homeschool

Studying Bees at the Bayer CropScience Bee Research Center

May 19, 2015 by Amy 4 Comments

My Big Helper is a new beekeeper, and although our bee class was incredibly detailed, we’re finding that there is still much to learn. We decided to take a field trip to the Bayer CropScience Bee Research Center in RTP to find out more about what’s new in the world of bees.

Bayer’s bee communication specialist, Sarah, gave us several minutes to explore the center before beginning. The space is open and bright, full of hands-on displays with lots to see. Some of the information is basic to bee life, while other videos communicate facts about more complex research, such as how to combat varroa mites.

To one side of this space is the research lab itself. A large glass window allows viewers to watch scientists at work. On this day, she was testing bees for the presence of nosema, a particularly unpleasant bee disease.

We enjoyed visiting various displays as a group. Sarah gave us the opportunity to ask questions and to engage with different information, before …

we headed outside to a screened-in porch next to a hive. Sarah geared up and opened the hive, talking through what she was doing and showing us the various things she found inside. The hive had recently lost its queen, and so there were even queen cells to see.

At this point the formal tour was over. We returned inside to explore certain displays further and to question the scientist, who was now available and had fascinating information to share. After that we headed outside to wander through the pollinator garden adjacent to the research center. The flowers were beautiful!

The Bayer CropScience Bee Research Center gives tours several times each week. You must be 8 years old to visit and sign up in advance – but it’s well worth the time and effort. Check it out and find out how you can help the bees.

For more bee information for kids, check out these resources:

Book Club: “The Lemonade War” Boys vs. Girls

May 13, 2015 by Amy Leave a Comment

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This month we broke all the book club rules and declared war: The Lemonade War (The Lemonade War Series)“>The Lemonade War by Jacqueline Davies, in which a brother and sister make a bet about who can earn the most money by holding lemonade stands during a five-day period. We took up the challenge.

The girls went first. They met in the morning to plan the details of their stand, including choosing a charity to which they could donate their profits. The girls chose St. Jude’s Research Hospital. They made posters, detailed plans for added value, good customer service, and how to make change. After that they ate a picnic lunch and packed up their gear.

We set up their stand at the local Tractor Supply store, where the generous manager had given permission for us to work outside. The girls stored their money in a toy cash register and traded jobs to experience all aspects of lemonade stand business.

The boys met this week. They followed the same routine as the girls, choosing Samaritan’s Purse/Nepal Earthquake Victims as their charity. The boys determined to raise more money than the girls – and just like in the book, the girls refused to divulge how much money they had.

The biggest difference between the two stands was the way that they handled themselves onsite. The girls were fairly reserved, while the boys were outgoing.

They even made posterboards and danced down the sidewalk with them.

In the end, the groups made more than $160 total for their charities – and I think they’ve learned a little bit about business and marketing, too.

Has your child ever run a lemonade stand?

For more business ideas, check out these great resources:

It’s Teacher Appreciation Week at EduCents!

April 29, 2015 by Amy Leave a Comment

Happy Teacher Appreciation Week!

Way back in the day, school was awesome. My first-grade teacher, Mrs. Aumiller, had been teaching for years, and she had the experience to back it up. She was always smiling and laughing and making fun crafty things to help us learn. My second-grade teacher, Mrs. Hile, was just as amazing. She had theme days, like Smurf Day, where everything we did that day revolved around our theme. She taught us to write in cursive and to multiply and to enjoy classic books like Charlotte’s Web and James and the Giant Peach. These two kind and caring teachers made me determined to teach someday. (They also came to my wedding, still send me cards, and are the basis for the way I teach my own kids.)

Here are three reasons why I am thankful for educators:

They have an impossibly difficult but incredibly important job.
They impact lives every day.
Teachers see the best in their students.

