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There are several NEW Middle School offerings here on the Hub. Check out these...
 
 
 
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Looking to add some exciting SCIENCE EXPERIMENTS into your lesson plans this school year? Check out these downloads...
 
 
 
 
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Spring has just begun, as the vernal equinox was Sunday, March 20, 2011. A lot of people don't understand what this means. Simply put, the Sun is in the middle of its annual path through the constellations, so that the days are equally divided into 12 hours of day and 12 hours of night.
On the vernal equinox, the Sun rises directly due east and sets directly due west. On the days of spring, the Sun will rise and set further and further to the north, and the days will grow longer. On the summer solstice, the first day of summer, the Sun will rise and set furthest to the north, and the daylight will be longest.
These are all signs that the LORD has placed in the sky to help us know the time of year. This is the primary reason the LORD made the Sun and Moon "...for signs and for seasons, and for days and years." (Genesis 1:14) Our Signs & Seasons curriculum has been created to help Christian homeschool families learn about these things and many other aspects of Classical Astronomy, the traditional approach to understanding the sky, different from the "modern astronomy" of black holes and NASA space flights.
Check out our Signs & Seasons curriculum and also our new storybook, Moonfinder, for explaining the phases of the Moon for little kids of all ages!
http://www.classicalastronomy.com/On_line_Ordering.asp
While you're at our site, please sign up for our free email newsletter!
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Preschool-aged children love to play with worms (at least my boys do!). You can turn their curiosity with worms into a science project with just a few items from your house and garden. Here is what you’ll need:
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Empty two-liter pop bottle
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Exacto knife
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Dirt
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Small shovel
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Sand
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Grass clippings
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Kitchen compost (apple peelings, etc.)
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Worms
Before you let your child loose in the garden, you will need to use the exacto knife to cut off the entire top of the pop bottle.
Help your child create a label for the container that has the child’s name and “worm farm” printed on it. You can make it by hand or on the computer. Tape the label to the front of the container.
Go out to the garden with your child and let he or she shovel a couple of inches of dirt into the plastic container. Pat the dirt down so the next layer of sand won’t filter through. Explain to your child that they need to be careful not to shake or jar the bottle or the sand and dirt will become mixed up.
Add a thin layer of sand, and then continue with a couple of inches of dirt and another thin layer of sand. The top layer should be dirt. Leave an inch or two of space at the top of the bottle.
Next add a few grass clippings on top of the last layer of dirt. The worms will need food, so add a few pieces of fruits or vegetables in with the grass, such as apple or orange peelings.
If you are lucky enough to have worms in your yard, help your child dig for a few worms for his or her worm farm. If you can’t find any, go to your nearest bait shop and buy a small package of night crawlers.
Let your child play with the worms before putting them in the worm farm. Help them make observations about their worms. Check out a book about worms at your local library or search for information online about worms. Talk to your child about how a worm’s job is to eat waste and mix it into our soil to fertilize it.
After your child places a couple of worms into the worm farm, they will be able to see for themselves how worms mix up soil. When the worms dig through the container, they will leave a trail of sand behind them that your child will be able to see mixing into the dirt.
For the most worm activity, place the worm farm in a dark place or tape a piece of paper around the worm farm to keep the light out. Worms do most of their work at night.
Your preschooler will have a lot of fun creating his or her worm farm. From digging in the dirt, to playing with worms… what’s not to like!
Rachel Paxton is a freelance writer and mom of five. For resources for the Christian family, including parenting, toddler and preschool activities, homeschooling, family traditions, and more, visit Christian-Parent.com. Article Source
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If you’re looking for ways to aid in teaching friction for children then keep reading. So your child comes home from school with questions about friction. How can you help your child understand this concept? Without friction life as we know it would not exist. Every surface would be more slippery than ice. You could not walk, run, write, or even feed yourself without friction. Friction for children is as easy as using common examples to guide your explanation.
Friction for children starts with the basics. Friction is a push, pull, or a force which works against the motion of objects that are in contact as they move past each other. When objects are touching their surfaces tend to stick together, like the tiny loops and hooks of Velcro. Heat and sound are also produced by friction. If you rub the palms of your hands together quickly your hands get warm and you can hear the sound that friction creates.
