Earth Science 2026!

I am a bit out of sync with my homeschool schedule with the rotation of what I teach, so I decided to do earth science this semester, starting with astronomy. 

BUT I never finished a couple lessons from our biology year, so I went back, and we had a lesson about ecosystems, biospheres, and environment. I think the kids liked it. I have a different group of kids than other years. We are evolving. I only have one class and they are all the "youngers" who are not that young anymore. We often have a visitor I don't know who comes to test the waters of my classes. I think they usually like it. My favourite "experiment" for that week was assigning each child a part in the ecosystem. Someone was grass, another a grasshopper, another a bird etc, and we made a web to see who ate/depended on the other. Then we got rid of one of the kids, and the entire ecosystem was effected.

The next week we studied plants. I should know the most about this subject, since this is the "official" subject I studied the most in college for science, but I feel like I forgot lots, and I forget why/if there's a distinction between nuts and seeds and other things like that. 

We did talk about Xylem and how plants carry water, and we put carnations in different coloured water to prove this, and we put limp celery in water to revive it.

Then I felt like we had officially done "enough" for our biology year, so I started our galaxy unit, and we started with the origin of the galaxy which starts with a bang....a big bang...haha...that was a lame joke lol.

But first, we talked a lot about light since that is the way main way we study the universe. We talked about prisms, bending light, lasers, and telescopes in general. I brought out our huge lens for this.

So the next week we learned about the big bang and red shift. We talked about cannibal galaxies, black holes, and all that...you know...bigger than life stuff. 

Inspired by Veritasium, I made this chart to show the order of size within the universe (don't worry....we talked about how some moons are bigger than some planets etc.). When Veritasium went out on the streets, the average person couldn't put these in the right order, so I felt it was my duty to teach my kiddos so they wouldn't be as inept....or at least if they didn't know, it wouldn't be my fault.

Then we talked about stars and constellations the next week. Including why stars twinkle and planets don't, how hotter stars are brighter, star's life cycles, and showing how our constellations are only visible from earth because if we looked at them from somewhere else in the galaxy, the stars would not make the same designs.

 

The next week we studied the sun and introduced our solar system. We talked about orbits, solar observations, sun dials, and how the sun effects us. As part of this, I threw a ball as levelly as I could and the ball followed a curved path as gravity pulled it down, and we talked about how the planets and moons are just constantly falling. 

(Do you see the earth ball?---maybe I should have uploaded the video. Oh well.)

And also we talked about the Aurora Borealis and how the earth's magnetism effects that, so we had our own "energetic particles from the sun" (ie iron fillings) rain down on our "magnetic earth" (ie just a magnet under a paper)

The next week we talked about the inner planets. This had us talking about the size and distance of planets, Mercury, Venus, and a little bit of Mars. 

As part of this, I asked them what mnemonic they wanted to use "My Very Educated mother just served us nine pizzas," or the one my class made up when I was little "Many Vampires Eat Monsters Jumping Squares Using Nut Pillows." And they decided they wanted to come up with their own (and I encouraged them to include Pluto....because I'm a 90s girl....) so they cam up with "Magnificent Vengeance Exterminates My Junior Siblings Using No Patience." Uhhhhhh yeah, that's a little harsh for a saying, but they had fun reciting it every time we had science.

The next week we learned about the outer planets, but I hadn't finished Mars, so we did that first, and as part of that, we did the experiment where we had sand in one jar and sand that had yeast in it in the other and then we added sugar water to both, and the yeast interacted, but without the yeast it didn't. (This was supposed to simulate trying to find life on Mars.)

Then we learned about the astroid belt, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and of course (again, I'm a 90s mom) Pluto. As part of this, I kept saying Your-in-us and the kids kept on going on about the pronunciation, so for better or for worse, I showed them this video (I told the parents that I did this)

By the way, EVERY movie about planets that CGP Grey makes is SOOO good! And we watched at least one more of his (about the mostest closest planets.) 

And then We learned about other elements of the solar system like meteors and comets. 

And we talked about the moon. This is one of my favourite lessons I do because I was so confused about the orbit of the moon as a child, and I feel like I didn't truly understand everything about it until I watched this youtube video by Mark Rober: 

We get out an earth, a moon, and a sun, and we act out exactly what happens so we have a hands on experience with the moon's orbit. I find this so important because it can be confusing, but hardly anyone came!!!! I remember back during the pandemic when I taught three full classes of kids! Now I guess I'm just not popular, But hey! At least my own kids know about the moon's orbit.

Oh, and we talk about craters, tides, the moon's reflection, and a bit about space exploration.

About this time of the year, the Artemis II mission blasted off!!!! I WAS SO EXCITED! and I was so pumped that my kiddos were prepped to be excited about this because of all that we were learning. WE ARE GOING TO THE MOON!!!!

Then we talked about EARTH. Yes, we didn't really get to Earth when talking about the inner planets. We talked about seasons, Zodiacs, the earth's rotation, more about how sunlight effects things, and more about the earth as a magnet.

As one of our biggest activities for this, we made "season trees" by glueing on little bits of tissue paper onto trees to represent the seasons. I know, I know. This is more of a craft than an experiment, but hey, they seemed to like it. 