Education has such an impact on ourselves and our little ones. Educents is here to help you pay it forward. In honor of Teacher Appreciation week, Educents & Peekapak have teamed up to provide your favorite educators with a gift basket worth over $40, which includes a FREE $10 Educents Gift Card & 3 months of Peekapak lesson plans (3 digital storybooks, 12 in-class lessons & 12 at-home activities) that teach Character Education and Language Arts.

So, whether it’s your mom, your classroom teacher, your neighbors, or another special human being who taught you important lessons, thank them by giving them a FREE gift basket, on Educents!

Fill out the form here to send this freebie to an educator you know.

Birthday School: Extreme Cakes

March 24, 2015 by Amy Leave a Comment

Last week was my Big Helper’s birthday.

She was super excited about that until about two weeks ago, when her enthusiasm level shot through the roof. She started talking about a ‘secret project’ and hid in her room to work on it at every opportunity. She recruited her daddy to help her drill wood and her grandmother for a sewing project. She even asked to be excused from some assignments, or to have the deadlines extended, so that she could work on this more.

Finally, she spilled the beans.

As a huge fan of “Little House on the Prairie,” she was creating cake toppers. Real ones. From scratch.

Before she showed me anything, she completed the Conestoga-style wagon you see above. The wheels have spokes and axles and really turn. There’s a seat for the driver and a back. The top is made of fabric and has a network of thin cardboard strips that form a web on the underside of the canopy to hold it’s shape. Those strips insert into cardboard pockets that are glued to the inside sides of the wagon.

She used craft sticks and tooth picks and glue and cardboard. It’s an amazing piece for somebody who has only ever seen a wagon picture – not a real wagon – and hasn’t studied them or researched them or even studied simple machines.

(She was even worried about getting splinters in the cake, so she asked for a piece of waxed paper to be placed under it.)

My Big Helper originally showed me her blueprints for the cake. Really – she draws blueprints every year. These called for a pretzel log cabin, complete with Lego-style directions for a stacked-pretzel door and lintel. (Unfortunately, my pretzel skills don’t live up to her blueprint possibilities.) She planned for a well and the whole Ingalls family – whom she made out of mini-marshmallows and toothpicks. She made the adults bigger than the kids and tried hard to get every detail correct.

By this time, I realized just how far she was taking this and called off our regular assignments for the week. While I really did nothing more than ask a few questions, she worked hard to plan this all out. She sewed clothing and learned about hemlines and fraying and stitching styles. We talked about the history of printed fabric and how to measure it to fit. We talked about simple machines and tabs and making pieces fit together. We measured and talked angles and proportions and when the big project and the busy schedule overwhelmed, we talked about priorities and relationships and importance.

Despite her worries, she finished it all a mere 15 minutes before her party guests arrived. Charles has curly hair and suspenders. Ma has a bun, and Laura has pigtails. Carrie is shorter than the others. The details are all there, and she’s learned so much: how to plan and finish a project, but also how to modify one to fit unforeseen circumstances.

I hear often that it’s hard to fit school in around life, but life is school. We learn from all of our experiences. Sometimes, maybe we need to throw the textbooks out the window and learn the lessons right in front of us.

Even if they come in the form of an extreme cake.

Want to try some cake decorating with your kids? Check out these resources:

Can a Movie Change Your Life?

March 23, 2015 by Amy 1 Comment

Can a movie change your life?

Chad Burns sure hopes so.

His new movie, Beyond the Mask, is a revolutionary new kind of Christian movie. It’s an action-adventure, and it has more sword fights, explosions, and chase scenes than I’ve seen in popular mainstream movies in the same genre. Beyond the Mask is jam-packed full of enough action to energize the most enthusiastic of teens but enough drama and straight-talking theology to please the pastors. It’s a mix I’ve never seen before, and I sure hope that the Burns’ have many more ideas, because we need more movies like this.

