New Sylvan Dell Book, Free Trial eBook Access

Sylvan Dell Publishing has 5 wonderful new titles coming out this fall, including Count Down to Fall by Fran Hawk, illustrated by Sherry Neidigh.

The book is written in short verses surrounded by a two-page spread of beautiful autumn scenes. It focuses on tree leaves, both their shapes as well as their autumn colors. This is a great early elementary book for a tree study, and, like other Sylvan Dell books, includes activities involving tree leaves as well as plants in general.

If you think this or any other Sylvan Dell books look good, like I do, you can check them all out for free for the next 90 days. Check out Sara Dobie's blog for the press release and the link. You can open and flip through all the pages of all their books. You can even have automatic page-turning with accompanying audio. It is a great opportunity to check out Sylvan Dell's wonderful line of science and math books.

The Eclipse in China

If you have not visited Jimmie's new web site, Jimmie's Collage, then you should check it out.

She's a homeschooling mom living in China so she got a great view of the eclipse. She has a fabulous blog entry about it here.

I Guess Education Is an Atmosphere...

...at least when it comes to science at our house. Here are the boys spontaneously role playing together. Ds#1 and Ds#2 are surgeons--see, they have their masks on. They are cardiac surgeons, specifically, performing an open heart on Ds#3. They even fully draped the patient so that only the critical area is in the work window (I have no idea where they picked that up!)

I understand the patient did well.

Molecularium interactive

I recently came across this interesting interactive, called the Molecularium, that is a great way to introduce kids to molecular structure and chemical notation.

When you follow the link you will want to click on the nanolab, the top button on the right, and then select the Build option.

Using 3 atoms--oxygen, carbon, and hydrogen--kids construct a series of common molecules. Mel, the computer, then gives a few facts about what they have made. Kids work their way through 3 levels plus a bonus round.

The Zoom activity views the earth at different distances, while the Transform activity shows water as a solid, liquid, and gas as the temperature changes, so there's not a lot to them. The home site showcases Digital Dome movies (shown in a planetarium) the project is producing.

Wow--Free NASA Webinar for Homeschoolers

Homeschool Connections has announced an incredible free science webinar with NASA engineer Domenico Ruggiero. Here are the details from the Unity of Truth blog.

Register for the July 29 event at One Small Step for Parents, One Giant Leap for Homeschool Kids: Insights from a NASA Engineer

I am certainly looking forward to this one!

Science Saturday Challenge #11

More About Cohesion and Adhesion

I found so many experiments about the topic I created an entire webinar with a whole series of experiments including the two from challenge #9.

You can view the webinar for free anytime.

I found a lot of my material in Super Science Concoctions--a great book to have on your homeschool shelf!

Courses and Webinars Listing

I teach live online human anatomy and physiology classes for high school homeschoolers through Walter Crawford and Maureen Wittmann's company, Homeschool Connections.

I teach classes every fall and spring. If the online live schedule does not fit your schedule, you can also purchase a subscription service that gives you access to all recorded courses.

I have the following courses available:

• Blood in Sickness and in Health
• The Immune System in Sickness and in Health

I hope to have one or even two additional courses ready for the 2010-2011 year. Go to Homeschool Connections and click on the Courses tab to see the upcoming schedule. Besides my science courses, Homeschool Connections offers an extensive and growing list of short courses in literature, history, theology, government, economics, and more, all taught from an authentic Catholic persective. They also have free live and recorded webinars for homechooling parents.

Lesson Planning Web Resources

I've started my lesson planning for next year, so I dusted off some of web sites I find most useful for finding educational material. I find all sorts of lesson plans, animations, interactive sites, video clips, and more through these sites.

I list them all in this post from my homeschool blog Science of Relations.

Happy planning!