The next week we talked about the age of the earth (when doing this, I said this to the parents...who are all LDS...."We talked about the age of the earth today. I talked about how, starting with Brigham Young, and going on to other prophets, they have consistently refused to have an absolute doctrine on how old the earth was, because it's not necessary for our salvation.

I said some believe creation was literally 6 days, some 6,000 years, and some say a "day" is a time period that could be millions or billions of years. It's okay to believe what ever way you want, because we don't know for sure and God hasn't told us for sure, but then I said what science is saying today (the billions of years scenario)"

We talked about fossils and contour maps. We talked about natural resources, conservation, energy, and pollution. As part of the pollution thing, we talked about how oil and water don't mix.

 

The next week we learned about Structure of the Earth. During which we talked about the mantle, the earth's "wobble" the rock cycle, minerals, and even more about the magnetic properties of the earth. As part of this, we took a "core sample" of an egg to show how taking a core sample of Earth's crust works.

Also, in this year's science, I would always realize I didn't get to something, or needed to review something, and this day, I just HAD to show my kiddos an experiment I had seen online that showed just how far away the moon was from the earth....it's much farther than you think!!!

 The next week was ROCK COLLECTION WEEK! (Don't get too excited...none of the kids brought any cool rock collections or had any rock to share....this was different than every other time I've done this....kind of a let down.) But regardless, we studied igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic rocks. we also talked about crystals, coal, oil and gas. As part of this, we looked at crystals under the telescope and showed how pressure melted things....like ice.

The next week we learned about shifting plates, plate tectonics, mountains, plains, and plateaus. As part of this, my wonderful hubby helped me make these "faults" and then, when we were learning about them, Abraham insisted that we draw in them, and I actually think it added so much value to the experience! It's fun, but also educational...fossils and history, right?

The next week we learned about Earthquakes, seismic waves, magma, and VOLCANOES! My boys know a thing or two about volcanoes...have GONE to one...

We learned about waves using a slinky, and we talked about how magma can be made out of lots of different things, and of course, we made our own little volcano out of baking soda and vinegar. The good ol' science fair standard. 

By the way. I know I usually only show one photo to represent a whole week of science, but there's so much I don't capture. Here's my supplies at the beginning that I needed to gather to do all the experiments that I wanted to do: 

And here's the picture I would show that doesn't capture all the other experiments:

The next week we learned about mechanical and chemical weathering, and soil. We also talked about erosion, abrasion, slopes, water, wind, and glaciers. This is a really DIRTy lesson, but I feel like I did it way better last time I taught about this. For some reason, I could not get my hoodoos to work. All the sand got wiped out under the coins instead of leaving hoodoos under the coins. I wish that had worked because I think it is so educational about why we have certain formations, but it didn't and I was too lazy to figure out how to fix it. 

The next week we learned about the water cycle. And we talked about filtering water. We also talked about oceans including currents. As part of this, we put hot water inside cold water, and saw the hot water current move through the cold water. We also showed hot water staying on top of cold water. (we do that in our chemistry year too...but I love it enough to do it multiple times a science cycle.) 

The next week we learned about atmosphere. Air, gases in air, wind, and atmospheric layers we the order of the day. To show that there is oxygen in the air we did the egg getting sucked up into a bottle trick (an egg that has a birthday candle on it gets sucked in after the flame eats up all the oxygen...another experiment we do multiple years.) 

As part of this we made pinwheels, because they're fun. 

YIPPEE! We are to our last science class of the year. I was trying to stuff everything into a short time. We only had half a year to do everything, and I didn't show it, but we were gone a lot even though we were technically "home." 

So for our last lesson, we stuffed everything "weather" into basically one week. We learned about humidity, condensation, precipitation, fronts, thunder lightning, tornados, and hurricanes, al at once. That probably wasn't too effective, but maybe they learned something!

As part of this, when we were learning about thunder and lightning, we talked about static electricity:

AND THAT'S IT FOR SCIENCE!

Classification of Living Things!

 Now SCIENCE!!!

Okay, so I left off talking about DNA. Well, I felt like I needed to do even more about this subject, so we continued talking about DNA the next week and we cut gummy bears as an "experiment." 

Now we had talked about all the systems of the body (musculature, bones, excretory, digestive, circulatory, respiratory, nervous, and reproductive) BUT we had not talked about the five senses. so first we talked about hearing. We made a model of the ear with household objects and we also showed how sound travels better through solids (like string.) I love this experiment where they ding spoons connected to strings. It's always surprising. 

However, the experiment where you put clay in the folds of your ears to mess up your sound direction didn't work! Maybe we needed to try it outside where there was no echo.

Then we talked about sight. I was so sad I couldn't find my glasses that turns everything up side down! Those were the coolest, and make an important point. But we DID get two cows eyes to dissect, and unlike last time, these were from a cow that was NOT blind, so there actually was a lens, which was awesome to feel. It wasn't as solid as I thought. I completely squished it at the end of the dissection.

