Today the boys and I headed about an hour NW of Calgary to the Cochrane Ecological Institute, a wildlife facility. You can find out more about them here. Their mandate is: The Cochrane Ecological Institute- Cochrane Wildlife Reserve Society is devoted to the preservation of North America’s biodiversity through the conservation and breeding of endangered [...]
The boys and I have been enjoying a series of short videos (about 5 minutes each) from the University of Gothenburg about chemistry, and how it is “all around you”. The videos are hosted by two Swedes who speak flawless English, and make chemistry accessible and exciting. These videos have expanded our knowledge of what [...]
Late last week we plunged back into –20C territory, and I remembered a science experiment someone had told me about ages ago. Take two cups of water—one regular, cold-from-the-tap water, and one boiling water. Throw them in really cold outdoor temperatures. Any guesses as to what will happen? I started by getting the boys outside. [...]
We began our day by having a look at some scientist Valentines that someone had posted on one of the homeschooling lists I am on. You can find the images here. They are quite clever and ‘punny’, and the boys—particularly Daegan—have enough science background to get some of jokes. Their clear favourite was the Charles [...]
This evening Daegan and I watched a show I had PVR’ed earlier—an episode of PBS’s Nature, entitled Birds of the Gods. It was about birds of paradise, and was absolutely amazing! You can find details about the episode here, and folks in the US can watch the full episode there online as well. It was [...]
Do your kids know about the new animated show Wild Kratts from the Kratt’s brothers? Martin and Chris Kratt, of Zoboomafoo fame, have a new show that airs on PBS. It’s a cartoon in which the Kratt’s brothers characters save animals by donning “animal power suits” in which they take on the abilities of various [...]
The other day the whole family watched an episode of MythBusters that we all thought was fantastic: Bug Special. If you are unfamiliar with the show, have a quick read here for what it is all about. In this episode, they tested three things: 1 – whether or not bees, temporarily glued to a laptop, [...]
The boys (and I too!) were quite taken with the Rocks and Minerals science crate activities that we did last fall at a science class at CHSA. I blogged about the science classes here. To continue our learning, I got some DVDs out of the library on the topic, and one of our favourites came [...]
This afternoon we had our final nature class of the year with Judy, environmental educator at Outdoors In. We learned all about owls, focussing on the 11 species of owl that live in Alberta. Judy showed the kids pictures and accurately-sized silhouettes of various owls, like this Northern Saw-Whet owl: For many of the owls [...]
This fall, the boys took a new homeschool offering: drama class at Evergreen Theatre. Evergreen does educational productions for schools on themes of science, nature and the environment; you can read about when we went to see their production Flushed, all about the wastewater treatment process, here. The theme of the boys’ drama class was [...]