There are three types of friction; sliding friction, rolling friction, and fluid friction. Sliding friction is caused by two objects touching each other that slide past one another. For example, when you push a large wooden crate across a floor you push against sliding friction. The entire surface of the crate that is in contact with the floor slides against the floor, slowing down the motion of the crate. Rolling friction uses wheels. If you move the identical large wooden crate with a wagon then you exert a force against rolling friction. Only the bottom of each wheel is in contact with the floor. Rolling friction is less than sliding friction; it takes less effort to push the crate on the wagon than to push the crate that is directly resting on the floor. When an object is in contact with a fluid, a liquid or a gas this is considered fluid friction. Airplanes and race cars are streamlined to reduce fluid friction. They have smooth, curved surfaces to reduce the friction, called drag, with the air.
When teaching friction for children it’s important to stress how friction can be advantageous. You light a match using friction. As you strike a match, friction creates enough heat to ignite a chemical compound in the match head that then burns the rest of the match head. Automobile brakes work because of friction. As the brake pads rub against the car’s wheels, the car slows down. Shoes designed for some sports have special soles to use friction to your advantage. Baseball shoes and football shoes have cleats to increase friction by sticking to cracks in the ground. A violinist puts rosin on his bow to increase friction between the bow and the violin strings, therefore producing sound.
However, friction can also be disadvantageous. If a door hinge squeaks, the noise is caused by friction. The space shuttle’s nose and wings heat up dramatically as it returns to Earth from orbit. The ceramic tiles on the shuttle’s nose and wings are designed to dissipate this heat caused by friction. The moving parts of a car’s engine rub against each other and can stick together, causing the engine to seize and to stop working. Using oil in a car’s engine protects the parts from friction. Cooked foods tend to stick to pans. Teflon on non-stick cookware reduces friction between the food and the pan, causing the food to slide. Competitive swimmers wear specially designed racing suits to reduce the friction between themselves and the water so that they can swim faster. A bowler wears extremely flat-soled shoes to slide on the lane right before he releases the bowling ball. Silicone aerosols, oils, grease, graphite (the very soft form of carbon in “lead” pencils), and ball bearings are all used to reduce friction.
By using every day examples, you can teach friction for children and help them better understand this concept. The three types of friction, sliding, rolling and fluid, can either be beneficial or detrimental to the motion of objects. Friction between your pen or pencil tip and the paper you write on allows you to write on the paper. Friction between the ground or the floor and your feet allows you to run or walk along these surfaces. Friction between your food and a spoon or fork allows you to eat with these utensils.
Lorie Moffat has 20 years of teaching experience in both public school classroom and science museum settings. Contact her about special summer online tutoring packages.Article Source
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If your children love Science and space they are going to love this lithograph set!
This set features images of the planets, the sun, asteroids, comets, meteors and meteorites, the Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud, and moons of the solar system. Along with the spectacular images, it also includes a lot of general information, significant dates, interesting facts and brief descriptions of the images.
Preview the NASA Solar System Exploration Lithograph set! The complete set can be downloaded here...on the Christian Home School Hub.
From our small world we have gazed upon the cosmic ocean for thousands of years. Ancient astronomers observed points of light that appeared to move among the stars.
They called these objects planets, meaning wanderers, and named them after Roman deities -- Jupiter, king of the gods; Mars, the god of war; Mercury, messenger of the gods; Venus, the goddess of love and beauty; and Saturn, father of Jupiter and god of agriculture.
The stargazers also observed comets with sparkling tails, and meteors -- or shooting stars apparently falling from the sky.
Since the invention of the telescope, three more planets have been discovered in our solar system: Uranus (1781), Neptune (1846) and Pluto (1930). Pluto was reclassified as a dwarf planet in 2006. In addition, our solar system is populated by thousands of small bodies such as asteroids and comets. Most of the asteroids orbit in a region between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, while the home of comets lies far beyond the orbit of Pluto, in the Oort Cloud.
The four planets closest to the sun -- Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars -- are called the terrestrial planets because they have solid rocky surfaces. The four large planets beyond the orbit of Mars -- Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune -- are called the gas giants.
Beyond Neptune, on the edge of the Kuiper Belt, tiny, distant, dwarf planet Pluto has a solid but icier surface than the terrestrial planets....Want more information? You'll find it with this set!
Field Trip Idea: After you download the lithograph set, check to see if there is a planitarium near you!
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A while back some friends and I talked about doing a class as a small group ~ we talked about history or something science related and came to settle on HUMAN ANATOMY… we chose to use the “Exploring Creation with Human Anatomy and Physiology” book and journal series…
As individual families, we take 2 weeks to cover each lesson and then we are meeting biweekly to share a lesson and activity…
Today was our first group meeting and it went really well.
