Satori Smiles » Science

Satori writes and draws about the Kidneys

Angela — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 02:12:12 +0000

Satori just can’t get enough of learning about the human body. She watches videos that are probably meant for children much older than her, and every night makes me read from detailed books. When she wants to learn about something, she typically ends up learning more than David and myself.

She just loves to draw and write about it. These are just samples. I’ve spared you all her illustrations of the human body sitting on a toilet with urine (uren) coming out.

You know you drink water but where it goes is first the kidneys. They get the waste that you don’t need and then it goes to your urethras, then your bladder. All of this is behind your intestines. And your kidneys have little tubes that gets the waste out. And also kidneys are the size of a bean. And the bladder looks like a white bag.

I got her some journals and she’s already filled out a dozen pages about different systems of the human body.

I do not ask her to do any of this!

I am now looking into notebooking as a homeschool tool for her.

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So You Think You Can Dance

Angela — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 03:45:02 +0000

This is what happens when I left Satori alone to do her science lesson to pack for our trip.

It all started off proper enough…

But I came back to this skeleton who thinks he can dance! Satori always makes me laugh, I don’t know how she thinks of these things.

At least she did everything I told her to do though.

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RSO: Eating our jello science activity

Angela — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 01:10:00 +0000

Satori begged to do another science lesson again today, so I figured this one would be a fun Sunday project. This is still from the second lesson “The Cell”. I prepared lemon jello and poured it into two different dishes – one round and one square. After an hour in the fridge, just enough to get them set a bit, I had Daddy re-read the lesson story while I prepared some fruit.

We held our breath when Daddy asked Satori which jello dish might be the plant cell. And she responded correctly, of course the square dish! The circular dish will be the animal cell.

We cut some green grapes in half to represent football-shaped chloroplasts and Satori slipped them into the cell membrane and into the cell.

Each cell got a big strawberry nucleus. Then we labeled the cell parts. Of course our animal cell didn’t get any chloroplasts. These are very simple cells and we could have made them a bit more intricate, but this sufficed for our 5 year old daughter. Besides it’s all the project called for anyway.

MMMm… don’t our cells look yummy?

Aren’t edible science projects great?

Right after this lesson, as I was uploading the photos to my computer, Satori rushed into my office and handed me this paper.

I love Science. (followed by a huge number)

We love our new science program R.E.A.L. Science Odyssey! The topics in Level One Life cover:

What is Life?
The Cell
The Human Body
Classifying Life
Animal Kingdom
Plant Kingdom

We just covered the human body as a unit study, so we might do some Animal Kingdom topics this summer yet. I especially think it would be great to do when we visit my parent’s Wisconsin farm, where it would be easier to find earthworms and snails.

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Real Science Odyssey – A Cell You Can See

Angela — Sat, 17 Jul 2010 17:26:43 +0000

We actually did this lesson last night right after our “What is Life” lesson, but my posts are so full of photos, I like to break things up a bit.

I love learning along with my daughter, and this lesson was no exception! We learned about cells, parts of a cell, and the difference between animal and plant cells. For our lab activity, we used a chicken egg. Since I’m on-off vegan, I had to get eggs from the store for this, but at least they were cage-free, organic, high Omega-3 eggs. In this picture you might even be able to see the tiny holes egg shells have to let air and water in (click image).

Satori filled out the lab worksheet on parts of the egg as we carefully examined our own egg.

The entire family learned more about the egg. David used to think the yellow-orange yolk was the baby chicken itself, which might explain why he doesn’t like to eat eggs, being we are vegetarian. But the yolk is the food for the embryo before it is hatched. We learned what all those funny little parts are that are attached to the yolk (chalaza). We saw the blastodisc inside the yolk. Satori knows a tiny bit about eggs from our quick unit study on the human body and she kept wanting to draw a sperm entering this egg. That entry point would be the blastodisc.

Anyway, the yolk and blastodisc is one entire single cell that we can see without an expensive microscope!

Satori completed her worksheet, labeled the major parts of the egg and colored it in.

Here’s more helpful resources on learning about Eggs!

Enchanted Learning – Egg and Embryo Development

Interactive Cell Model for Animal and Plant Cells

Plant and Animal Cell Worksheets

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R.E.A.L. Science Odyssey

Angela — Sat, 17 Jul 2010 17:03:02 +0000

Yesterday we pulled out our R.E.A.L. Science Odyssey – Life program (RSO) and did the first two lessons. Up until now we’ve struggled with trying to use Building Foundations of Scientific Understanding (BFSU). But after discovering recently that BFSU won’t be covering evolution in their next level, I decided it was time to put it on the shelf and try to do a science program that was easier to follow. I had actually purchased RSO a year ago, as it looked great – specifically built for homeschoolers and followed the WTM classical style of three cycles of Life, Earth/Space, Chemistry and Physics. I looked through it again and printed it all out and put in a 1.5″ Staples Better Binder.

I could not believe how easy-to-implement and how well put together this program is! I felt rather spoiled. In the front of the book, is lists of perishable and non-perishable items you’ll need in order of lessons. Book suggestions and web links. Each lesson starts out as a read-aloud story which isn’t hesitant to include a few complex science vocabulary words. Then there’s at least one lab activity all neatly laid out for you, including worksheets you might need. The activities look so much fun! I was drooling over it all and then I purchased the next two years – Earth & Space and Chemistry. They look just as much fun and I know Satori is going to love this.

In fact, this program is so well put together that I could hand the RSO binder to David and have him teach an entire lesson right off the bat! I could never do that with BFSU, that always required a 30-minute reading and gathering prep for the parent.

After reading the intro story on “What is L ife?” and doing the first worksheet, we headed out in the wilderness to do a plot study. This fox watched us, he was doing some really loud and scary screaming that we had to double-check it wasn’t a mountain lion before we entered the forest!

Armed with a magnifying glass.

David was doubtful we’d find any “life” in our high altitude desert forest, but that’s pretty much all we found. The only non-living things we found was rocks, soil, and a scrap of tinfoil. Our first rock Satori overturned had a nest of ants with tons of larvae. By the time we got the camera from the house, the busy ant workers had whisked most of the larvae into safer passages.

Here’s a view of our house we don’t usually see.

We’re really looking forward to doing more RSO lessons. In fact, you may see a slurry of RSO posts in the next few days, we are going on another 12-day vacation next week so we want to get as much in as we can before we head to my parent’s Wisconsin farm. Here’s a few more views of the program, although you can download an extensive “Try Before You Buy” off the Pandia Press website!

The read-aloud story for “Living Things Are Made of Cells” (lesson covered in next post)!

A sample lab worksheet, see how easy they lay it all out for you?

View of the front cover.

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