My new favorite thing!

Homeschooling will never be the same for us!  I have discovered 360 Cities - a website that lets you access interactive 360º panorama images of user-submitted locations all over the world!!  The interactive and spherical nature of these images really bring the locations to life and make it feel like you're standing there in person - a night and day difference from a 2D image.  And the way the images are cataloged makes it incredibly easy to search for exactly what or where you're looking for, and you even have the option of clicking on a global map to explore images from any area of your choosing.  The homeschool applications are unending!  Are you studying China's great wall?  Why not try standing on it?!  Or might you be studying geology and cave formation?  Have a look around one for yourself!  You could visit the Louvre, see what it's like inside the engine room of a submarine, pay your respects at Ground Zero, go scuba diving in Egypt, stand on top of a volcano!  The possibilities are truly endless!!  And ds10 and I COULDN'T be having more fun.  :)  And isn't that how it's supposed to be??  :D

Crash Course videos

Add this to your toolbox: the Crash Course YouTube video series from Vlogbrothers.  As of this posting they have made 64 videos, 32 each on World History and Biology.  The videos are silly, exciting, very visual, interesting, and extremely engaging.  Their geeky-silly style is akin to Bill Nye, Alton Brown, and Horrible Histories.  And through this unique combination, the producers are incredibly able to cram you full of more information in 12 minutes than you've probably learned in your lifetime on a subject, and have you able to not only understand but retain it all.  IMPORTANT NOTE: these videos are targeted toward older kids or young adults, and are sometimes quite blunt in their content matter, so you should preview each video before having your child watch it to determine the level of appropriateness.  But don't worry - they're so fun, you won't mind one bit watching the video a second time with your child!  ANOTHER IMPORTANT NOTE: these videos are also blatantly secular in their perspective, so often there will be philosophies in them that don't line up with the philosophies of most conservative homeschoolers.  So again, preview each video first.  However, I still maintain that these videos are useful, despite some of the content, due to their ability to engage and interest the learner and effectively give them a big-picture understanding of a topic before delving into the topic for further study.  Please consider using them as a sort of preview of a subject, and following up each video with questions and conversation and further learning.  And for parents of younger children, or children for whom the videos aren't appropriate, parents should also consider watching them for themselves, so that YOU can have a working understanding of the topic at hand before you delve into it.  Or, you know, for pure entertainment, because these videos are CRAZY FUN!!

The list of videos to date, not in any particular order...

BIOLOGY

Your Immune System: Natural Born Killer

Evolution: It's a Thing

The Big Guns: Your Muscular System

Your Skeleton: It's ALIVE!

The Excretory System: From Your Heart to the Toilet

The Digestive System

Circulatory & Respiratory Systems

The Nervous System

Animal Behavior

Chordates

Complex Animals: Annelids & Arthropods

Simple Animals: Sponges, Jellies, & Octopuses

Comparative Anatomy: What Makes Us Animals

Taxonomy: Life's Filing System

Population Genetics: When Darwin Met Mendel

Evolutionary Development: Chicken Teeth

Animal Development: We're Just Tubes

Speciation: Of Ligers & Men

Natural Selection

Meiosis: Where the Sex Starts

Mitosis: Splitting Up is Complicated

DNA, Hot Pockets, & The Longest Word Ever

DNA Structure and Replication

Heredity

Photosynthesis

ATP & Respiration

Plant Cells

In Da Club - Membranes & Transport

Eukaryopolis - The City of Animal Cells

Biological Molecules - You Are What You Eat

Water - Liquid Awesome

That's Why Carbon Is A Tramp

HISTORY

Coal, Steam, and The Industrial Revolution

Latin American Revolutions

Haitian Revolutions

The French Revolution

Tea, Taxes, and The American Revolution

The Amazing Life and Strange Death of Captain Cook

The Seven Years War

The Spanish Empire, Silver, & Runaway Inflation

The Atlantic Slave Trade

The Columbian Exchange

The Renaissance: Was it a Thing?

Russia, the Kievan Rus, and the Mongols

Venice and the Ottoman Empire

International Commerce, Snorkeling Camels, and The Indian Ocean Trade

Wait For It...The Mongols!

Mansa Musa and Islam in Africa

The Crusades - Pilgrimage or Holy War?

The Dark Ages...How Dark Were They, Really?

Islam, the Quran, and the Five Pillars All Without a Flamewar

Fall of The Roman Empire...in the 15th Century

Christianity from Judaism to the Constantine

The Roman Empire. Or Republic. Or...Which Was It?

The Silk Road and Ancient Trade

Alexander the Great and the Situation ... the Great?

‎2,000 Years of Chinese History! The Mandate of Heaven and Confucius: World History

Buddha and Ashoka

The Persians & Greeks

Ancient Egypt

Mesopotamia

Indus Valley Civilization

The Agricultural Revolution

Columbus, de Gama, and Zheng He! 15th Century Mariners

Horrible Histories, and much MUCH more!

Getting your child interested and engaged in learning a subject makes teaching and learning tremendously more effective and enjoyable. The "Horrible Histories" videos that were put out in the UK are a brilliant and fantastically comedic way to do just that - especially for one the most notoriously "boring" subjects ever. But be warned! The humor is crude and bluntly honest, and though there's no foul language or such, parents may want to preview these videos first to determine the level or appropriateness for their child (I recommend pre-teen and up). That being said, I reiterate, THEY ARE HILARIOUS!!! And full of interesting tidbits you never would have imagined. Here is a list of all the videos that were made, and they can all be found through a simple YouTube search such as this one.

There is also the related book series, which is equally comical, gruesome, and intellectually engaging.  My 10 year old boy is eating them up like candy!  Here is a complete list of the Horrible Histories books, which are available for purchase in many different combinations and formats.