We started out the class with a discussion on cell division and used made a “model of a cell” activity from Janice Van Cleave’s book “The Human Body for Every Kid”
 In this activity we used jello and grapes to create a simple cell with a snack-size bag representing the cell membrane, jello being the cytoplasm, and the grape being the nucleus.
Then we made edible DNA using Twizzlers, toothpicks, and colored marshmallows. We discussed the different letters associated with nucleotides and what they each meant (T, C, G, A,)
working on the DNA strand
the finished product…”A DOUBLE HELIX”
We read an article from ”The History News: Medicine” and talked about Vesalius and how he went about disproving some of Galen’s theories (that had been believed as truth for over 1400 years) by actually dissecting cadavers. Galen had only been able to dissect pigs, oxen, and monkeys ~ it was against Ancient Greek law to use cadavers…
We looked at cell permeability by taking a colander and pouring dreid beans and salt through it showing that a cell membrane will only allow like sized things to pass through it’s pores ~ thus the “SEMIPERMEABLE MEMBRANE” theory…
My favorite part of our class was watching a great movie on the human body from Netflix called ”Eyewitness The Human Machine” …. You can see a clip of it here.
I think I enjoyed this class and learned as much as the kids did… I can honestly say that this is a science class that has my kids and me wanting to learn more… we love it!!
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We are really enjoying our human anatomy study so far..
We have been taking our time and the kids are really retaining a lot more than I expected…
I love how each part of the cell is broke down and related to something the kids can associate with in their life… Mitochondria being power plants (or substations since that’s what DH does for a living) , the cell itself is a city, and the lysosomes as policeman…
Here’s some pictures of the cell anatomy the kids drew in their notebooks…
 Libby’s journal entry
 Tommy’s journal entry
Jeanne Fulbright adds biblical history in there in a way that is easy for the kids to understand and relate to the topic ~ correlating the Wall of Jericho to the cell membrane for example….
I got a great idea from my friend Michelle to make some flash cards with the word and a picture of it’s function… so, we’ve been playing with these every day as a review and it’s a great way to improve the kids memory of what they’ve been learning…
We’ve ordered some other books to use as go-alongs from Amazon… 2 of these that we are using now are “Enjoy Your Cells” by Fran Balkwill and Galen and the “Gateway to Medicine” by Jeanne Bendick.
I also have gotten some movies from Netflix : “Human Body: Pushing the Limits by Discover” and then this one from National Geographic, called “National Geographic: The Human Body”… both are in our instant queue, so we can watch them as we need to go-along with what we are studying… of course the kids are still watching “The Magic School Bus: The Human Body” almost daily (they love the Magic School Bus movies)…
Today we traced our bodies and cut them out to place on the wall, so we can add organs and systems as we study them… I never realized how tall my son was getting, until I saw his shape on the paper… *LOL*
One other thing that I decided to invest in with the start of this unit was a membership to BrainPop … They have so many online lessons and movies about all things science that it will pay for itself (hopefully)…
As we go-along, I will be posting different books and items that we are using in our study at home and I will also be posting about the activites of our Anatomy co-op that we and 2 other families are doing bi-weekly while we do this study..
Now back to our bodies ~ we’ll check back in soon!!
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This has been a great week ~ the kidlets and I are both loving using "Exploring Creation with Human Anatomy" ...
We bought the journals (I got the Junior Journal for DD since she’s only 7) and they really like using them since they are used to notebooking…
This week so far, we’ve looked at the Ancient Civilizations and how they viewed the body.
The kids learned some great vocabulary words like hypothesis, theory, phlegmatic, and sanguine… We used some homemade flash cards to help with learning their meanings…
We discussed some historical greats in medicine ~ Hippocrates and Aristotle and added them to our timeline journal… they each had to write 3 sentences about what they had offered to medical history from what we had learned in the book..And we used “Usborne Book of Famous Lives” to look up some other info about each of them…
We talked about the theory of spontaneous generation and compared it to the Big Bang theory…
We started a new family read-along on Galen 
and watched the “Magic School Bus: Human Body” (more times than I wanted too *LOL*) 
The best thing about the week was the experiment the kids got to do using an apple, salt, and baking soda… 
First we peeled 2 apples, then we mixed up baking soda and salt   
then we placed the apples in the bowls and covered one with the salt/baking soda mixture, and left the other exposed to air in a different bowl…
We’ll be able to see the results next week (hopefully) … the kids can’t wait since they have already written out their hypothesis…
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