Renaissance study

Along with the book Clown of God, we did an in-depth study of the renaissance period and specifically, Leonardo da Vinci.  We read Leonardo's Horse by Jean Fritz and the Magic Tree House Research Guide for Monday with a Mad Genius as a part of this study.  Most of the material came from homeschoolshare, but some came from a free lapbook I had downloaded to my hard drive.

We first discussed when the Renaissance period was and what it meant.  We talked about the architecture, food and clothing of that time.  Then we talked about some of the artists of that time.  This led into a detailed study of da Vinci.  As we studied him, we discovered that he was more than a great artist - he was also an architect, a scientist and an inventor.  We looked at 4 of his paintings and analyzed them.  Here are pictures of the final result:

Other Renaissance period inventions were the clock, glasses, telescope/microsope and the printing press.

The Renaissance period began in Italy.

Da Vinci was left handed and wrote backwards so that he wouldn't smear his writing in his notebooks.
Other artists of that time were Raphael, Michelangelo and Verrocchio.

The boys kept their own art gallery to go along with our study of da Vinci's works of art.  The following are the portraits they drew after studying Mona Lisa.

After looking at the Annunciation, they were to draw a picture that portrayed some kind of emotion/feeling:

After looking at the Last Supper, they were draw their own landscape or perspective picture.

We compared two painting of Virgin on the Rocks.  One version is in Paris, France and the other is in London, England.  The two paintings are similar, but there are differences.  Here are the things Alex noticed that was different between the two:

Simple Machines

We read the book The Very Last First Time for co-op last week.  In the book, the girl uses a stick to pry up mussels from the sea floor.  This is a simple machine called a lever.  I had Alex study simple machines.  He learned the difference between a simple machine (one that uses human effort to work) and a complex machine (one that uses artificial power to work.)  After he read about the simple machine and understood it, I had him look in a book that lists experiments for each.  He was to do the experiment with Nicolas in order to explain the concept to him.  He learned about the following simple machines and examples of each, along with the experiment that went along with it.

inclined plane (a ramp or a slide)

A raw egg dropped from the height of the can onto the plate broke.  (Actually it fell to the floor and broke on my rug, so we had to do a little laundry.)  But an egg rolled down an inclined plane from the same height did not break because there is less force.

a lever (shovel or a see saw)

The stool with Nicolas on it was hard to lift by hand, but when using a broomstick and chair as the fulcrum point, it was easier to lift.  This is because he was using his weight to push down in order to lift the stool rather than using his strength against gravity to lift the stool on his own power.

pulleys (on a crane)

We made our own pulley using an empty spool of thread and ribbon.  The pulley reverses the effort so that we need to pull down on the ribbon to lift up the bucket.

wedges (an axe or a nail)

For wedges, the boys cut wedges out of carrots and stuck them into an apple.  They discovered that it is easier to push carrots in when they have the point at the end than when the edges of the carrots are rounded.

screws (self explanatory)
wheels and axles (also self explanatory)

We did not do experiments for these two types because they are so common.

Here is the lapbook he created:

Characteristics of a simple machine.

This is a machine Alex invented that uses several simple machines - the lever to move the axes, wheels and axles to move from tree to tree and in the steering wheel and wedges to cut down trees.

Penguins

We have been reading Mr. Popper's Penguins for our read aloud.  Since I had Alex working on Simple Machines this week, I decided to have Nicolas work on Penguins.  Here is the lapbook he created.

Map showing where penguins live.

Pop-up penguin book.  We wrote interesting facts about penguins.

And finally, Nicolas used drawing instructions to create his cover....

And when I told him he was going to draw a penguin for his cover, he said, "What?  I can't draw a penguin!"  But, you know, he CAN draw a penguin because I think this one looks pretty good!

Human Body - Day 11

Digestion and taste.

We finished up our lapbook of the human body today.  We talked about how our food gets broken down in our mouth by our teeth and saliva, then goes to the stomach for further break down.  Then we followed the path through the small and large intestines and out of the body.

Large version for our wall.  And a small version for our lapbooks.

We continued our discussion of the 5 senses with taste.  We looked at our taste buds and where our tongue tastes bitter, salty, sour and sweet.

Interesting facts about digestion.

You can only see the reflection of the pencil markings, what we labeled on the tongue.  In the back is the bitter, then on the sides beginning in the middle is the sour then the salty in front of that.  The sweet is in the very front tip.

We read a scholastic book about Healthy Eating and talked about the food pyramid.  I found this food pyramid online that we printed on cardstock, put it together and filled it with a healthy snack (Honey Nut Cheerios.)

They had the back side of the last page blank and we were done with what I had planned, so I decided to have them copy the first part of Jeremiah 1:5 for the final page.  I think it summed up the entire study well.  "Before I formed you in your mother's body, I chose you.  Before you were born I set you apart to serve Me." (New International Reader's Version)

(Sorry the pictures are hard to see, pencil doesn't photgraph well with my camera.)

And finally, the cover:

I did not have a unit study planned for next week, and even though our lapbooks are done, I still have a few things from the library that we have not had a chance to look at.  So, next week we will be finishing up the study with 2 books - Living with Blindness and Living with Deafness.  I also have a DVD I checked out that talks a little about cells and genetics.  We won't watch the entire thing but will hit these 2 topics. 

So our Human Body unit study will end up being 12 days long.  We didn't go into much detail with anything.  There is so much more in Blood and Guts that they could learn.  Then next time it gets pulled out will probably be for individual study later in their studies.

Thanks for following our journey. 

Human Body - Day 10

Hearing.  It's amazing how sounds passes through the ear canal to the eardrum to the 3 small bones to the cochlea and how our brains can translate that vibration into words or sounds.  We didn't do any experiments with hearing today, but here are the books we added to our lapbook.

Can You Hear Me Now? states amazing facts about our ears.  We read in the Usborne book what decibals different sounds are.  Then we made this accordion book showing the different parts of the ear.

I wanted to make sure we had covered all 5 senses in this study (skin-touch, eyes-sight, ears-hearing).  I didn't have anything planned for smell.  There isn't much to study about the nose except that there are smell receptors that send messages to the brain about what we smell.  I did, however, find an experiment to try about how our tastes are affected by our smell.  I cut into small pieces some potato and some apple.  The boys plugged their noses and tasted the potato.  Because the texture is about the same in both, they shouldn't have been able to tell the difference between the two.  (I tried it before they did, and I could taste the difference, but decided to let them try it anyway.)  They both made a face and exclaimed "What is this?!?"  Then I let them try the apple.  That also they could taste, but it left a better taste in their mouth.  :)

We went ahead and started the taste sense today with a study of teeth.