Learning about the Six Kingdoms of Life

One thing I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE about Montessori education is the "cosmic" approach which teaches children to see the big picture.  Since I've decided to incorporate more Montessori principles into our homeschool, I have looked extensively at the free online Montessori Biology albums to decide how to teach about scientific classification of living things.  After studying the recommended sequence of presenting these concepts, I purchased the Six Kingdom Chart from Montessori For Everyone (I have a feeling Lori at MFE is going to get LOTS of business from me in the near future.  Her materials are so beautifully done!)  I also purchased the Six Kingdom Nomenclature Cards.

I presented the chart to both of my boys (although my oldest son was somewhat familiar with it from his first and second grade years at a private Montessori school) and they each recorded the six kingdoms in their science notebooks.  My older son used some of the cards from the chart set to write a bit more information about each kingdom, but I just had my first grader list the six kingdoms.  After all, I'm pretty sure no public school first graders are learning about the six kingdoms of life!!  Interestingly, Lori has recently modified her charts to include a sixth kingdom.  Apparently for a long time (and in the online Montessori album), scientists had been using only five kingdoms.

I had done a Google search about "six kingdoms" to learn more and came across a fabulous online resource called BrainPOP.  We are currently doing a free trial of it, but I may end up subscribing.  I found a video on the BrainPOP website that explains about the six kingdoms.  It also has separate videos (and correlating quizzes and activities) for bacteria, protists, fungi, plants and animals.  Pretty awesome!

The day after I introduced the six kingdoms with the chart, I had the boys watch the BrainPOP Six Kingdoms video and also the Bacteria video.  Then they recorded some info in their science notebooks.  We also played a VERY cool game on BrainPOP which required us to create our own bacteria, choose a virtual "host" to infect, and allowed us to "spray" our bacteria on various places in the hosts home so we could ensure contamination.  It was hands-on learning at its best!

The Six Kingdom Nomenclature cards are shown below. (Two of them, anyway!)

 Six Kingdoms Chart..........

Fourth grader's notebook page of the Six Kingdoms.

First grader's notebook page of the Six Kingdoms.

Apparently fuzzy photo of first grader's notebook page about Bacteria (with some help from mom on the written info.)

First Grade Reading: Jellyfish Study

 I wanted to share some more about my first grader's reading program.  A few weeks ago I printed off the book Gaggle, Herd and Murder from Reading A-Z for him to read.  He really likes to learn about animals and I knew he would enjoy this book about the names for various groups of animals.  After he read it a few times, I had him choose one of the animals from the book to research.  He chose jellyfish.  In the photo above you can see the printed book and the cover of the lapbook we made about jellyfish.  In the photo below you can see a photo of the page from Gaggle, Herd and Murder that was about jellyfish.

The rest of the photos are of some of the various lapbook components.  All the lapbook pieces are from Homeschoolshare.  We checked out some books about jellyfish from the library and used that information to fill in the mini-books.  This project took us about a week to complete with my little guy writing on 2-3 mini-books each day.  This was a great way to incorporate reading, writing, and science all into one activity.  I think more lapbooks are in our future for sure.  He was proud to show his finished book off to his grandmas.

Real Science Odyssey: Chemistry

I wrote a few posts back about purchasing the RSO Chemistry ebook from Pandia Press for our science curriculum.  Their ebooks are currently on sale through the end of September.  I ended up buying the Level One Life Science curriculum too.  I just love how their curriculum is set up and I am loving the ebook format.  I can easily print off only what we need and multiple copies of the lab pages for both boys.  For now we are doing science twice per week.  I teach it on Wednesday mornings and my husband (the one with the PhD in science and who is a college science professor) teaches on Thursday mornings.  While he is better qualified to answer questions than I am, I'm really excited that I get to teach part of this great curriculum to the boys.

