Bone Zone Field trip

For our co-op Fitness Fun class, we went to Minnetrista during their "Bone Zone" exhibit where we learned more about how our bones look and how to make them stronger.


A couple of ways to make our bones stronger - Vitamin D from the sun and calcium from milk. We can also lift weights.


Our bones also protect vital organs.


They made "bone models" with sponges for the inside and wrapped it in clay.

James Whitcomb Riley Childhood home

For our co-op Indiana History class, we talked about the "Hoosier Poet", James Whitcomb Riley. In class we read "When the Frost is on the Punkin'", "Little Orphant Annie" and a couple of others. Three years ago when I taught Indiana History, we visited Riley's childhood home in Greenfield and really enjoyed the field trip, so of course, we had to revisit. It was a beautiful day, the nicest day of the week, so we were able to eat our lunch at the park.

These flowers were made from Mrs. Riley and her daughters' hair!


James Whitcomb Riley's bed above and Little Orphant Annie's bed below:


What a good looking group of Indiana History students!

If you would like to see more pictures from his childhood home, you can read my previous post from 2008 when we visited before here.

Free Resources as a Supplement

I was talking to a friend today about how I use Homeschoolshare (HSS) as a supplement to Apologia Elementary Science curriculum. Several years ago, we went through the Flying Creatures of the Fifth Day, but did use any supplements to it. Apologia has the student notebook what they have learned for each chapter with some fun activity, and sometimes just answering review type questions. It was fine and the boys enjoyed learning about the animals, but the notebook was not very impressive. If I had it to do over again, I would add in some of the Animal Studies just to have some variety. The Flying Creatures text covers birds and insects and I see several that we could've done:
Owls
Hummingbirds
Ducks
Birds of Prey
Backyard Birds
Bats (Stellaluna)
Praying Mantis
Bees


Last year, we did Swimming Creatures of the Fifth Day and I discovered that there were several Animal Studies on HSS that helped to reinforce what we learned. For example, we generally spend 2 weeks reading about a particular chapter and notebooking on the last day of the reading the chapter. If there was a HSS study that goes with the chapter, we do it the next week - as a review. I wouldn't always use all the lapbook pieces that are available, but only the ones that had information we had learned about - or anything else that I thought was interesting. We glued them directly into our spiral bound 1 subject notebooks that they used for the notebooking activities in the Apologia book. Here are some of the Animal Studies we used for Swimming Creatures:

Whales and Dolphins:


Along with the Seals and Sea Lions chapter, they touched on Manatees:


Sea Turtles:
Sharks:
When studying Mollusks, we chose the Squid pieces and took some Octopus pieces from Nico's Octopus Unit:


Jellyfish:

There is also the Night of the Moonjellies Unit that could be done with this one.

There are others on HSS that could be go-alongs with the Swimming Creatures textbook, but we only chose these.
Coral Reefs
Seastars
And more.

This year we are doing Land Animals of the Sixth Day. I see many Animal Studies that would be go alongs for this book also, although I don't know yet which ones we will do. If you would like to see some of these, you'll have to keep watch on this blog. But here are a few I see:
Raccoons
Wolf
Wild Dogs
Tigers
Lions
Cheetah
Elephants
Marsupials
Of course there are others, and more being added.

Other Apologia science curricula offered for Elementary students are:
Astronomy - Go alongs are listed on the Connections - Outer Space page
Botany - Go alongs are listed on the Connections - Plants page
Anatomy - Two free lapbooks are My Body and Human Body (although the first might be more for the younger crowd.)

We have done Astronomy, again, without anything from HSS. Botany is on the agenda for next year and Anatomy the next year, so we have not used anything from HSS to go along with these as of yet.

If you can't beat 'em, join 'em...

My boys are obsessed by football right now. I might send them to do their math or reading independently, then go do the dishes, laundry or other chore and then next time I turn around they are outside playing football...or playing Madden on the Wii...or playing football in the house (with a balloon)...or looking at their football cards...or playing some football game on facebook...or checking Fantasy Football... You get the pictures. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy football season. I like to watch the games on Sunday and Monday (if we get the channel.) But this is ALL day, EVERY day! So, I decided for school, I would pull out Amanda Bennett's Football Frenzy for a unit study. We are taking it really slow and in-depth. They are LOVING it! Even my 4th grader, who hates to write, doesn't mind writing about football. It's amazing how I don't get the complaints!

