Topics of Study

 Lakin: Dinosaurs. With clay fossils and handwritten lists of dinosaur names by a little boy who normally "doesn't know how" to write. His beloved prehistoric predator documentaries on Netflix. Stacks of heavy dinosaur encyclopedias and a camera filled with photos of model dinosaurs.

Cohen: Whales, sharks and other sea life. With Blue Planet and Shark Week on Netflix. A list of whale species. Clay dolphins and an oil pastel orca.

 Rylna: Vehicles. With a list of questions about the inner workings of tractor trailers and the speed and cost of the fastest cars. Books on Modern Aircrafts and How to Draw Flying Machines.

Cale: Volcanoes and Earthquakes. With a mud packed volcano. Baking soda, vinegar and red food coloring. A second attempt with a few additions to make the lava flow more impressive and longer lasting. National Geographic and Discovery Channel videos of eruptions and the history of Pompeii. And of course a little volcanic duct tape creating planned for tomorrow.

We started something new this week. More record keeping and accountability. Learning contracts and a couple project helps to get them moving forward and digging deeper. Yesterday I met with each of the boys to go over their new contracts and to discuss my expectations and theirs. I asked them to pick a topic to study while we tried this new system and with the exception of Cohen they all picked something new...Dinos, Vehicles and Volcanoes/Earthquakes. And so far, 2 days in, I am seeing some good changes coming.

Field Trip Friday: The NC Arboretum

I feel a little odd posting about our recent trip to the NC Arboretum when I have no pictures of plants to share...there was still a lot in bloom and lots of ornamentals, but my favorite parts of this trip were the 2 traveling exhibits that were going on. The Blue Ridge Fiber Show and After the Dinosaurs: The Age of Mammals and Ice.

First we stopped at the Education center where there was a Bonsai Expo was going on and the Blue Ridge Fiber Show upstairs. The kids weren't terribly interested in this- other than their amazement at the cost of some of these pieces. I thought they were beautiful- and can't wait till Spring when we shear the alpacas and I can start to learn how to felt and use fiber myself.

Then we went down to look at the Bonsai. Annika got a little bored, so we left Paul, my mom and the boys inside and went out to explore the gardens and fountains.

The other traveling exhibit is After the Dinosaurs: The Age of Mammals and Ice. Now this was something the kids loved! My boys absolutely love to watch documentaries on this type of thing. They have watched them on all sorts of dinosaurs and prehistoric reptiles and mammals. So seeing the skeletons and such of all of these animals was so much fun for them.

They had replicas of skulls, claws and teeth. They had huge electronic replicas of the animals themselves. It was pretty cool. Lakin was drawn to the Smilodon and other sabertooth cats. They had a huge ground sloth and short-faced bear- both of which they had seen videos on.

They had a little rice-filled pit to uncover bones in. Annika played here most of the time the boys were running around looking at the animals.

They had a couple of animals they didn't know much about- like the dire wolf and giant beaver. I am sure we will be searching for them soon in books and movies.

So that was our trip to the NC Arborteum this week. It's a lovely place with amazing gardens, exhibits and trails. If you want to see some more you can read my post about our previous trip to the Arboretum.

Do you have a field trip to share this week? You can link up any posts about getting out of the house and exploring life and learning first hand. Please link back here to help this blog hop grow!

Teeth and Theories of Extinction

Differences between herbivore and carnivore teeth


They each made a set of round, flat herbivore teeth and sharp, cone shaped carnivore teeth out of salt dough.

Then Rylan and Cale made a chart describing the different types of teeth and what they used them for. They also included a list of dinosaurs that had those specific types of teeth.

Theories if Extinction:

Cohen's mammal eating dinosaur's egg

Lakin's ark and flood

Rylan's meteor with tidal wave and dust everywhere

We also have a volcano which is made, but unpainted, and the scene unmade. Cale had a rough week last week and never got around to the thing he actually wanted to do.

Where in the World?

We've been sick this week so we haven't done too much....a couple half finished projects and one easy one completed.

Armed with our 3 dinosaur books/encyclopedias, a big tub of plastic dinosaurs and a few maps they went to work. Identifying each unlabeled dinosaur, looking it up in the index of their book and finding out which continent(s) it was discovered on. As you can see by the huge pile, the majority of the dinosaurs we own were discovered right here in North America.

Once they were sorted by continent we began sorting them by time period...

With most being in the Cretaceous:

And the long-necked ones in the Jurassic

We were hard pressed to find a Triassic dinosaur. Cale scoured the book until he found a meat-eating, 2-leg walking, smaller dinosaur that resembled the little green one in the picture that lived in the Triassic. He decided it was a Coelophysis.

Our half finished projects are models of carnivore/herbivore teeth and models of 4 of the different theories of extinction- and we'll get them done next week.

Dinosaurs, Assignment 1

Make a list of at least 10 dinosaurs; half herbivores and half carnivores and find out how tall they were.


Create a graph of the heights. Label both axes.

Create a key for your graph.

Answer questions.

How tall was the tallest dinosaur? Shortest?
What type of dinosaur was the tallest? Shortest?
What was the average height of the herbivores? Carnivores?
Which group was taller on average?
etc....

I was very happy with how their projects turned out, and they were too. Cale complained his way through the initial list- until I let them watch a documentary on Allosaurus, then he finished very quickly. Today with the graphing part he didn't complain a bit. And they learned so much more than just the dinosaurs heights or how to read a graph. How to read a pronunciation guide, how to spell all these dinosaur's names, how to measure out a scale for the height axis so they were equally spaced and allowed enough room for the maximum height, how to find averages, how they really can write smaller and neater than they say they can and how writing so much really isn't so bad when you have a finished product you can be proud of...