In Which We Discuss Nebulae and the Life of Stars

We're not following a set curriculum for science this year. I might like to next year, but for this year, we're going it alone. And that's been fun. 

There's so much rich, free information in print and online, that I can't believe schools use textbooks. They're dry, boring, dull, monotonous, 

Oh. I digress.

We're rounding out the month of January by focusing on stars. Have you looked at pictures of the birth of stars? The birth of a star is so much prettier than the birth of a human. 

It's true. 

Look here. And here. 

And if you want to watch a really great video series on the Life and Death of Stars, I recommend this series (here is part one of five. They are all on YouTube): 

If you love They Might Be Giants like we do (What? They sing catchy songs!), you should watch this video. Three times. And then spend the rest of the day randomly blurting out a few bars. 

Since we're rather crafty in a no rules, do it our way only, kind of way, we decided to craft our own nebulae.

 Yes, I got in on the action, too. We blew through straws, added glitter and sequins. It was great fun. 

And now, we're going to go make whoopee pies, just for fun. I love homeschool being school-free. 

Engrossed in Space: Delight-Directed Science

Tuna playing a game at NASA's site. She played after watching a lovely video tour of the International Space Station. 

I love this chalkboard that I scored for FREE at an elementary school that was switching to white boards. Tuna's recording her data here. 

Organizing data into a lapbook. She's enjoying this much more than I thought she would. The lapbook was a freebie I found here. 

A recent acquisition: planets poster with tons of data. 

Her Space Encyclopedia, which she devours daily, provides plenty of data for her project. 

In her own words: "It was fun because I noticed the facts all over my poster. I got to do a project. We got to listen to that solar system song. Yeah, it was really fun today." I guess fun is the word of the day. 

The Solar System (and the education of Tuna begins)

Today was our first official day of school for 2013 and it got off to a stellar (pun definitely intended) start.

Lessons didn't take nearly as long as I anticipated, and I ended up dumping a couple of lessons that were just...dull.

We began the day with Unjournaling. Her prompt was to write a paragraph with at least ten words that rhyme with "be"... She wrote a paragraph of song lyrics about a girl and a bee out to sea. It wasn't beautiful, and it wasn't technically a real paragraph, but I'm not going to correct her morning journaling. That's for her, mostly.

We did math, which is just a reteaching of basic math skills that I feel like she somehow missed in public school. Mental math is our focus this week. She whizzed through the lesson.

Next, we began reading Paddle to the Sea. I am purposely going slowly with the story in order to hold her attention (plus, we're doing activities surrounding the chapters). We're reading three short chapters her week. We mapped Paddle's journey so far and did some spelling and vocabulary words going along with our reading.

After lunch came science: her favorite subject of all, and one that the public school system barely touches. Science will be largely delight-directed since it's her favorite area of study. I consulted her on what she'd like us to cover. She answered with astronomy, weather, plants, and anatomy. For now, we're studying astronomy. Her grandparents bought her a very nice telescope for Christmas, which is going to come in handy!

She loves project-based learning, so I am going to try to offer her constant projects to feed her busy mind. Here's a simple one we did today that she enjoyed. She made salt dough and created a solar system.

In her own words: "Well, today was amazing! I loved making the salt dough solar system. With the leftovers (dough), I made a volcano on an island with a turtle that was laying eggs. I really liked the math. It was nice and easier than usual, but it will get harder. And I really liked Paddle to the Sea. It was amazing."

Can't ask for more than that. :)