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Natalia
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| Posted: Nov 01 2005 at 8:15am | IP Logged
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Has anybody found an effective way of teaching this? I am using this by recommendation of the MA curriculum but I find myself lost with it. We are doing their recommendation of using Microscoping Explorations with it and that part is working find. But I find myself avoiding UIMH just because I don't know what to do with it.
Natalia
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time4tea
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| Posted: Nov 01 2005 at 10:41am | IP Logged
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Natalia,
For what it's worth, I gave up on trying to figure out Universe in My Hands. I'm sure it's a great program, but I found myself totally lost with it, too (now, I was told often by my Chemistry teacher that I was one of the most illogical people he had ever met, so.....). Anyway as a result, I am sticking with the study of Natural History for my 5th grader this year (we are using CHC Middle Grades plans, and Universe in My Hands is the recommended text for 5th and 6th grades). We are focusing on birds, flowers and reptiles.
God bless,
Jenny
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Bridget
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| Posted: Nov 01 2005 at 11:17am | IP Logged
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I gave up too. I had an extra copy of My Temple of the Holy Spirit (in the 4th grade plans) from when they sold it serarately. My 5th grader is doing that with his 4th grade sister.
Someone with a logical, science brain could probably do wonders with it. CHC needs to re-work this for those of us that don't. 
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God Bless,
Bridget, happily married to Kevin, mom to 8 on earth and a small army in heaven
Our Magnum Opus
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Kathryn UK
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| Posted: Nov 02 2005 at 3:22am | IP Logged
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I'm doing UIMH with a small group (seven 6 to 10 yo's and one 12yo) at our homeschool group. I'm intending to record what I do and post it on the MA site as a set of suggested lesson plans - but don't hold your breath, as we have only done four lessons so far and we only meet once every two weeks. To give an idea of how I'm approaching it, this is what I've done and planned so far.
Unit 1 is focused on measurement and the concept of size rather than any scientific concepts. We started by brainstorming things our own size, one-tenth our size, one-hundredth our size and so on down. I typed up the results and gave everyone a copy to put at the front of their folder. For one metre the children measured each other, tied a scarf round their legs at the metre point, and a I took a photo of each to put in their folder. They also drew pictures of themselves and marked one metre. We filled in the three column sheet for 1m x >1m, 1m x 1m, and 1m x <1m. That was all one (longish) lesson.
The next two lessons were shorter and on 10cm and 1cm respectively. We used 10 unit and 1 unit cuisenaire rods to give an easy visual of the lengths. We did the drawings suggested in UIMN (hand / finger), measured our hands and fingers and various other things. Again we filled in the three column sheets. For each of these three lessons they had to make a picture sheet with items of the appropriate magnitude as homework - either by drawing, cutting and sticking, or on the computer.
The last lesson was on 1mm. Again we did the activities suggested in UIMH (drawing 10 lines, drawing a ring). I decided we'd had enough of three column sheets, so skipped that. I bought in various tiny things to look at under a microscope. For homework they are supposed to draw something they saw.
From here I've decided to take a slightly different tack to the book. I understand that the first two units deal with things visible to the naked eye, but I feel we are on a roll with looking smaller and smaller and that the younger children in particular will grasp the idea of microscopic sizes more easily if we keep going in that direction. I'm going to do the 0.1mm section, and then jump straight onto unit 3 to keep going with the microscopic stuff. This is where it gets scientific. I see Units 3 to 5 as having two purposes:
(1) to help the children build on the concept of magnitude, of everything having its proper size, and how the different sizes relate to each other
(2) an opportunity to introduce certain scientific concepts.
For Unit 3, I'm going to spend one lesson on each of the following concepts. We won't go very far with any of them, as the aim is just to give the children an overview of what these things are. I'm not planning to teach 6yo's everything there is to know about cells, for example!
