Archive | Grade 5

Early Morning Fires and Homeschool Projects

By Linda on July 23, 2012 in Flower e-book, Grade 5, Grade 7, Homeschooling, Homesteading

Kye, Caiden and Sandy sitting (at a safe distance) by a warm fire…

Olive found the sun… (photo by Erin)

This weekend Caiden planted his Bottlebrush tree. This is part of his Leaping Wolf badge that he is working through and will complete before he goes up to Scouts from Cubs in 2 weeks time. This particular badge is called Greening the Community. He chose the tree, planned the whole project, chose the tools to use, compost etc… he also has to document his projects in a journal with photos.

He is very proud of this tree that he planted, it was so heartwarming to see him walking out into the garden today to ‘check’ on his tree and see how it was doing.

Another part of this badge is to show how plants breathe or transpire. Remember these little cloches? They are also perfect for showing that plants do indeed breathe, can you see all the water droplets on the bottle?

My lettuce has been growing beautifully with these little cloches around them. The bugs seem to have been kept at bay and the lettuce has been given a chance to grow.

Caiden is learning about the Vikings for is grade 5 school work so he made a viking ship by covering a wine bottle with paper mache, painting it and adding a wooden base for the top of the boat.

Erin is learning about anti-cyclones in her grade 7 geography. She made a globe by covering a balloon with paper mache, painting it blue and adding the continents. She made her anti-cyclone circles with pipe cleaners and pinned them on.

Have you been busy with any projects lately?

Knitting Flowers e-Book Update:

I have had a few emails from readers who would like to purchase my E-book as a PDF for their computer.

The E-Book in PDF format can now be bought from:

ETSY, Ravelry and Craftsy

PS If you haven’t entered the giveaway from GermanDolls yet go here to enter.

Have a lovely week

Linda

Waldorf Grade 5 Botany

By Linda on August 12, 2010 in Botany, Grade 5, Homeschooling, South Africa, Waldorf

Erin has finished her second block of grade five Botany. In South Africa, our school years run from January to December, with holidays in between. We have both really enjoyed the Waldorf approach to Botany and learned so much. I thought I would share some of her drawings and activities that she did as well as books that we used for the block.

Erin has been drawing flowers that are indigenous to South Africa, this is our national flower, the Protea.

Another indigenous flower, the Strelitzia.

We have read all about the wonderful bees…

Studied the distinction between the lily and the rose.

Erin built a little terrarium, that is still a work in progress. She filled it with sand, moss, grasses and made a ladder and benches with toothpicks…

She is growing Mung beans, they have started to swell. It is so much easier growing beans up the side of a glass container instead of in a dish. This way you can see the progress of the growth and keep your plant from drying out too soon.

She has also picked flowers, leaves and grasses to make a Botanical picture, you can see Jenna’s here and we will also make some window transparencies as soon as the flowers have dried out.

These are the books that we used to put our blocks together:

The Living World of Plants by Dr Gerbert Grohmann
Botany by Live Education
Botany by Donna Simmons
Botany by Charles Kovacs (awesome)
Tree of Life by Rochelle Strauss

Giveaway Winner:

RoseMamie said…

Happy Anniversary..and OH how lovely it all is here!! I just found you, but am now a follower and so glad!

Congratulations Rose! Your knitted treasures will be on thier way to you soon:)
xo
Linda

Here…

By Linda on January 26, 2010 in Art, Chickens, Grade 5, Grade 6 Botany, Mineralogy

Chickens sun tanning…

We have been having so much rain here in Benoni at the moment, that we are experiencing floods in some areas. This photo was taken by my hubby this morning when he was on his mountain bike ride…

This is usually a little stream, now it is a raging river…

Discoveries in the garden…

Today we went for a long walk down to the lake and as we were walking home, we found some stranded tadpoles, we have brought them home and will release them to our pond when they are fully grown frogs…

Erin has been learning about the lily and the rose in her Botany study as the two archetypal plants, one with a strong root system and the other a bulb… These are her representations of each one…

Jenna is finishing off Mineralogy, this is her drawing of a volcano…

Jenna’s coloured pencil drawing of the life cycle of Limestone…

We have been enjoying our One Small Change and for this month, we have used oil lamps as often as we could at night and have really enjoyed this challenge. It has created the most peaceful atmosphere within our home and has really made an impact on our children about the use of electricity. We are discussing what our next challenge for February will be and I think we are all going to stop using shampo for the month of February and possibly thereafter. Instead of using shampo which flows down our drains and is quite full of harsh chemicals that ends up in our ground water and drainage systems, we will be washing out hair with Bicarbonate of Soda. I have used this before and it is wonderful for your hair and the environment too. I will post more about this tomorrow…

Homeschooling Grade 5, Botany

By Linda on January 21, 2010 in Botany, Grade 5

For the last 2 and a half weeks Erin has been enjoying her Botany block. It has been amazing and we have both learnt so much! I think we have enjoyed it so, because we are using a wonderful book by a writer called Charles Kovacs, his book is titled ‘Botany’ and is really worth having. We will be basing both of our botany blocks on this book. He is so descriptive in his words and explanations and as you read, it is like he is speaking directly to you. We are also using The Tree of Life a beautifully illustrated book about the different plant kingdoms etc…

We all went on a nature walk to see how many mushrooms, moss and lichens we could find. We did spot quite a few and we have been having so much rain lately, so our garden and surrounding areas are rich with beautiful mushrooms at the moment…

Aren’t these stunning, Erin spotted them the other day from our car window as we were driving down our street. Such a lovely specimen of fungus.

These are some specimens of different kinds of mosses and lichens, they are sprayed with water everyday and we will return them to the garden in the next few days. The moss is amazing, we have found so many different types, some are flat, others seem like tall forests, some even look as if they have flowers, but they are simply the green stalks, they are all so beautiful…

We have also learned about penicillin, who discovered it and what it is used for. We let mould grow on a piece of bread and studied it with a magnifying glass. We have gone in this order so far, the study of the plant and its parts, fungi, lichens, mosses, ferns and horsetails, and today we learned about conifers… We have also included form drawings incorporating leaf shapes and stems, I will post these sometime next week. For the last two weeks we have been memorising a poem about trees and also learning how to draw leaves and flowers with light and shade.

We are so enjoying this block, it is wonderful! If anyone is homeschooling with grades 2, 5 and 7 and blogs about it, please could you email me your blog address, we would so like to see your progress and ideas:)

Happy Thursday to all:)

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