Chick Study Day Three

We finished the last two lessons about chicken from Handbook of Nature Study by Anna Botsford Comstock:

Lesson 6: Feet

-The functions of feet

-Chicken are fast runners (didn't know that!)

-Compare chicken's feet with duck's feet.

Lesson 7: Chicken ways

- Chicken communicate through different way of clucking, cheeping, peeping, etc - Never realized that! I thought they just keep clucking away without reason instead different way of clucking has different meaning!

Besides using the handbook, I also found some interesting things from the net and I decided to make them into part of our Chicken study. Today, we look at some of the different breeds of chicken - there are over 100 breeds! 

We also study a little bit about egg today, we will continue this the next lesson and that led me to my GREAT DISCOVERY- I discovered yesterday through internet researching, hen doesn't need rooster to have eggs! It is just that the egg she has without a rooster is unfertilized egg and will never hatched!!!! Eggs that we buy from stores are mostly unfertilized eggs! I never know that! And almost everyone I talked to, never knew that either! 

We put some of these info in a page:

Inside the little yellow chick ("Growing Up") we include the following info:

- Chick grow a comb at about 3 weeks old, in other words, Chicka Chicka and Boom Boom are not yet 3 weeks old;

-Chick usually considered fully grown by 6 months old;

- Hen starts laying egg at about 18-20 weeks old;

-She lays 1 egg at a time

-She can lay egg every 24-26 hours.

I also printed out 4 short stories about chicken and let Den read to me one story a day. I get a lot of this idea from lapbook page at http://www.homeschoolshare.com/chicken.php but I decided not making a lapbook, just make some note pages and I will stable them together when we are done.

Chick Study Day Two

This is going to be just a short input. Tired...just came back from Maundy Thursday service...and it is 130am...but hubby will be around the next few days so might not have much time to update...better do it now.


We didn't have time to really study on Wed but Den still get to spend 30 min or so playing with them. Today she played with them for about an hour and I asked her to pay more attention to their wings, eyes, ears, nose and beak. It was really amazing how much she observed by her self just by pointing her to the right direction.


We covered three lessons from the Handbook of Nature Study by Anna Botsford Comstock....I learned so many new things today! To a point, I think homeschooling is to homeschool the mom and not the child!


Lesson 3: Wing:
- We experimenting with Umbrella to show how the overlapping wings feathers help chick fly;


- We talked about the function of chick's tail - act as rudder and also help to fly


Lesson 4: Eye and Ear
- We found their ears...we knew they have ears since Chicka Chicka and Boom Boom (their name) has been responding very well to Den's voice...come running to her whenever she calls...and they love music, whenever Den play piano, they will sing too...but we never knew where are the ears located...today we found them. ^^


- Den observed that chick has only lower eyelids.


- I saw the film lid that came out from the corner of chick's eyes and cover the eyes like a veil when they first arrived but I never knew what that was... today I learned....and found out even human has the film lid!! At the corner of our eyes near our nose, just that we can't move the film lid like chicks...any more...I need to find out what is the function of the film lid...Den and I guess - to protect the eyes.


- Chick cannot see the same object with both eyes at the same time


Lesson 5: Beak
-Found the nostrils!!


-Compare Duck bill and chick beak


-Functions of beak


-Chick has no teeth and not much sense of smell.




Den also identified different part of a chicken and color it:

While discussing, Den asked me a few interesting questions that I had no answer! But with the help of the internet, we have discovered:

1. The function of Comb and Wattles - (I thought they are just there for deco!!) is to cool down chicken's body temperature

2. How to tell the gender of bb chicks - the best way is to look inside the vent...which I am not going to do! So we settle with the latest way - tell by color of their feather - the lighter will be hen and thus we declare Chicka Chicka as a rooster and Boom Boom a han...the most interesting thing is Den already told me that on the first day they arrived! From their behaviour, Den told me Chicka Chicka is a boy and Boom Boom is a girl! Lets wait and see if we are correct!

There is another GREAT DISCOVERY (to me!!!) but I will leave that for another day.

Chick Study Day One

Den is getting a little bit bored with our usual schooling materials, so I decided it is time to detour. Last month I downloaded Handbook of Nature Study by Anna Botsford Comstock from Freebie Of The Day, I decided to give it a try since we have not had much hand on in nature study (Im very much a city bookworm...not the outdoor type...)


For Bird study, the author suggested to use a hen. The way I see it will be more fun to raise a bb chick than getting a full grown hen....and much easier since we are living in an apartment! After asking for help in getting chicks in FB, a friend volunteered to get 2 chicks for us from her hometown! We were overjoy for I have no idea where to get bb chicks in KL/PJ.


2 kampung bb chicks arrived at our place yesterday. We decided to put them in a box since we will only be keeping them for 2 weeks...as I mentioned it will be hard to keep 2 full grown chicken in apartment! 


There were many things happened yesterday and we did not get to really study them until today. 


Today after her ballet class in the morning, Den spent 2 hours study/observe/play with the chicks. We took them out of the box and let them walked freely at our wash area. Den kept them company for 2 hours until I had to put a stop and asked her to come in for lunch. That's how she is, she really really likes animals and have lots of patient with them. 