Then we learned about taste and smell. (We did these the same week.) We did a lot of taste testing and mapping of our taste buds. I made some chicken green to show how our senses work together to give us clues about how things will taste and if they're safe.

One week we also learned about touch. I don't think I have any photos of our actual class, but we did this experiment that I had seen on facebook, and it DID NOT work....well not totally. You were supposed to be able to touch this fake hand and trick your brain into thinking it was yours, but (unlike the Facebook video) if you didn't actually touch your hand, you couldn't feel anything.

Now that we had thoroughly studied the body, we needed to study the classification of living things. We started out by "classifying" our shoes. This is the only thing that I did in school that I remembered and carried into my science class. We take everyone's shoes and put them into categories until we have a full taxonomy of shoes.

The next week (or did we have enough time that week? It's all jumbled in my memory) we talked about the different kingdoms. We focused mostly on the fungus and bacteria kingdoms. 

I had them take petri dishes and go through my house and collect cultures from things in my house. Over the next few days, this became very disgusting:

This one I got from my ice maker....which instills all kinds of confidence in the cleanliness of my house.

 Then we learned about invertebrates. We were running out of time to be done for the year, so I tried to do as many invertebrates as possible. We did worms, (and played with worms) and molluscs (and ate snails.) Speaking of eating snails, 4 years ago when we had this lesson, I just had them eat escargot right out of the can, but as I was going to buy them this time, my Francophone friend said I had to cook it in garlic and butter or it was gross, so I did that this time. Last year, only one kid was brave enough to eat it, but this time, I think they all did! It pays to know how to cook!  

But then we also talked about bugs. I had them take "butterflies" and stick them in "pollen" (ie glitter) and then into another bowl of "pollen" and see if they could spread the different kinds of pollen around. They went CRAZY and I think I still have glitter in my dining area!

I had asked them to bring any bugs that they had caught to show to the class. ZABY was a STINKER and had brought this huge jar that he had covered with a tea towel. I though I was going to see an ant, and was confused when I thought I saw the bottle move a bit. This put me a little on edge, and when I lifted the towel, I saw a WET GOPHER! (For some reason, it being wet was sooo disconcerting.) I of course screamed and Zaby was so proud because my scream had been his goal.

Then the next week we finished invertebrates by doing arachnids and crustaceans. Honestly, they seem incredibly closely related. Think about a scorpion and a lobster....brothers! We dissected a crawdad. We had enough for everyone to dissect one! And boy did they STINK! I've never had a dissection that stunk so bad. But I think they all thought it was pretty fascinating. 

We learned about reptiles and amphibians. Yes, I taught them in the same lesson because summer was closing in on us. We of course dissected a frog. The tongue always gets me. So crazy.

The next week we learned about fish. I put it on facebook that I needed a fresh fish that had all its guts, and a super nice fisherman jumped at the chance. (Any excuse to go fishing seemed to please him! LOL.) Fresh specimens are so superior to things preserved. The swim bladder was even still inflated. 

Then we learned about birds. One of my favourite dissections ever is dissecting owl pellets, and they are expensive online and four years ago, my friend had brought a ton extra that were just in her backyard (she's in the country...more than me.) So I thought I could get some, but it was a bit of an adventure.

Since my friend's owl had deserted her, yet again I said on facebook I needed them, and when I was driving one day, a friend tracked me down (I had a very distinctive car) and told me (all conspiratorial) where to get a huge amount of them. I thankfully knew of the farm he was talking about, and boldly went up to the farm house later that week and asked if I could look on their farm, and they said yes.

I looked for half an hour, I kid you not, and had only found a few. Suddenly I found a huge pile of them. I looked up, and sure enough, there was a nest. My advice: look for a nest before you look for pellets.

We had more than enough for everyone, and I think they had a blast looking through the pellets for bones.

Our final class was dissecting a PIG! I have never received a specimen this way:

Yep. That's a pig in a bucket of formaldehyde. Yum

Honestly, it was well preserved, and it really was a good culmination of everything we've learned all year. We opened the bucket and dissected it OUTSIDE. I had learned my lesson from the crawdads that this did not need to be an inside affair.

That middle photo is of the brain. Everyone was pretty insistent that we get to the brain. That was a hard thing to do! The brain was so well protected by the skull! Which was a lesson in and of itself. You can see me comparing it to the small intestine because they looked similar. 

Oh! And we had a bonus science class. My sister-in-law asked me to come over with all my ideas of how to play with dry ice. You don't have to ask me twice! I knew exactly what to do with dry ice. It turned out she had buckets and buckets and buckets worth of dry ice! (By the way, it's really hard to get ahold of dry ice in Canada.) I guess what had happened was that her friend was using the dry ice to brand her cattle. Instead of heat burning them, they cold burned them (if that makes sense.) And we got her left overs.

We had so much fun, but there was so much even after, so we went with some of those left overs to another friend and had even more fun. We put a ton in their sink and it filled up the room (DO NOT WORRY! We were in a ventilated area with doors open and made the kids run outside every 2 minutes.) It was so much fun!

And that's is for science for the year. Did we get to plants or ecosystems? No. Does that bug me? Yes. Will I do anything about that? Not sure.