On Wednesday we did a fun lab to discover how small atoms are.  First I read the "for my notebook" pages to the boys.  These are pages that explain the concepts in kid-friendly, attention-grabbing language.  We learned that a 2 mm dash like this "__" contains 40 million atoms.  Isn't that amazing?  For the lab, we smelled some uninflated rubber balloons and examined them closely with a magnifying glass to be sure there were no holes.  Then (with the boys in the other room), I put a small amount of water in one, some cinnamon in one, some almond extract in one, and some lemon extract in another.  I then inflated the balloons and numbered them.  They boys smelled the balloons to try and guess what each contained.  The gist of the lesson is that atoms are so small that the "scent" atoms from the cinnamon and extracts were able to "squeeze" between the atoms of the balloon so we could smell them. Pretty amazing when you think about it.  I just love how hands-on and fun the labs are.  Hubs gets to do one on Thursday morning which explores how atoms move.  I'll try to remember to get photos.  Here's one photo of the balloon lab that I managed to take.

One more thing before I forget.............I keep pretty close tabs on the stats for this blog.  If you like what you're reading here and don't want to have to remember to keep checking, please consider signing up for an email subscription.  You can do so using the link in the right sidebar.  It's FREE and that way you'll get updates via email each time I post.  Just a tip for those of you who don't use Google Reader to keep track of your blog reading.

So here's the deal..........

In THIS POST I explained that I have been considering making some changes to our program for this year.  I've now made those changes and I feel SO MUCH BETTER about what we're doing!!  I promised to explain what I'd decided, so I'll do that now.

Our major change is that I've decided to put aside A World of Adventure for a few years until both of my boys fall into the age range that is intended for which is 4th through 8th grade.  I was having a hard time with the difficulty of the literature selections even for my oldest son.  And it was also really hard for me to keep my youngest son involved.  The publisher does offer a companion curriculum for adapting it for younger students.  Still, I feel sure that the direction we have chosen to take is best for us this year.  I want to restate that I do think AWOA is a really great curriculum.  We were not unhappy with it; it just wasn't a good fit for us at this time.

For my oldest son's literature I am going to let him choose which chapter books we'll read.  Now we are working on The Cricket in Time Square.  I'll write a whole post on our work with that book once we've finished.  I love this book so much and am so glad he chose it.  George Seldin's writing and characters remind me a lot of E.B. White who I also love as an author.

For language arts we are adding in Easy Grammar (4th and 5th grade level).  We've just barely started this.  I had managed to get a copy for a great price at a used curriculum sale this summer.  I am also considering Winning with Writing for a writing curriculum for him.  It is very reasonably priced and looks really good.

For history we are going to use The Story of the World.  I already had Volume 1 and the Activity Guide and was originally planning to use it before I chose AWOA instead.  We have done the first chapter this week and are LOVING it!!!  I will be posting more about it soon.  With all the references in the AG I'm easily able to add extra reading and writing for my 4th grader to amp up the challenge for him.  I'm SO excited about this!

Another change I'm really excited about is that this week (tomorrow) we'll be starting a new science curriculum.  Again, I had originally wanted to use Real Science Odyssey from Pandia Press for science.  Then I chose AWOA and decided not to order.  Through the end of September Pandia Press is offering a discount on their ebooks and I jumped on it and ordered the Chemistry curriculum.  It is intended for Grades 2-5, but the labs are hands-on and the text is written just right for children so I think my first grader will do fine with a bit of help on some of the lab sheets.  My husband (who has a PhD in science) teaches science to the boys on Thursday mornings while I teach Kindermusik in our home studio.  He'll do one lab with them a week and I'll do one.  I have to admit that I'm so excited about this curriculum that I'm a bit disappointed I don't get to do it all.  Admittedly, he's way more qualified than me to answer their questions!!

I can't tell you  how much better I feel now.  When I made my curriculum decisions last spring as a new homeschooler I really wanted something I could open to tell me what to do each day, especially for my oldest.  Even though I'm a certified, licensed teacher and have taught for 20 years, this made me feel better.  What I should have know is that even when I taught in public and private school settings, I ALWAYS had to tweak everything and add in lots of my own activities and ideas.  It's just the way I love to teach.  The changes I've made much better reflect how I love to plan and teach.  So it's all good.  Can't wait to post more soon!