4Real Forums: Planning a Nature Unit

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Exploring God's Creation in Nature and Science
4Real Forums : Exploring God's Creation in Nature and Science

Topic: Planning a Nature Unit

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Rachel May
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Joined: June 24 2005
Location: Kansas
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Posts: 2057

Posted: Jan 04 2008 at 8:58am \| IP Logged

My kids want to learn about snakes and I'm having a hard time organzing my thoughts. I started by finding some resources. Here are some of the online ones:

St. John Bosco suggested by Aussieannie

some book ideas Includes Macbeth's story about catching a snake

and suggestions forliving books about snakes.

Snake Circle Book

Dragon notebook Not snakes, but they're both reptiles, right?

I think what I need help with is figuring out how to organize the study. We do only this for one week, it doesn't need to include any other subjects any more than come in naturally (so I don't need to build in snake math).

I guess what I'm trying to figure out is are there basic things you study on any given "nature" topic? and as we like to keep these studies in very basic lapbooks, how would you do the recording part? What do you have your kids record? If we study life cycle, habitat, diet, local snakes...what more should I include to make the unit complete?

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Rachel
Thomas and Anthony (10), Maria (8), Charles (6), Cecilia (5), James (3), and Joseph (1)

MacBeth
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Probably at the beach...

Joined: Jan 27 2005
Location: New York
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Posted: Jan 04 2008 at 10:37am \| IP Logged

Rachel May wrote:

Dragon notebook Not snakes, but they're both reptiles, right?

That's a fun question to follow...are they? Towards the end of your study of reptiles, find as many pictures or depictions of dragons as possible, and have the kids decide whether they have features that fit the reptile model. Many are quite mammalian, with scales. Many have limbs that fit onto the body unlike any reptile. Fun!

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MacBeth in NY
Don's wife since '88; "Mom" to the Fab 4
Nature Study
MacBeth's Blog

lapazfarm
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Joined: July 21 2005
Location: Alaska
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Posted: Jan 04 2008 at 10:48am \| IP Logged

I always like to do some "fun facts" kind of stuff with any animals we study. Like which is the biggest, smallest, deadliest, historical references(Cleopatra, anyone?), de-bunking myths (snakes are not slimy), etc, just fun stuff like that to make the study a little more user-friendly.

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Theresa
us-schooling in beautiful Fairbanks, Alaska.
LaPaz Home Learning

Rachel May
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Joined: June 24 2005
Location: Kansas
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Posts: 2057

Posted: Jan 07 2008 at 8:06pm \| IP Logged

Thank you both! Just this and watching conference talks got me over my mental (and anal retentiveness) block. I'm actually looking forward to this again.

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Rachel
Thomas and Anthony (10), Maria (8), Charles (6), Cecilia (5), James (3), and Joseph (1)

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