Whoooooooo's Still Here?

We had a wonderful last day of our homeschool session today. The theme was “Whooo’s Still Here?” and we learned all about owls and other birds that stay here for winter. We began the day with a few favorite games, Colored Eggs and Fishy Fishy Cross My Ocean.

Then we came inside and did a high five greeting. We discussed our password, raptor, which means a hunting bird that uses its talons to catch its prey. Homeschoolers knew a lot about raptors already, and could name many: eagles, owls, hawks, falcons, and (maybe) turkey vultures. We looked at some owl mounts to learn about our local owls: great horned owl, northern saw-whet owl, eastern screech owl, barred owl and snowy owl. We practiced their calls – the great horned owl hoots with this rhythm: “Who’s awake, me, too” and the barred owl hoots: “Who cooks for you? Who cooks for you all?” Homeschoolers recognized these hoots right away as some they’d heard in their yards before.

Then it was time to eat snack and convert the classroom into a museum. Homeschoolers did a fantastic job. Then we went on our outdoor adventure, running through the woods and arriving at Bramble Hill Farm, where we looked for frogs, praying mantis eggs, and cattail seeds! We saw a total of 8 frogs (on December 6^th! Can you believe it?) and two praying mantis egg cases! We saw one faraway raptor but could not identify it.

We came back to the Hitchcock Center to eat lunch and work on the last pages of our journals.  A little more setting up the classroom and soon it was time for the parents to arrive. Kids did a fabulous job teaching our passwords from our session to the families.

    Many thanks to Anne Mileski and Carole Lynch, our parent helpers this session! Thank you to Skye Belle Pryzstas for picking up our cider today!

Don’t forget: Registration is open to current homeschool families this week only!  We open it up to the public next week. See you in January!

Cozy and Warm

Hello!  Whew, another whirlwind of a day here at homeschool. Our second to last class! Our morning game was fishy fishy cross my ocean. Always a favorite! Today’s greeting was a choice between a pound (touching fists), a high five, or a silly animal, like a snail or turkey. (See photo!)

Then we reviewed what our passwords have been all session. Impressively, kids remembered difficult words like curcubitaceae, and long-ago words like harvest (way back in September). Parents, prepare to learn all about the passwords next time at our last class! 

Kids then shared home projects. They had been doing lots of thinking in the last week about how they stay warm in the winter (everything from “migrating” to California to generating heat by eating pumpkin seeds!).

We read the morning message and introduced the theme of the day: Cozy and Warm. The password is insulation. We discussed what insulation is and demonstrated by doing an experiment. Kids picked what material they wanted to insulate with and each pair was given a jar to insulate. Then we took the temperature of boiled water – about 188° - and poured it into the jars. We insulated our jars the best we could, and left one without insulation to be our control. Then, since the weather was so warm outside, we decided to put the jars in the freezer to test how well we insulated the jars. We recorded all our information on our insulation sheets.

Then everyone got a turn to try on the "blubber gloves" and put their hands in ice water. On one hand was just a plastic baggie. On the other was a "glove" of plastic baggies with Crisco (pretend animal fat) inside. Which one was better insulated?

After a quick snack, we went outside for our adventure. We marched to Larch Hill, where we were given a challenge: build the most insulated shelter you can using materials from the forest. Everyone built something really different and did a great job. One was expertly camouflaged. One had fun details like a slide for fairies. And one was big enough to fit several homeschoolers! 

When we were done with our challenge we headed back to the Hitchcock Center by way of the farm. We were looking for a red-tailed hawk that we had startled from her roost, but we couldn’t find her again. (I think it was a female because she was so big!) We played in the cattails and made sure the praying mantis egg case was still there, and then we had to be on our way.

We ate lunch and then checked our jars in the freezer. The results were interesting! Some you could tell the difference in temperature just by touching. Some had leaked, with water frozen to the material. Everyone had a chance to record the temperature of their jars, and to compare their results with their prediction. See our results in the photo.

Next, some of us worked on journals while others did our craft for the day: an insulating snake for drafty doorways. We filled tubes of material with sand, beans and rice and then hot glued eyes and tongues on. They came out awesome! A huge thank you to Carole and Betsy for helping out.

We are looking forward to seeing you all at 1:30 next time for a special homeschool museum-style display of all we’ve been working on this session. See you there!