What’s it really about? Check it out:

The leading mercenary for the British East India Company, Will Reynolds has just been double-crossed and now is on the run in the American Colonies. Working to redeem his name and win back the affections of the woman with whom he’s never been fully truthful, Will now hides behind a new mask in hopes of thwarting his former employer. As his past life closes in on him, Will must somehow gain the trust and the help of his beloved Charlotte – as well as Ben Franklin – while he races against time to defuse a plot of historical proportions. Coming to theaters Spring, 2015, Beyond the Mask is a revolutionary new family film that brings history to life in a faith-filled adventure celebrating grace, liberty, and the true freedom that can only be found in Christ.

Beyond the Mask is all that and more. Set against the beginnings of the American Revolution, it’s full of fascinating historical information. No viewer will realize that he’s on the receiving end of a history lesson, though, because he’ll be too busy watching stuff blow up – and, who knew? Benjamin Franklin not only identified electricity, but he knew how to harness it and create generators – and that pyrotechnical knowledge is put to good use in this movie. You won’t find any educational video anywhere that will excite your students more.

And that’s not really the point – at least, not to educate us about history and science (although as a homeschooling mom, I’m happy to find those lessons wherever we can). The basic tenets of the Christian faith are woven tightly into every element of this movie. It’s not tacked onto the end of scenes or proclaimed in teary reunions, but instead it’s there and natural and basic.

The action makes it edgy and the drama keeps the tensions high. Unlike most of those other movies that you’ll find, though, it’s clean – completely clean. There is no foul language or smutty scenes, which I would expect from a Christian movie, but the Burns’ went a step further. They made an action-adventure movie that’s not scary or gory but will keep you on the edge of your seats from the first scene until the last. The cinematography is amazing: although you’re watching duels and death, there is very little blood. The camera chases the action but leaves the consequences of the thrusts and punches to your imagination. You see bruises and blood on fingers, filling up scratches, but no gratuitous violence.

That’s why you should see this movie. The faith lessons are vital. The educational ones are fascinating, and they’re all wrapped up in a suspenseful, exciting package that will entice even elementary viewers.

Unlike other movies, you can’t go to your local theater and purchase a ticket. Beyond the Mask is being distributed via a different marketing model, and so the only way to see it is to click here and purchase a ticket online.

Want to know more? Watch the trailer here.

The Burns’ have released a companion book called Secrets of the Past, and you can download the first chapter for free here. This book shares the backstory of the movie and tells about the Colonial American history portrayed in Beyond the Mask.

Book Club, Girls’ Edition: “The Wright 3”

March 6, 2015 by Amy Leave a Comment

Our book this month is a super exciting one, and it’s full of lesson possibilities, too! We read Chasing Vermeer“>Chasing Vermeer. This book continues the story of Calder and Petra as they try to stop the destruction of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Robie House.

We started out by summarizing and discussing the story. There are lots of threads to pull in this one – issues about art, murder, friendship, honesty, and architecture – and we pulled them all.

Then we moved into the kitchen to bake one of Calder and Petra’s favorite snacks. They seem to eat a lot of cookies, often at the neighbor’s house while having tea, so the girls mixed up a batch of chocolate chip cookies. I baked them while they worked on the next project.

I wanted the girls to get a good feel for how different Wright’s architecture is and how special and custom he made it. Having visited Falling Waters years ago, I knew the great lengths to which Wright went to make his buildings visionary. We watched this YouTube video and tried to identify the locations in the book that happened in the house. The girls were really good at this!

Then we moved into the kitchen. The girls paired up and chose special locations. They tried to blend their unique places with a livable space, and they found that it wasn’t easy!

They had fun doing it, though, and I heard lots of giggles through the process. (Incidentally, my Big Helper hasn’t stopped drawing blueprints since!)

The Robie House was extremely unique for it’s time period, but it’s not the building that stands out the most to me. I think that Falling Waters does an even better job of merging the environment with the building (how much closer can you get than to be built overtop of a waterfall?) and so we also watched a video tour of that. Much of this video is computer-generated, but it does share the location extremely well.