And THEN there is the Horrible Science book series, which ds10 finds absolutely amazing!
And THEN there is the Murderous Maths book series, which ds10 finds utterly astounding!
And THEN there is the Horrible Geography book series, which ds10 finds incredibly intriguing!
And America's Funny But True History series, which we haven't read yet.
Oh, and we musn't forget the Boring Bible series - which makes learning about God's word anything BUT!  :)
...and several other minor book spinoffs that I don't have room to list.

There is also a Horrible Histories website, a Murderous Maths website, and a Horrible Science website, each with some fun games and bits of trivia on it, but IMHO they are utterly lacking compared to the books and videos, and not worth looking at except to preview the kind of material you are likely to find in the books.

Educational graphic novels for kids

Rosen Publishing has a huge series of Graphic Nonfiction books covering many historical, scientific, and educational topics, each in "graphic novel" story format.  This is a GREAT way to get your visually-oriented or easily-bored readers thoroughly engaged in a topic.  They're not to be used as primary source material, but as a supplement, but a great one!  Book sets in this series include:

• Grammar Ray: A Graphic Guide to Grammar – grade 2-5: Adjectives, Adverbs, Nouns & Pronouns, Prepositions, Punctuation & Sentences, Verbs
• Graphic Battles of the Civil War – grade 4-5: Antietam, First Bull Run, Gettysburg, Shiloh, Wilderness, Monitor vs. Merrimac
• Graphic Battles of World War II – grade 5: D-Day, Pearl Harbor, Guadalcanal, Iwo Jima, Midway, The Bulge
• Graphic Dinosaurs – grade 4: 18 books, each profiling one dinosaur species in story format
• Graphic Discoveries – grade 5: Ancient Treasures, Fantastic Fossils, Incredible Space Missions, Medical Breakthroughs, Spectacular Shipwrecks, The History of Flight
• Graphic Forensic Science – grade 5: 6 books, each profiling one aspect of forensic science in story format
• Graphic Mythology – grade 4-5: 6 books exploring the mythology of ancient cultures
• Graphic Natural Disasters – grade 5: 6 books
• Graphic Nonfiction Biographies – grade 4-5: Abraham Lincoln, Christopher Columbus, George Washington, Harriet Tubman, Hernan Cortes, Sitting Bull, Alexander the Great, Cleopatra, Elizabeth I, Julius Ceasar, Richard the Lionheart, Sartacus, Bob Marley, Martin Luther King Jr., Muhammad Ali, Nelson Mandela, Rosa Parks
• Jr. Graphic American Legends – grade 2-3: Casey Jones, Jim Bowie, Paul Bunyan, Davy Crockett, Johnny Appleseed, Daniel Boone
• Jr. Graphic Biographies – grade 2-3: Sitting Bull, Hernan Cortes, Harriet Tubman, George Washington, Christopher Columbus, Abraham Lincoln
• Jr. Graphic Colonial America – 6 books, grade 2-3, telling famous stories of America’s history
• Jr. Graphic Founding Fathers – grade 2-3: , each profiling one of America’s founding fathers in story format
• Jr. Graphic Mythologies – 5 books, grade 2-3, exploring the mythology of ancient cultures
• Mandrill Mountain Math Mysteries – 10 books, grade 2-3, solving adventurous mysteries through math and logic
• Superheroes on a Medical Mission – 12 books, grade 5-8, exploring medical conditions

You may also be interested in a similar series, the Interactive History Adventure books, which I reviewed in an earlier post.

Intelligent Design science videos

I love incorporating movies, documentaries, and fun educational videos into our homeschool lessons whenever possible. And usually there are great videos to be found on nearly any subject we teach. However, when it comes to the biology section of our science lessons, I've run into a limitation with just about all the science videos I've found. They all seem to be presented from a strong evolutionary viewpoint, some almost to the the point of feeling like a platform for evolution in the disguise of a children's video. This is a problem for us, since we teach "Intelligent Design" (a.k.a. creation science), and address evolution as only a theory, and a weak one at best. So in the past I've just left video watching OUT of our biology lessons. But what fun is that for the kids? So yesterday I went searching, and found a treasure trove of ID videos on the Answers in Genesis for kids website. They're not strictly biology, but they're mostly biology, and the rest can be shelved for later. And some of them may be a bit on the cheesy side, but what kids video isn't (hehe), and after all, they're better than nothing, so I'm happy. :)

Bill Nye resources

I don't need to tell you how useful Bill Nye's videos are in helping our kids get excited about science, and retain what they learn. The man needs no introduction. Instead, I'll just share with you a few useful links.

• A complete categorized list of all his episodes, including full descriptions of each episode.
• Links to free web-hosted videos of every episode - of which Megavideo has the best quality and track record. (Use "ctrl-F" to quickly find the one you're looking for.)
• A user-submitted collection of printable student worksheets to go along with each video.

Enjoy!

6-sided paper snowflakes

'Tis the season to cut out snowflakes with your kids! Unfortunately, most people cut snowflakes the WRONG way, and don't even realize it. Thing is, real snowflakes don't have 4 sides, nor do they have 8. They have exactly 6 sides. (See photo to the right of a real snowflake!) This year, I encourage you to teach this fact to your kids by having them cut out 6-sided snowflakes instead.

Here is a pattern for cutting out a 6-sized snowflake out of paper. This is the method that I've been using since I was a little girl, and the results are FANTASTIC every time!!

Here is a pattern and tutorial for a similar method, but the steps are in a slightly different order, which some people might find easier to follow.

This pattern is adapted for use with a coffee filter. It's basically the same thing, but the diagram shows a circular pattern as you go, so it's easier to follow if using a coffee filter.

Please comment on my blog if you use one of these, and let me know how it turns out! HAVE FUN!!!