We completed the first two weeks of data recording. From the beginning until the spring equinox, all you need to do is record sunrise and sunset data, calculate the photoperiod (amount of daylight), and graph the data. Photoperiod reveals the latitude of the mystery classes since it is different for every latitude yet constant along that latitude around the globe. This gives you several weeks to explore related concepts.
Week 1 we investigated globes, maps, and the longitude and latitude lines on them. This information is readily available in most atlases. The
National Geographic Xpeditions site has a lot of great information and related activities. I printed a copy of the
world map for each student and gave them coordinates to mark to show how longitude and latitude gives you a global location. I assigned the program
Globes and Their Uses on Discovery Streaming. We also learned about dividing a circle into 360 degrees as part of this lesson. We used the
diagrams from the program to illustrate.
Week 2 we investigated the
Reasons for the Seasons, watching the video of the same name on Discovery Streaming, and reading
the Let's Read and Find Out book. There's a nice interactive on
Teacher's Domain, too. They figured out why classes 3 and 8 (both of which Ds#2 has) have photoperiods of 0 and 24 respectively and near the equator is 12 hours. From that they learned that photoperiod indicated latitude, that north of the equator the photoperiod was increasing, and south of the equator it was decreasing. I even caught two math errors in photoperiod because the trend didn't fit that pattern. And now that we have a line drawn on our graph, the overall pattern makes sense to them.
Love2Learn.net, as the web site says, is a place to find "favorite resources for Catholic homeschoolers and others who 'love to learn.'" I heartily agree, and I am honored to announce that I am now a contributor to the site. In fact, I posted a review for the book, Little Black Ant on Park Street by Janet Halfmann. You can read the review on Love2Learn here.
If you live anywhere near Cambridge, MA, the Edgerton Center at MIT offers several free LEGO kit science classes. I arranged for our homeschool support group to participate in the Car Rally class because that one allows for the broadest range of ages. Two other moms and I brought in 14 kids; Dh personally escorted us directly to the Center. Here they are heading towards the Infinite Corridor.
Kids were broken up into groups of two and given Lego kits with which they built cars. In order to earn points, they first had to put the cars on a tilt board; the higher the board could be tilted without the car falling off, the more points you got.
lunch break. Since we all left our lunches in the vehicles we went for 2.5 hours straight through. Only the youngest two showed any signs of wear; the rest we had to almost wrestle parts from their hands!
-:|:-In His Grip-:|:- Loni from Hearts-In-Training gave this wonderful award to me--thank you so much for the honor!
We completed the first two weeks of data recording. From the beginning until the spring equinox, all you need to do is record sunrise and sunset data, calculate the photoperiod (amount of daylight), and graph the data. Photoperiod reveals the latitude of the mystery classes since it is different for every latitude yet constant along that latitude around the globe. This gives you several weeks to explore related concepts.