Here’s how we created our model atom of Sodium: Materials: 3mm aluminum wire Duck tape styrofoam balls (we used 2″ for the protons and neutrons, 1″ for the electrons) wire cutters fishing line Tempera paint Sharpie hot glue gun First it’s helpful to have a basic understanding of the Bohr model of an atom. Here’s…
Sometimes if you want something done right, you have to do it yourself. It follows, after not finding anything but states of matter cards that exclude plasma, I made my own sorting activity for all four states of matter: plasma included! Poor plasma always getting left out. Plasma is awesome. Plasma is all around us,…
Elements are the ingredients that make up everything. Do you know where those elements come from? Explaining a concept like nuclear fusion and the creation of all the ingredients of the cosmos might sound a little daunting for a homeschool parent (let alone for the elementary child). However I’m here to tell you it’s not…
Whenever someone asks me how to begin homeschooling an elementary-aged child in the Montessori pedagogy, I tell them it all starts with the Great Lessons. What are the Great Lessons, who are they for, and how do you implement them? Why do they matter so much? Consider this a crash course into the five impressionistic…
Packing up my shelves this week as we transition from our units on geological eras and prehistoric life towards ancient civilization. I wanted to share some books before they go back on our “library shelf” (which currently is just an avalanche of books waiting to happen. Organization fairy, please come rescue me from my good…
“Human consciousness comes into the world as a flaming ball of imagination.” –Dr Maria Montessori After the “Coming of Life” great lesson follows the “Coming of Humans” story. We have been studying the different eons and eras, and we’ve studied fundamental needs of humans by going camping and visiting a wool farm; here’s some of…
Speaking of “painting windows” in my last post… I always forget to share activities we do to the blog. So here’s one of the activities we did at the end of January for the Second Great Lesson (Coming of Life). I keep reading about the “Mural of Life” used in Montessori classrooms. Aside from the…
Do you know how big our sun is compared to our home planet? Can you visualize that? After our model solar system activity, we got a good idea for the sizes of the planets. Originally I’d really hoped to take the kids on an adventure around town showing the scale and distance apart, but even…
Life’s gotten crazy lately; I know I don’t have to tell you that. With everyone stuck at home lately corona-quarantining, how about we take a virtual field trip together? Recently, we were very privileged to meet a local artist who keeps sheep for wool and weaves beautiful textiles. What a fantastic opportunity to learn about…
We recently went on a field trip to a Primitive Arts and Stone Age Festival to learn more about the Third Great Lesson. The main highlight of it all was learning to throw the atlatl; we took turns hunting down a Wooly Mammoth. Having recently visited the skeleton of a real Mammoth, we determined we…
