualize the greenhouse effect which incidentally, lined up perfectly with the weather subunit I am doing with the younger two this week.

First she took the temperature outside in the sun then she placed that thermometer inside of a gallon sized zip lock bag and left it in the sun for about fifteen minutes.  When you try this at home you will see a difference in temperature.  The plastic bag is our acting greenhouse.  Now to amplify this and show the way carbon dioxide retains heat she took it one step further by filling the bag with carbon dioxide, sealing it withthe thermometer insde and then leaving it in the sun for another fifteen minutes.  Wow!  Big rise in temperature!

Here are the steps to getting the carbon dioxide in the bag as per Apologia.  (And it is much easier than some of the web recommended methods.)  You'll need:

• empty 2 liter bottle
• vinegar - enough to fill it about a third of the way up
• 3 tsp. baking soda

Pour vinegar into your bottle about a third of the way.  Next pour 1 tsp of the baking soda into the vinegar in the bottle.  Wait until the bubbles stop fizzing and then pour the second tsp of baking soda in.  Before you pour the third tsp of baking soda into the bottle get your bag ready.  Get all of the air out of your bag by flattening it out and leave it unsealed just enough to fit over the top of the 2 liter bottle.  You'll have to do the final step very quickly so be ready!  OK, ready?  Pour the third tsp of baking soda into the bottle and very quickly get the bag over the opening of the bottle "sealing" it with your fingers to keep any air from getting in or carbon dioxide from getting out.  Hold the bag there until the fizzing stops and tadah, you have a bag full of carbon dioxide.  Now quickly get your thermometer back into the bag and seal it completely.

This week at co-op we will be discussing temperature and the effect it has on weather, the Earth and everything on it.  We'll also be putting together terrariums so we can have mini greenhouses in our homes.

Hands On Homeschool Blog Carnival May 2011

Welcome to this Spring edition of the Hands On Blog Carnival.  I hope you all had a wonderful and heartfelt Mother's day yesterday!  I'm so excited that spring is finally here.  Not just here on the calendar but the weather is actually beginning to act springlike.  We've been taking advantage of the beautiful weather to go outside with our homeschooling.  Our favorite thing to do every spring is to take a good book outside and read on a blanket spread out on the lawn.  My little kiddos all sprawl out alongside Mom and we get totally absorbed in the likes of Little House on the Prairie, Homer Price or Swiss Family Robinson.

Hopefully you too are getting outside for some relaxed schooling.  I picked up nature journals for my two younger kids last weekend at our local homechool convention.  This is a great tool for getting hands on with nature and practicing observation.  Today's carnival is full of examples of other ways to do some hands on homeschooling.  Enjoy!

Wendy presents The work of our hands posted at loving learning.

Shelly presents KONOS Unit #2: Stewardship - Africa posted at Count It All Joy.

"Dramatizing a play makes History come alive! (And it's a sneaky way for me to get the girls to memorize some facts!)"  I totally agree Nadene!!!  Here is how she does it: Playing the Mayflower Girls posted at Practical Pages.

Heather, a fellow KONOS mom, presents Becoming Butterflies... and Knights-in-the-Making posted at Cultivated Lives.

Denise says, "I need your help to finish my books of homeschool math games."  Here she presents Working on My "Let's Play Math!" Books posted at Let's Play Math!.

Margot shares two posts with us today including Terrariums   and Explore the Universe and Contribute to Astronomy posted at Learning Beyond The Book.

I love field trips because they are the ultimate in hands on learning.  They really put you in the midst of your subject of study.  Pamela has spent some time in Arizona and shares her trip with us in her article Saguaro and a Shoot Em Up posted at Blah, Blah, Blog.

Jane plays a sweet game of Magnetic Fishing for All Ages, a game I used to play with my kids except it was a letter version, posted at Mama Pea Pod.

Ritsumei has a fun way to Play With Your Food and she's also sharing a giveaway in her post about Owl Puke Pellets  posted at Baby Steps.

Thanks for visiting the Hands On Homeschool Blog Carnival.  Submit your blog article to the next edition of hands on homeschool blog carnival using our carnival submission form. Past posts and future hosts can be found on our blog carnival index page.


If you haven't already, put the Blog Carnival Sidebar Widget for this carnival onto your blog. It provides current links for this carnival, and other recent carnivals on the web. Or you can just grab the button off of my sidebar.

Loyalty - Citizenship Wrap Up

Our loyalty unit lasted about 3 weeks beginning with loyalty to God then moving on to family and friends and then wrapping up with citizenship.  It was a short unit!  To cap off the end of our unit we used the KONOS skit entitled Birth of America from the loyalty unit in Volume II.

They started by singing America the Beautiful all together and then each student made a short monologue in character.  A couple of the kids had to play more than one part but they handled it well.  The line up included Leif Erikson, Columbus, Capt. John Smith, Billington child from the Mayflower, a drummer boy, Paul Revere, Jefferson, Washington and Madison.  Then they joined together again to sing God Bless America.

This made for a great review of the founding of our nation after just finishing the unit on wisdom prior to this.  If you remember correctly, the wisdom unit contained a subunit on government.  We plan to practice it some more and then use it for our upcoming talent show.  Making this play not only a great way to review but also a practical way of ensuring that each of the kids perform something for our groupwide talent show coming up very soon!

Just after the play we piled the kids onto a blanket on the lawn and Lucy talked about what it means to be a citizen and how you go about becoming a citizen if you were born somewhere outside of the U.S.  She then asked the kids questions from the list that immigrants use to study about our country.  We started with the idea that we would only ask a few but the kids were doing so well and enjoyed it so much that she managed to get all the way through the list.

We ended our celebration with desserts and a red and white pinata. (I know, not American but we had this pinata and my son wanted to use it so I told him if he decorated it in some patriotic fashion than we could use it.)  Along with the usual candy, we filled the pinata with some fabulous American tatoos from Kim.  At the end of the day, the kids were covered in red, white and blue tattoos, all sugared up from cupcakes, strawberries and cookies and playing in the sandbox.  Doesn't that sound like a good old American kids party?