Today we have studied many of the diverse animals of the land down under. The girls and I were both surprised to learn how small a duck billed platypus is when it's born. The mother lays an egg and ten days later it hatches. The baby platypus is the size of a lima bean at that point! As adults they are not very large either. The adult platypus is the size of a domestic cat. I always thought they were larger than that.
Another thing we were amazed by is that the platypus is venomous! Well the male is anyway. He has poisonous spines on his hind feet that he sticks into another animals when he is threatened. The male doesn't sound too cuddly. I look at, Perry the Platypus, in a whole new light now. tee hee Below are all the things we covered today during school time.
Here is one of the videos we watched today that you may be interested in viewing.
A video on recreating the Sydney Opera House. McKenna was interested in what a model looked like and I found this for her.
We also learned a song about the Kookaburra and listened to it's laugh.
We finished up by watching a video called Waltzing Matilda. The girls and I loved it. There were many landmarks and slang terms throughout the video and helped us understand them better.
I hope you enjoy the videos as much as we did and can use the links I've shared!
Today we began our unit on Australia. The girls watched several videos about the Aborigine people, learned to locate Australia on the globe and learned about several native animals to the continent. We discussed marsupials and what they are and how they carry their young in pouches. The girls were surprised to learn that not just baby kangaroos are called Joeys.
We also touched briefly on the Great Barrier Reef. Throughout the next two weeks we will expand on what we learned about this reef in our Oceans unit.
Our craft for the day was making didgeridoos. Each of the girls decorated their didgeridoo and then proceeded to make music with it. If it could be called that. I'm not sure I would agree that, that is music.Life has been a whirlwind lately and I don't have a lot of links, but I will share our pictures of the learning that took place today.
Some days are winners and some are days the kids can't sit still and it's like trying to herd a can of worms! Today we started our second week of our Polar Regions unit. I suppose I had one too many videos for the girls to watch. I think I was clued in when I heard them ask is this almost over! Ha Ha It was interesting to us adults, but I think it was a bit long for them to sit through. The highlight of the day was our experiment on why the ocean doesn't freeze solid. This was the second experiment we have done like this. We did a similar one last week. The girls all wanted to stick their finger in the water and see how long they could stand to leave it in there. Silly girls! Tee Hee.
We began by learning about the magnetic and geographic North Pole.
We learned about the ARCTIC WOLF
Why doesn't the ocean freeze solid?
Look is that frost forming?
The girls had so much fun learning that salt lowers the freezing temperature of water. What I think they really had fun doing though is sticking their finger into the cccold water and seeing who could stand it the longest. Some times kids find things to be extremely fun and educational that adults find ordinary. Just another aspect to use to learn by. Using all our senses whenever we can really brings the learning home!
Why are the oceans salty?
How cccold is that water?
We decided learning about latitude and longitude would be a good fit for this unit so we started out watching this video clip. It kept the girls in fits of giggles and it is pretty funny!
Latitude and Longitude explained.
Arctic Wolf howling.
Arctic Wolf babies.
A few more resources we used that you might be interested in.
You can find more ideas on my Homeschool pinterest boards here and here. Also here and here you can find maps on latitude and longitude and the compass rose.
You can find a few more videos I have pinned here.
Hope you have as much fun as we are having learning about the Polar Regions, Polar Explorers, arctic animals, latitude and longitude and where the North Pole really is located.