Cells (mag -5) - I'll print some pictures of different cells from the internet, and let them look at onion skin cells under a microscope. I'll take grapefruits or oranges for them to see large-scale cells.
Bacteria (mag -6) - what they are, what they do, what they look like
Light (mag -6/-7) - talk about light waves, use a prism to split light into the colours of the rainbow, draw rainbows, learn the colours of the rainbow, talk about ultra-violet and infra-red light (if I can make it work, show how data can be transferred between two PDAs using infra-red)
DNA (mag -7/-8) - look at pictures, talk about what DNA is, draw DNA, briefly introduce molecules
Viruses (mag -7) - same as bacteria
Molecules (mag -9/-10) - use a molecule kit like this and play with making different molecules; draw molecules; look at chemical symbols (H2O for water and so on); molecular behaviour of water (surface tension)
Atoms (-10) - talk about different elements (gases, metals); look at periodic table; draw an atom
Electrons and quarks - not sure what I'll do with these yet!
That's as far as my thinking has gone so far. As we go through, I'll keep stressing the idea of magnitude, and just how tiny these things are compared to the things we could see and measure. Also, I have a book called Heaven and Earth which has a lot of photos taken through powerful microscopes and telescopes, and will use pictures from that book as illustratons.
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Kathryn
Dh Michael,  Rachel(3/95) Hannah(8/98) Naomi(6/06)  (11/07)
The Bookworm
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Natalia
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| Posted: Nov 02 2005 at 7:42am | IP Logged
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Kathryn UK wrote:
r
I decided we'd had enough of three column sheets, so skipped that. |
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You lasted one more lesson with the three column sheets that I did 
Kathryn UK I bought in various tiny things to look at under a microscope. For homework they are supposed to draw something they saw. [/QUOTE wrote:
We bought the Microscopic Explorations kit you suggested on MA. And it is going well but I keep forgetting, or find it hard to do, to relate it to the magnitudes studies.
Kathryn UK wrote:
(1) to help the children build on the concept of magnitude, of everything having its proper size, and how the different sizes relate to each other
(2) an opportunity to introduce certain scientific concepts. |
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We bought the Microscopic Explorations kit you suggested on MA. And it is going well but I keep forgetting, or find it hard to do, to relate it to the magnitudes studies.
Kathryn UK wrote:
(1) to help the children build on the concept of magnitude, of everything having its proper size, and how the different sizes relate to each other
(2) an opportunity to introduce certain scientific concepts. |
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After I posted this question we have a nice moment at dinner. We have been listening to the Phantom Tollbooth on tape and the kids were talking about the "weirdness" of it. And then my 8 yo, who is the one I am using UIMH with, started talking about things changing sizes overtime and my dh asked him if he thought that maybe humans will be giants sometime. And he said no because everything has a proper size. So maybe something is sticking!
[QUOTE=Kathryn UK As we go through, I'll keep stressing the idea of magnitude, and just how tiny these things are compared to the things we could see and measure. Also, I have a book called Heaven and Earth which has a lot of photos taken through powerful microscopes and telescopes, and will use pictures from that book as illustratons. |
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As I mentioned above that is what I find hard to do- to refer everything back to the magnitude studies. It feels disjointed to me. The other day as we studied the montains and volcano lessons from MA, I printed a picture of the Mt Everest to put in our UIMH binder since one of the examples they had was the Himalayas but then I started to think. Are all mountains in the same order of magnitude? or are different mountains according to their size be in different orders? Since I didn't know how to answer that question, I just dropped it.
One thing that did help to get a visual picture of everything was the book Powers of Ten. We didn't read but only looked at the pictures. Too bad our library doesn't have the film that goes with the book.
After seeing your post I guess I'll continue with what we have been doing and hoping that all make sense to him somehow.
Natalia
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Tina P.
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| Posted: Nov 02 2005 at 4:08pm | IP Logged
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We kind of blasted through UIMH as quickly as possible because we were *all* yawning after the first couple of lessons. 