Next we talked about the art glass windows that Wright designed specifically for the Robie House. I gave the girls some pattern blocks and asked them to think only about the shapes, not the colors, and to design a window quickly. The girls made some great designs on the fly!

Then it was time for the real thing. Using wooden sticks, plastic beads, and their own imaginations, the girls created their own faux art glass windows. Sorting the beads took a long time, as they were very small, but each girl successfully designed and made her own window – and the light shines through beautifully!

What are your kids reading right now?

Want more information about Wright and his work? Check out these books:

NEW See the Light Monthly Newsletter

March 3, 2015 by Amy Leave a Comment

We love art, and See the Light is our very favorite art instruction company! They provide lessons on DVD for students of all ages and skill levels, and each lesson is taught by an art master. These quality lessons are fun and educational, and I’ve really seen my kids’ art skills and interest level increase from using these DVDs.

So that’s why I’m excited to share some of See the Light‘s newest endeavors with you – a monthly newsletter full of great art information! The best part is that early subscribers receive access to the new Watercolor Buttefly lesson FREE. This will soon be released on DVD as part of a new Adventures in Art series, but if you sign up now, you can see it at no cost.

To see Watercolor Butterflies for free, sign up for the newsletter here. As always, your information is safe and secure – and please tell them that Amy at A Nest in the Rocks sent you!

Snow School: Finding Fractals in Nature

February 27, 2015 by Amy 1 Comment

One of my favorite things about homeschooling is the ability to learn from what’s happening around us, and that includes the weather. It’s snowed several times in the past two weeks, which is pretty rare here in the Carolinas, and so we make the most of it.

We don’t take the day off from school for snow; instead, we declare ‘Snow School is in Session’ and make our school day all about the snow.

One way to do that is to head outside and search for fractals.

Fractals are irregular patterns frequently found in nature. They involve unusual and similar shapes that make up patterns. Think snowflakes. Each stem of the snowflake is the same as the other stems, with smaller stems branching off from the main one and then smaller stems off of that one. Each of those repeating, identical stems make the flake a fractal.

Humans tend to put easily recognizable shapes in patterns, like squares and triangles and circles, but God uses the beauty and symmetry of fractals in His, and finding them makes for a very fun Snow School day.

So send your kids outside in the snow or the sunshine with a camera or a notepad and pencil to find as many fractals as they can.

Can you find mine?

Want to know more about fractals? Check out these resources:

Book Club, Boys’ Edition: “The 100 Year-Old Secret” by Tracy Barrett

February 25, 2015 by Amy Leave a Comment

This month our boys’ book club read the same one as the girls: The 100 Year-Old Secret” by Tracy Barrett. That doesn’t mean that this club meeting was a duplicate of the other, though.

In fact, this is about as close as we’ve ever come to doing the same thing, and yet the way that we did it was quite different.

We started out by discussing the book – by summarizing it and comparing the characters’ actions to how we thought we might handle the situation.

Then I sent the boys outside to find things in nature with texture – that were dead.

They totally loved that assignment.

The boys couldn’t focus on their texture assignment until they darted off some energy, and they did that speedily – all over my yard. They ran everywhere. I’m sure that nobody would ever have guessed that it had rained for several days prior!

Eventually they got back to it, and then they found all sorts of things – dried grasses, sweet gum balls, dead leaves, stems, sticks, etc., and happily carried them into my house.

There I added to their collections with dried pasta and string. We gave them plates of glue and wide picture frames and told them to create textured, sculpted, artistic frames like the one that the famous painting was hung in in Barrett’s story. They got really into it.

As they finished, I took their frames outside and spray-painted them metallic gold. The boys loved that paint – and the fact that it turned my grass gold, too.

Then we talked about facial proportion – about how the tops of your eyes line up with the tops of your ears, etc., and I sent them off to make portraits of each other. The boys did surprisingly well – they got really into it and did some great work. I was very impressed! They drew with pencils and shaded and sketched for quite a while.