After lunch, we discuss about different parts of a feather- Quill, Barb and Fluff; functions of feathers and why male bird's feathers is usually much prettier than female bird (I also printed out some pictures of other birds to show her)(Lesson 1 and 2 from the handbook). This is what she drew in her book:

Since Easter is coming, we have been spending time talking about Jesus last week on Earth. Today we focused on the promises of Jesus from Gospel of John. Tomorrow we will focus on the parables that Jesus told. 

She watched Goodtv in the evening and after dinner we study Chinese.

P/S: for those of you who are interested in reading the handbook online, you can go to Google Book, then type "Nature StudyBy Anna Botsford Comstock".

03 April 2011

We started a few new things in our school last two weeks. Before we go there, lets talked about some of the 'normal' things we did:


1. History - WWII (I haven't check out the internet links yet because I'm not sure I want to use them...after WWI experience...)


2. Bible - We focused on two ladies that God used during WWII to do great things for Him -Gladys Aylward (from I Heard Good News Today) and Corrie ten Boom (from both Little Lights and Heroes For Young Readers series, read about these two series in my previous entry)


We stop using the Word and Song Bible since Den started doing daily devotion her self but I decided it is time to use it again. We listen to Ruth story yesterday and as usual we enjoy it very much.


3. Science - We finished Sonlight Science week 20. In week 20 we studied about major organs in our body, blood and vessel, skin, bones, muscles, and digestion. No time for internet link yet. 

Den drew this in her science workbook - digestion

4. Chinese - I asked my brother to help me get 70 books from China. All from the same series 玛蒂娜 (Martine by Belgians Marcel Marlier and Gilbert Delahaye) - 40 picture books and 30 corresponding sticker books. I fallen in love with the drawing when I saw it online and I knew Den will enjoy it too and I'm correct. Even though she cant read most of the words, she spent the whole afternoon just now looking through the pictures. She seldom pick up any Chinese books so I'm very happy about that. 

We read 4 of the books this two weeks and so far we enjoy the story..even though I have my doubt in some of the translation...sometime it didn't make sense and sometime it didn't go with the drawing...I manage to bluff them off...good thing about Den cant read most of the words!!

 

example of the sticker book

Since I make this year "improve Chinese language year", Den's speaking Mandarin has improved significantly. A few of our friends comment that, so I'm very happy about the direction we are going - lots of interesting Read Aloud, Goodtv Mandarin cartoon and always do Chinese lesson first (right after Bible, so that we will always have time to do it properly!)

5. CLP Language Art - She finished Workbook 103 (Total score 98!! Reward systems works wonder in this case!) and started the first lesson in Workbook 104. In 103, we learned about Question words, contractions (don't/can't), Was/Were, Rhyming words, Consonant digraph - CH, Vowel Set - ai, ay, ee and ea.

In 104 first lesson, we learned about Vowel set - ie and y=i and 5 consonant blends- bl, fl, gl. pl and sl.

6. Math - She did a few worksheets from varies workbooks, a new sudoku book (she complained the last one  was too hard...so I got her a new one Sudoku Basic RM4.50 Popular) and we also started playing Tangrams (bought a set from Times warehouse sales at RM15 that came with 200 puzzle and 2 set of Tangrams so that we can play it like competition).

7. Calender - Another new thing we started last week. Sonlight K came with a calender kit but we had not used it until last week. I finally feel she can grasp the concept of months and this will help to make the concept even more concrete for her. We are going to do it month by month, we started at the end of March and we worked on the month of April. At the beginning of each week, we also fill in the activities of the week. 

A country is featured in every month. The month of April is Italy and so coincidentally that Den saw some Gondola at Marina Sand two weeks ago.We spent sometime talking about Venice, Rome, Pompeii, leaning tower of Pisa and I show her some of the photo, hubby and I took when we visited Italy. 

We also spent sometime talking about Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter. We decided we are going to wear black on black Saturday. 

8. Sewing - It is rather ironic that someone who cant sew is trying to teach sewing!! Den has been asking me to teach her to sew. I think the normal needle is too sharp and too small for her. So when I saw this sewing kit in Diaso (RM5) I jump on it and brought the biggest needle I can find. So far, Den has not prick her fingers yet!

some of this stitches are done by me and some by Den and you really cant tell which is from who...I dont know it is because she is really good at this or I'm really sucks at this! ^^

This is how it is going to look like (hopefully!!) when it is done.

I think the most important "new thing" we started last week is we have set our study goal for this week together. This is the first time we did this. Usually I do the planning my self but I think she is old enough to do this with me. 

First we plan out how many days of school we are going to have this coming week - 3 days. Then we write down how many works we are going to do in each subject in this 3 days. This is our goal for this coming week -

Yamaha - 5 practice and 1 homework

Bible - 3 

Chinese - Lesson and Review 2, Read Aloud 3, Den Read Aloud 2, Copywork 2

English - Read Aloud 2, CLP 3, Copywork and comprehension 2

Math - 3

If she can achieve the goal then she will get 30min of PC game credit which she can use it right away or accumulate. ^^

p/s: Den was in drawing mood, so I updated some of the most recently drawing here.