Archive for the ‘Homeschooling’ Category

Starting Vegetables from Seeds

Tuesday, May 10th, 2022

starting-vegetables-from-seeds

It’s been a while since I’ve started vegetables from seeds, so I thought I would try it again this year. We planted these back in March, so now that it’s May, we have transplanted the seedlings outside. We filmed the entire process, giving tips along the way. Make sure to check your weather forecast to make sure that it will not freeze overnight in your area before transporting the plants outside.

I show you in this video the whole process of starting vegetables from seeds:

  • We planted the seeds in seed trays, using seed starting mix instead of regular soil, because the seed starting mix keeps moist better. You can use old yogurt containers or other small containers instead of seed trays.
  • Make sure to have a grow light, which has the full spectrum of sunlight so that the seeds can get off to a good start. Otherwise you can place them in a sunny window.
  • Put cellophane over the rows of seeds, to keep the seeds moist and to cut down on the amount of times you need to water them.
  • Use a spray bottle to water, so that the seeds don’t get washed away.
  • Some seeds grow faster than others. Some take a few weeks to germinate. As you can see in the video, the green bean plant sprouted high above the others, reminding me of the Jack and the Beanstalk story!

Starting Vegetables from Seeds (video tutorial)

After a couple of months, you will want to transplant the seedlings outside. Some of the plants were getting too tall for the grow light, but the frost outdoors hadn’t passed yet, so I just transplanted the taller seedlings into larger containers and placed them in a sunny window.

transported-seedlings

I have a raised garden bed in partial shade, so I chose veggies that like the shade, such as lettuce and spinach, to plant in it. Then I set up a trellis next to my house, and I planted the climbing varieties of vegetables along the trellis. Green beans, for example, need a structure to climb up. You might want to stake those up with a wooden shishkabob skewer like I did in the house in the sunny window, using a twist tie to make sure they don’t fall over.

Growing your own vegetables is a great way to eat healthier and tastier food. I will be growing an even larger vegetable garden next year!

Umbrella Star Chart

Saturday, March 12th, 2022

umbrella-star-chart

One super fun and relatively easy hands-on activitiy you can do with your kids when you are studying astronomy is to create this umbrella star chart. The person who originally created this activity is H. A. Ray, who wrote a groundbreaking astronomy book called The Stars. He took the complicated constellations and made simplified stick figures out of them, making the constellations more of a dot-to-dot rather than a complicated figure for each star pattern. This is a great activity to do to understand how the night sky rotates counterclockwise as the earth rotates, causing the illusion of the stars spinning around a central point, which is the north star.

The center of your umbrella (the handle) will be the north star. All the other constellations rotate around that star. So you can start with Cassiopeia, which looks like a W:

Take five silver star stickers, and place them on the umbrella in the form of a W to create the shape for the constellation Cassiopeia. Then spin the umberlla to the opposite side of the sky, and create the Big Dipper:

constellation-stickers-on-umbrella

After placing those two constellations, spin the umberlla, and you will see how the sky rotates at night. This is why the constellations are not always seen in the same places. However, if you learn to always find Cassiopeia (the W), you will always be able to find the Big Dipper on the opposite side of the sky. Isn’t that cool?

Over the years, you can learn more and more constellations. You can add as many constellations as you want to your umbrella star chart. If you make the constellations smaller, you can fit in quite a few. We just placed some basic ones to give you the idea. The sky is the limit on what you can create on this star chart!

star-chart-on-umbrella

A great activity to do right after making this umbrella star chart is to get in your car and drive away from the city one clear night, to go looking for these constellations:

If you want to see some hands-on activities for elementary astronomy, here you go:

If you want to see our high school astronomy curriculum and some fun field trips we did, go here:

We have done so many more activites for astronomy over the years, which we have inside the Astronomy Unit Study article in the Unit Study Treasure Vault. Hope you enjoyed this activity as much as we did!

Plymouth Plantation Tour

Monday, November 15th, 2021

plymouth-plantation

How would you like to walk through a reproduction of the original Plymouth Plantation, as if you were one of the Pilgrims landing in America for the first time? Today we will give you a virtual tour! A few months ago, my family was able to visit extended family on the east coast, and one of our field trips was Plymouth Plantation in Massachussetts. I was pleasantly surprised at how extensive the property is. You can see the ocean from the village, and each house had furniture from the 1620’s.

Plymouth Plantation Tour

At the beginning of the tour, we saw a Wampanoag longhouse. From the outside it looks small, but inside it’s very large. First the Native Americans built the structure with bent sticks. Then they filled it in with bark and other materials. They had openings in the ceiling, where smoke could escape.

wampanoag-longhouse

As you can see from the video, the inside of the Wampanoag longhouse had ribs, and the walls were lined with blankets and furs to keep everyone warm. The fire would have been kindled in the middle of the room for warmth as well as for cooking.

wampanoag-longhouse

The Pilgrim village had people that were dressed in period costumes as well as tour guides that gave demontrations. I filmed snippets of several of these actors and tour guides. A couple of women were singing an old melodic hymn, a Pilgrim man in one of the cabins was talking about what life was like back in the 1620’s, and a tour guide gave me a demonstration of cooking in that era. It was all very interesting.

plymouth-plantation-village

I enjoyed seeing the furniture in each of the houses. The beds each had curtains around them to keep in the warmth and to have privacy from the rest of the cabin. Each house had a chimney with a place to cook over a fire for the kitchen area. A small table and chairs rounded out the furniture in each house. The Pilgrims were simple folk.

plymouth-inside-cottage

At the head of the street was a fort, where cannons were kept as well as places to look out above the village, to see if danger was coming. This fort had a place downstairs that looked like it would have been used for school or church, since the entire village could have fit in it.

plymouth-plantation-fort

I also loved the animals and gardens surrounding each Pilgrim house. It really felt like we went back in time!

plymouth-village

For more hands-on activities for this time period, take a look at our Pilgrims Unit Study, on sale right now for only $5!

Mayflower Tour

Thursday, September 23rd, 2021

mayflower-tour

Last month my family flew to the east coast for a family reunion with my husband’s family, and one of our favorite activities was touring the Mayflower! The ship is a replica of the original ship, which went back to England and eventually deteriorated.

Mayflower Tour

Here is our tour of the ship:

My husband’s sister lives in Massachussetts, which is the area where the Pilgrims landed in the New World back in 1620. We hadn’t seen this side of our family in six years, so my kids were excited to see how much their cousins had grown. We had a wonderful time re-connecting.

plymouth-rock-sign

Plymouth Rock is still there, even though it has been chipped away by tourists for years, making it better called Plymouth Pebble. It’s a bit anti-climactic for present-day tourists, who look down on it from the cage or jail cell where it now resides near the beach where the Mayflower ship replica is harbored.

plymouth-rock

When we climbed aboard the Mayflower, we stepped back in time. The ship is actually quite small! Above deck, we walked around the ship, which is not very much exercise, since the entire ship from front to back is only about a dozen steps in total.

on-deck-mayflower

Below deck, it was easy to envision the cramped conditions of the 102 men, women, and children who were living down here for 66 days–over two months! I felt sorry for them, since their conditions didn’t improve that much when they arrived in the New World, only to die of starvation.

inside-mayflower

No wonder Thanksgiving Day really affects our hearts, to know that the Native Americans helped the Pilgrims to survive in this unknown land. We give thanks every year for all the many blessings we take for granted, which the Pilgrims had to mostly do without.

This was a really fun educational field trip for American history that I’d always wanted to do with my kids. It was worth doing, and I’m glad we got to do it with our extended family.

If you want more hands-on activities for this time period, check out our Pilgrims Unit Study!