There is a thread *somewhere* on this site (can someone help me find it?) of what more creative people did with it and how they sort of *brought the lesson home* to their children. Wish I had read that *before* we did UIMH.
Tina
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Kathryn UK
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| Posted: Nov 03 2005 at 2:39am | IP Logged
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Natalia wrote:
As I mentioned above that is what I find hard to do- to refer everything back to the magnitude studies. It feels disjointed to me. The other day as we studied the montains and volcano lessons from MA, I printed a picture of the Mt Everest to put in our UIMH binder since one of the examples they had was the Himalayas but then I started to think. Are all mountains in the same order of magnitude? or are different mountains according to their size be in different orders? Since I didn't know how to answer that question, I just dropped it.
One thing that did help to get a visual picture of everything was the book Powers of Ten. We didn't read but only looked at the pictures. Too bad our library doesn't have the film that goes with the book.
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Different mountains can be in different orders, but only mag.+3 or +4. Mag.+3 is 1000m, mag.+4 is 10000m, so if a mountain is over 5000m you would put it in mag.+4, and if it is under 5000m you would put it in mag.+3. Mt.Everest is 8850m so would come under mag.+4. Thinking about it, mountains would be a good way of demonstrating that certain things can fall into more than one order of magnitude - as well as adding your picture of Everest, you could add a smaller mountain to mag.+3 (Mount Snowdon in Wales is 1085m, so would fit there neatly).
Magnitude isn't an exact science. Many things belong to more than one order of magnitude. Take a 10cm cuisenaire rod, for example. It is 10cm long (mag.-1), but only 1cm wide (mag.-2), so could theoretically be placed in either. So long as you aren't sticking things in a ridiculous place (a mouse alongside a mountain!!!!), near enough is good enough  . Remember magnitude is just a tool that helps children to understand scientific order and relative size. For example, they can begin to grasp the concept of real "smallness" because they have seen what happens when you divide visible things by ten ... then you divide the smallest visible thing by ten and it becomes invisible ... and then they can understand how you keep dividing by ten even things too small to see. It also helps to give a sense of order.
In the MA schedule the microscopic explorations (and then the chemistry and astronomy units in terms 2 and 3) don't tie in exactly with UIMH. They are intended to give some added depth at points along the way. I suggested one UIMH lesson and one hands-on lesson weekly because I felt it would make for more variety. In fact logically it might make more sense to do the UIMH section in consecutive lessons and then stop and switch to the hands on work when you reach that point of magnitude (mag.-3 or -4 for the microscope work).
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Kathryn
Dh Michael, Rachel(3/95) Hannah(8/98) Naomi(6/06) (11/07)
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cathhomeschool
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| Posted: Nov 04 2005 at 3:52pm | IP Logged
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Tina P. wrote:
| There is a thread *somewhere* on this site (can someone help me find it?) of what more creative people did with it and how they sort of *brought the lesson home* to their children. |
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Tina,
Was it the CHC again thread?
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Janette (4 boys - 22, 21, 15, 14)
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MaryM
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| Posted: Nov 22 2014 at 2:16am | IP Logged
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A picture book I just read made me think of "The Universe in My Hands" and thought it would be a good supplement especially for young ones. I knew we had a thread here somewhere so bumped it.
Looking Down -It is a nice look at the study of magnitude. Starts with a view of earth from space. Each page getting closer, continent, region, city, neighborhood, yard, little boy, magnifying glass, insect. Very cool. Would be a nice supplement to Mary Daly's "Universe in My Hands" curriculum.
And then it reminded me of this interactive video on magnitude that doesn't seem to have been shared anywhere here. I saw it last year when a friend posted it to our local group, and thought it was on here, but can't seem to find a link. This is fascinating. Give it a try.
Scale of the Universe
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Mary M. in Denver
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4Real Forums : Exploring God's Creation in Nature and Science
Topic: Universe in My Hands