When they were finished, they snacked on ‘biscuits,’ English-style, before dashing back outside.

The boys moved at the speed of light, but they had some great thoughts about this story, and I couldn’t believe how detailed and careful their artwork was. They really took their time and put some effort into it. Maybe one of their portraits will be in a fancy frame someday!

What are your kids reading now?

Xena and Xander Holmes have just discovered they’re related to Sherlock Holmes and have inherited his unsolved casebook! The siblings set out to solve the cases their famous ancestor couldn’t, starting with the mystery of a prized painting that vanished more than a hundred years ago. Can two smart twenty-first-century kids succeed where Sherlock Holmes could not?

Modern technology meets the classic detective story in this terrific new mystery series that will intrigue young sleuths everywhere!

10 Ways to Learn {Without a Textbook}

February 20, 2015 by Amy 1 Comment

When I was a kid we had a textbook for everything. Grammar, reading, math, science, etc., even in first grade.

But when I taught in our local schools, we had only a math book and a curriculum. I was on my own to teach everything else – and that’s when I realized just how many fun ways there are to learn the simplest information.

My absolute favorites, though, are when you leave the classroom – or the dining room table – behind and go out into the ‘real world’ to get your hands into the subject matter. Fortunately, there are many places that are welcoming to homeschoolers – and to children in general – and will go above and beyond to share with them.

**While I do love all of these options, we enrich as many of them as possible with books. Not textbooks, but storybooks. Non-fiction books. Also documentaries, Youtube videos, websites, and the like, mostly because these amazing community members get the kids so fired up that they can’t wait to find out more.

Here are a few of our favorites:

Classes offered by special-interest clubs, extension services, and community organizations. My Big Helper is taking a beekeeping class right now, and it’s intense! She’s learning a great deal about honeybees and their care, as well as the environment. With a college lecture-style format, she’s been busy taking and reviewing her notes, researching related topics online, and preparing to receive her bees. It’s been a fantastic opportunity – and not one that could be simulated with a textbook.
Library programs. Libraries often offer really neat classes, and they bring in cool experts. Check out what your library has to offer, and don’t be afraid to make suggestions.
Restaurant owners. Many restaurant owners, especially those of smaller, local businesses, are happy to share their expertise with you. It may mean coming in at an odd hour to suit their schedule, but the wealth of information they have to share is well worth it.
Small business owners. These people have a vested interest in the community and in your children. They want them to succeed and do well, and they want you to have a good opinion of their product. Most are happy for the chance to tell you exactly what makes their product or services so special, and in the process, your child can learn about research, development, marketing, and the work ethic behind running your own business.
Museums. Many museums run special programs just for kids, and these often allow them to get their hands dirty, so to speak.
Historical sites. This is one of my favorites. Historians love their craft and usually love to share it. They’ve got all the awesome info about how people used to live – all the nitty-gritty details that make history so exciting – and aren’t usually found in textbooks. They can give you the skinny on what mealtime might’ve smelled like when nobody had showered for 10 months and deodorant wasn’t invented yet. They can teach you to make brooms and candles and milk a cow. Fun stuff!
Sporting arenas. You might think that a baseball game is just that, but sports are big business, and it takes a lot of people – and a lot of work – to pull off these big events. Touring these spaces and speaking with representatives can teach you about the business behind what you might see on TV – and sometimes they have curriculum information to share, as well.
Authors, artists, and other experts. These people are professionals, and they know about a specific thing that many others don’t. Having them share is invaluable and inspiring.
Parks. Local, state, and national parks offer some really great programs. There is one near us that has orienteering classes each summer, as well as survival, wildlife identification, canoeing, and crafting classes each summer, and for a very nominal fee. Check around and see what might be offered in your own area. *I also read this morning that President Obama is giving all fourth-graders a free pass to all of our national parks for the next school year! Be sure to check that out in the coming months – it’s not quite live yet.
What would you add?

For more ideas, check out the Creative Learning tab above.