For example, the first day is scheduled to look at some videos, talk about the object of the game (which I had them write in their notebooks), look at the defensive line, offensive line, special teams and penalties. We looked and wrote about each position and wrote down 12 of the most common penalties - understood what each one was and wrote down the yardage penalty for each. We have taken 2 days so far to do just these things. Also on the first day, we are to talk about scoring, the quarterback's job, find out what NFL stands for and fill out team profiles for 6 teams (including their hometown, their stadium, the head coach and what year the team was founded.) I'm thinking we could do all this in one more day, but we might take 2. So each "day" will take us 3 -4 days each.

Another obsession they are having right now is Toby Mac. I'm not sure I'm ready for a unit study on him!!

Auburn Car Museum

What a wonderful field trip we had the Auburn Cord Duesenberg Museum today! There are so many pictures to share with you.
It began with this wonderful slide welcoming our group to the museum. This is the first time we have had our name on a slide to welcome us.
After explaining a little history about the development of the cars and the inventors, this slide shows the first Auburn produced to the last car produced at the Auburn factory.



Sometimes when someone thinks something is really great, they'll say "It's a Duesy." Did you know that phrase refers the Duesenberg because that was a really great car? We learned something today! (Well, we learned much more than that!)

After the slideshow presentation, each child was given a photo scavenger hunt booklet of 10 cars to find in their museum. They were to write down the year and make of each car. The kids had so much fun exploring the rather large museum. Every time you turned a corner, there was another room. There were so many more cars there than I expected to see. What a great learning experience for the kids.

Throughout the museum, there are signs warning you not to touch the cars. Finally, they get to a car that invited you to sit in the car and feel free to touch!

So, now on to some of the cars we saw:

1926 Model A Duesenberg
This car orginally cost $8,300 when a new Dodge Roadster cost only $855 and a new home would've cost $3,500. There were only a little more than 600 of this model produced. This car originally belonged to the mayor of San Francisco.

1930 Cord L - 29
The cost of this car was $3,195. This was the first mass produced front wheel drive American car.

1932 Auburn 12-160A Coupe
Powered with a Lycoming V-12 that produces 160 horsepower, this car cost $1,545 then dropped to $1,105.

There were other cars on display besides the Auburn, Cord or Duesenbergs:

1929 Lincoln L Brunn Brougham Towncar
There were only 58 of the Brunn Brougham Towncars produced between 1929-30. This car cost $7,200, but you could get a basic Ford at this time for $450.
This particular car was ordered new by Joseph Madden of Omaha, Nebraska for his wife. They owned a dry goods store that was later sold to J.C. Penney. This car was shipped to Florida for their winter use and shipped back to Nebraska when they returned. They sold the car and during WW2 when rationing began, it was put into storage. It changed hands again in 1972 and had a complete restoration. This car now only has 12,000 original road miles on it!

1910 Zimmerman Runabout
This car only cost $840 in 1910. It was owned by John Zimmerman who was company president and later a purchasing agent for Auburn Automobile Company.

This car was E.L. Cord's personal automobile - a 1937 Cord 812.

This car was Frank Lloyd Wright's personal car - 1929 Cord L-29

There was a Haynes - Apperson section of the museum also. Elwood Haynes, from Kokomo, joined with the Apperson brothers to produce automobiles in Kokomo - the factory later became Haynes-Stellite.
This was Edgar Apperson's personal car - 1920 Apperson Model 820. This car sold new for $2,950.

1901 Haynes - Apperson Model A Motor Carriage
The original price was $1,500. This is an extremely rare model.

1900 Eckhart
The Eckhart Carriage Company began on 7th Street in Auburn, Indiana and was incorporated in 1885. Two years later, Frank Eckhart went on the road selling to wholesalers in the midwest states. As the business grew, the Auburn Automobile Company began to take shape.

1904 Auburn
This is the oldest Auburn known to exist.

1930 Auburn 8-125 Sports Sedan
This car may be the ONLY one of it's model left to survive.

1957 Chevrolet

1956 Ford Thunderbird

This is also a Ford Thunderbird (sorry, I don't know the year). My first car was a Ford Thunderbird, but mine looked VERY different from either of these cars!

I had the boys each choose their favorite car. Nicolas's was the one you could sit in:

And Alex's was a 1999 Plymouth Prowler:

The base price for the Prowler is a mere $40,000. (Yep, my son has expensive taste.)