Earth sciences

I'm calling this lesson block Earth Sciences because we departed from the more traditional Waldorf focus on only mineralogy and spent 5 weeks covering a much broader spectrum of geography and geology.  When I came across Carrie's lesson ideas (The Parenting Passageway.com), I knew this was how I wanted to approach it.  I will not go into much depth about what our lessons were because I basically followed most of what Carrie did with only a few alterations.  I loved the tie-in with last year's botany, and I loved being able to the put two weeks of mineralogy we did at the very end in the context of geology and geography.

I will only post photos of some of our activities and some of Dallin's work.

Observing a habitat.

Plant germination observation. 

 All three kids had loads of fun with this.  We put Dallin's seeds in the warm sunlight, Sariah's in the fridge, and Preston's in the dark under a box and compared what happened.

Biome Map of North America with map key.

A field trip was in order.  We went to a nearby geological formation.  Rocks like this are very unusual here in our part of the country, as opposed to Utah where we used to live, where cool rocks pretty much define the state.

See Dallin and Sariah on top of the rocks?

And Dallin climbing?

Dallin is hanging his feet down a 20+ foot drop.  He proclaimed this "our best field trip EVER".

 
Main lesson book page on volcanoes.

And of course, the obligatory clay volcano that erupts.  Everybody made their own, and this was one of our funnest homeschool days ever.

Forming sedimentary "rock" with graham crackers and peanut butter.

Forming metamorphic "rock" from different colored taffies.

A beautiful main lesson book page on the three types of rock.  I discovered a secret with Dallin, aka "Mr. Competitive".  I downloaded a bunch of pictures of other students' work, gave him 3-5 of those samples, and told him to get some inspiration and create his own page.  I was afraid he would copy.  He did not.  No, he was determined to make a better and cooler page than those he saw.  It was great!  He happily workerd hard and produced some really nice work, and I got to stay out of the way.

We burned coal.  This picture did not capture it, but when you put tiny coal "crumbs" in the candle flame, they spark.  Definitely combustible!  I unfortunately had to pay out the nose for the coal and oil samples I got, since the one website that offers them free for education purposes was backordered for several months.  I felt it was important to learn about coal, oil, and natural gas since they are such a big part of the economy in the area where we live.

We ended the block with a field trip to a not-too-far-away cave, a cave that is underwater.  The tours are done by boat.  The kids had a blast and Dallin especially was enthralled with the whole thing, though totally annoyed by the family sitting next to us whose toddler screamed the entire trip so Dallin couldn't hear the tour guide.

This wasn't the coolest cave I've ever been in, but it was pretty nice, especially when they lit up some of the formations.  We tried to grow our own stalactites and stalagmites at home, but it wasn't especially successful.

The back entrance to the cave.

Last, but not least, Dallin's effort at veil painting a cave.  I think it turned out quite nice, even though he and I both burned out after about the fifth day of painting, but before we put on the last finishing touches.

I didn't have a lot of resources to put this block together other than Carrie's basic outline of what she did.  I ended up turning a lot to mainstream resources, and we did a lot of experiments that I found online.  Some worked, some didn't.  We grew crystals, we made different types of rock with food, we checked out rock and mineral samples.  I tried to make it as hands on as I could in order to have it not be dull.  I think he enjoyed it, but it was a great deal of work for me.  I am saving everything I did and found for when Sariah is this age.  Now, I am more than happy to relax and do nothing but read and create art during our first Roman history block!