The Bare Bones

I have been trying to figure out better ways to teach my two kids at the same time. They are three years apart. I'm constantly wondering if I'm teaching down to my younger child and not challenging my older one? I have read a lot about how you can teach them at the same time, but allow the older child to go into more depth. I haven't figured out how to do this without assigning more busy work for the older child. How does she learn more without having to do an additional book report, more online research, more reading, etc.?

My oldest was in public school for over 4 years. When I said we were going to learn about the skeleton, she heaved a heavy sigh, "Mom, I've studied that, like, three times already." I held my breath for a moment. What should I do? She may have learned about the body three times, but my son hasn't ever been exposed to muscles, the brain, the bones, etc. I am really trying to teach them at the same time  as much as I can. They tend to pay attention better, have more excitement for new subjects, and I don't have to spend twice as much time teaching two kids separately. It's been a win-win situation for us to learn together.

So, we foraged on, but I tried to make it more exciting and do experiments I didn't think my daughter had already done. We made a "rubber egg" in our kitchen. The kids were able to do this one with little supervision. This experiment lead to a discussion as to why it's important to have calcium in your diet!

Then we built a skeleton out of paper towel rolls, and other items. This art activity turned out to be more difficult than I anticipated. I wasn't able to give up the image I had in my mind (of the final product) and therefore, I did a lot of the work. The kids named the completed skeleton "Bob" and they have asked to keep him around for a while.

I hope, in the end, that my daughter learned something more this time around. Maybe, not just what the bones are called or where they are located, but also a little about science and nutrition. Either way, she seemed engaged the entire time which is a "win" in my book.

Plants and Beyond

Learning all about plants:

We just completed our latest unit on plants. After reading and researching about photosynthesis, chlorophyl, and root systems, we dived into a few projects. We tried to germinate an avocado pit (once with a conventional pit and once with an organic pit, both faile

d) as well as a potato (failing now). I'm not sure why they aren't working, other than I do *not* have a green thumb. We followed directions, but for whatever reason (maybe it's winter and we don't have enough sunlight) they did not sprout.

We did get to explore a local store (3 miles from home) that we've never been to before and found it to be a fabulous, locally owned store. There, we purchased seeds and grew some wheat grass and cress (pictured in a heart formation) which worked great in less than a week. We had fun sketching them each day as there was a lot of rapid growth to keep us interested.

At the end of our unit, we made Japanese gardens and wrote Haikus to display with them.

Daughter's garden and haiku (could not convince her it was not a zen garden):

"A Zen Garden"

Here's a zen garden

Zen gardens are beautiful

I made mine today

Son's garden and haiku

"My Seeds"

Seed grow in the soil

They need water and sunlight

They become flowers