How we homeschooled today #5

Venom, atoms, and baby robins

• Rainy trip to the playground in our waterproof trousers, including some mental maths when they wanted to know how many squares in the table tennis net

• Several more episodes of Greeking Out including Egyptian and Norse myths

• Seven year old built a model of a formic acid molecule using the very cool molymods that came in her Curiosity Box. Formic acid is what ants sting with.

• Finished Bringing Back the Wolves (and started it again)

• At lunch we played Guess My Number (1-20, is it odd? Is it in the 3x table? etc. I wrote 1-20 on a bit of paper so they could see all the answers we eliminated with each question.)

• Puffin Rock

• Seven year old conducted another Curiosity Box experiment to show what snake venom does to blood. It prompted a brilliant discussion about why you wouldn’t want your blood to be thick and clumpy, why you wouldn’t care where the anti-venom injection went and so on.

• Observed the baby bird again when he made a return visit, and deduced that its parents must be the two very noisy robins who were hovering anxiously nearby. Went to buy some mealworms to help out the robin family.

• Lots of time playing with friends in the garden

• At tea we discussed atoms, elements, and molecules. I told them about carbon, oxygen and hydrogen (which make up formic acid) using these great element infographics. We also discussed the carbon cycle and looked at It’s Elementary! which showed us how carbon atoms can be arranged differently to make different substances like diamond or graphite.

  

• Aesop’s Fables and Stuart Little for bedtime stories, and more Aesop and Usborne Greek myths before lights out.

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