Work Scientifically – Diary of a First Child

Over the summer we bought a wonderful little book called the Tree Detectives’ Handbook with which the children are able to identify common British trees by their leaves, fruit and flowers.

Each two-page set has a species of trees, and each set contains vital statistics for the tree in question, including height, location, and fruiting and flowering times. The book contains fifty trees and common shrubs found in the UK including identification tips and detailed illustrations for every tree. There are also interactive boxes where little explorers can record their sightings. Tree Detectives Handbook

Using Beads To Show How Feelings Affect Life

Home / 4-5 / Using Beads To Show How Feelings Affect Life

September 9, 2016September 9, 2016 by Luschka

We’re talking about feelings and emotions at the moment, because both seem to be running high with my four-going-on-fourteen and six-going-on-sixteen year olds. Sometimes its hard to know what really sinks in, but this evening as we were climbing into bed, my youngest was becoming shouty, then stopped herself and said “Mommy, I’m feeling sadness” – the sadness was about going to bed, which was promptly ended by falling asleep, but it was progress, still!

I saw a picture of window charms made from melting beads somewhere recently, and it struck me as a good way of showing how different emotions and feelings can be amassed in a melting pot to make a life – spend the majority of your days angry, and you’ll have an angry life. Spend the majority of your days joyful and you’ll have a joyful life. (With the obvious exception of mental health concerns.) I wanted to demonstrate this visually.

First I rummaged around for a variety of beads and poured them into a muffin case and labelled each colour on the tin.

In our example I used white for happiness, pink for joy, light blue for sadness, dark blue for anger, dark pink for fear and orange for disgust – these being the six major emotions. Read more: Using Beads To Show How Feelings Affect Life

Classifying Animals Into Categories

Home / 6 - 7 / Classifying Animals Into Categories

January 26, 2016February 1, 2016 by Luschka

We’re busy reading The Incredible Journey by Sheila Burnford which starts off with a passage describing the landscape around Ontario, Canada, and the wildlife found in the forests. I decided this passage was a great place to do some ‘classifying living things‘.

“… all these human beings together are as a handful of sand upon the ocean shores, and for the most part there is silence and solitude and an uninterrupted way of life for the wild animals that abound there: moose and deer, brown and black bears; lynx and fox; beaver, muskrat and otter; fishers, mink and marten. The wild duck rest there and the Canada goose, for this is a fringe of the central migratory flyway. The clear tree-fringed lakes and rivers are filled with speckled trout and steelheads, pike and pickerel and whitefish.”

I grabbed a bunch of photos from Canadian Geographic and put together a sheet of pictures with categories to divide them into.

Click here to download the printable worksheet.

I recommend laminating the cards.

Create columns and sort by:

⦁ Bipedal animals and Quadruped animals
⦁ Nocturnal or Diurnal animals
⦁ Terrestrial or Aquatic animals
⦁ Herbivores, Carnivores or Omnivores
⦁ Conservation Status – Common or Endangered

And because most of us haven’t done Animal Sciences in some time, here are the Cambridge Dictionary Definitions to help you out. (Us mamas have to stick together!!)

Biped – an animal that walks on two legs
Quadruped – an animal that walks on four legs
Nocturnal – active during the night
Diurnal – active during the day
Terrestrial animals – living on the land rather than in the water or air
Aquatic animals – living or growing in water
Herbivore – animal that eats only plants
Carnivore – animal that eats only animals
Omnivore – animal that eats plants and animals

Diary of a First Child

Category: Work Scientifically

Tree Detectives’ Handbook For Tree Identification

Classifying Animals Into Categories

Click here to download the printable worksheet.