Professor Noggin's Card Games - Official Review

Our family has been using these games for years and they are a fun, entertaining and exciting way to learn a number of subjects in numerous categories from Science to History to Art to Geography. These fun games can take your family to the far corners of Outer Space and deep into the Ocean. You can find a complete list of titles - HERE

Each game comes with 30 cards and 1 three numbered dice - meaning a six sided die that has 1, 2, & 3 on two sides each. Each card has 6 questions - 3 easy and 3 hard - which makes it fantastic to play with the whole family regardless of the amount of knowledge individuals may have in each area. Questions come in the form of true or false, multiple choice or trivia. I truly can not say enough about these fantastic product!

Here are the titles we have on our bookshelf -

  

Human Body Study - Completed

We have finally completed our Human Body Study and KM has completed her exhibit...






All pics taken by KM ~ She did a fabulous job on this study! I was very impressed with her increased initiative and independence throughout this project!

Human Body Study - update

I have mentioned several times ~ starting way back when ~ how much KM has been enjoying her Human Body study.

First I have to mention the new subscription that we got to Adaptive Curriculum through Homeschool Buyer's Co-op group buy. OH MY GOSH!!! It is fantastic, I was so impressed with the 10-day trial that we did get the year subscription and it is such an incredible supplement. Science is one of KM's favorite subjects, whereas for me it is one of the most daunting because I feel like I know the least in this area. Therefore it is far and away the one area that I spend the most money on, but I am also so super careful that the things that I get are secular, accurate, engaging, entertaining and WORTH THE COST! This program so is!!! KM has been asking each day to redo the experiments and activities that are on it and since it is interactive she is really understanding the concepts and can work through the situations and experiments on her own. WE LOVE IT! Here is a screen shot of the DNA building model -




You had to build the DNA strand and then it showed you what you animal you would have built based on the given combination that you picked! VERY COOL!

We also did some exploring at the Museum of Science last week. Of course it was their busiest field trip day of the year - just our luck! - but we did manage to get to most of the exhibits that we wanted to -

Explored the different mechanical solutions to bone repair and zapped tumors.

Hmmm...that eye looks familiar, she got it together in a snap and the giant ear was a cinch as well!

She had a very lengthy and informative conversation with a MOS volunteer who explained how infrared lighting works and how the different levels of light can be scene by the eye.

Her FAVORITE exhibit though was a new one on Nano technology

It was amazing to see all the things that they can do with these TINY little particles! I think this will be next weeks research project!

Science this week - Nervous System

As we were finishing up on the nervous system this week I remembered that I had some little kits that I had picked up on clearance somewhere or gotten with my Scholastic teacher points - not sure which one...

First was the brain -

Next was an eye -

She has also been diligently working on our human body exhibit and we will have updated pics of that next week!

Egg and Vinegar Finale -

So we finished up the egg and vinegar experiment today. The egg had been in the vinegar for 6 full days - you can see the first set of pics for this HERE. Today we decided to take it out and see what we really had left.

This was the membrane that was left over when the vinegar ate all the calcium.

KM then examined it under the maxscope.
We then compared the membrane from the vinegar egg and the membrane in the shell from my breakfast this morning.

We were very surprised at how movable and elastic like the membrane that had been soaking in vinegar was. It had the texture of paper, but was stretch like elastic. VERY STRANGE!

I will say that I am very glad that the vinegar smell will be gone from my kitchen -
for a while anyway!

Building Barbara Bones -

When I ordered this book I had assumed that it would be a perforated book -

IT WAS NOT!!!
So after three days of cutting...

and almost an entire roll of tape...
we have completed building Ms. Barbara Bones!
and she will be the featured central piece of our human body exhibit!

What happens when you have...

an ordinary hard boiled egg -

and

after only a few minutes it looks like:

and after a few hours -

and after 36 hours

Click on the pic so you can look at them closer and you can really see what is going on.

Stay tuned to see what happens in the next episode of Vinegar and the Egg!!!

For anyone who missed the reference let me just say we have been watching a bit too much of Rocky & Bullwinkle around here lately!

Another Nifty Science Experiment...

...from the free homeschool Classic Life Science curriculum by Mr. Q. Although we have found some small errors in some of the text - more grammatical than anything. This program still rocks!!! The fact that it is free is even better, but the BEST part is all the really cool, simple experiments that are included that can be done with things you have right around your house. Some of the other experiments I have posted have come from this curriculum as well and I do try to credit him whenever I can!

So today we were discussing the digestive organs and how they break down food. We then did the experiment for this unit which was called Cat's Meow -

Please excuse some of the spelling errors and/or homophone mistakes in the video! She did this one pretty much all on her own!

We are back from our WONDERFUL trip!!!

We arrived home last night and thank the heavens had a wonderful flight both ways and very little bad weather while we were there! We had some great adventures and learned some pretty cool stuff along the way!

Saturday we went to Pine Island and had a wonderful afternoon on the beach. As you can see it was a bit cloudy, but the most amazing thing happened. Gustaf was passing over the Gulf at this point and as we were sitting on the beach we looked out and saw these things that kept popping out of the water - then we realized they were dolphin fins! A pod of dolphins was swimming less than 50 ft off the shore! It was the most amazing thing! Of course we couldn't get close to them, but still - KM technically got to swim with dolphins!!! How cool is that!
You can't see them in the picture above, but they were swimming just past the landing near the signs.

KM has ALWAYS loved to make sandcastles and dig at the beach, but she decided to turn herself into a mermaid instead!

Sunday we went to the MOSI - in Tampa!

KM, my dad and his wife played a very large game of operation!

We played a few rounds of a great game show!

KM got to experience what it feels like to be in the center of a twister!
The wind speeds went up to 85mph!

We ended our day in their HUGE hands-on activity section called Kids-In-Charge!
This was the greatest kids section of a musuem I have EVER seen. It covered everything from magnets to air pressure, optical illusions to logic puzzles and everything in between!

Monday we hung around the pool area and didn't do much of anything - you just need those days sometimes!
Tuesday we were off to the Lowry Zoo for some close encounters with some amazing animals!

and lots of babies!

The meerkats were so cute!!! It seemed like their was always one watching you!

The lemurs have always been my favorites - I think because we watched soooo much Zoboomafoo when KM was little!
We fell in love with Manatees on our last visit and still think they are amazing creatures! We had the whole Sting Ray pool to ourselves! KM wouldn't touch one, but grampa did!

There were sooo many baby animals. It seemed like every turn we made there was another sign saying "New Arrivals"

All and all it was a great day at the zoo!!!

On Wed we went to do one of Grampa's favorite things - Bowling!
We are used to candelpin, but they don't even know what that is in the south,
so it was off to the big balls - Ten Pin Bowling!

Then we played in the small arcade for a bit!
Thursday was our last day in the tropics! (It was HUMID) so KM wanted to try some Shuffleboard! She did really well.
On the flight home Thursday evening I asked KM what her favorite part of the trip was -

Here response was playing the funny piano at the MOSI - turn on your sound:

Instead of playing different instruments, this keyboard played different bodily functions!

All and all it was a very good, relaxing, enjoyable trip! Just what we needed!