The Happy Housewife™ :: Home Schooling

homeschool tips, printables, curriculum reviews, and more

5 Math Lessons Using Sunflowers

by

Springtime is a great time to get out and get planting.  And, sunflowers are the perfect flower to grow with kids, as not only are they easy and inexpensive to grow, but they can teach so many important lessons as well.

Helpful Tips for Growing Sunflowers:

  • Sunflower seeds germinate in about 10-14 days and bloom within two months of germination.
  • They need lots of direct sunlight and protection from wind.
  • Plant sunflowers in the spring after the danger of frost has passed.
  • Water often, especially at the beginning.

Take a look below at some fun, easy, and frugal math lessons using sunflowers that you can try in your own home.

5 Math Lessons Using Sunflowers | The Happy Housewife

5 Math Lessons Using Sunflowers

1. Estimation

Before you plant your sunflower seeds, make estimations about how tall you think the plant will get. Write your estimations down on paper and store them in a safe place for future reference! You can even have a contest amongst children to see who gave the closest estimation.

2. Measurement

As your sunflower grows, take a tape measure and measure its progress. It will be fun to see how fast or slow the flower grows from week to week. When the flower reaches maturity, you can even remove the head full of seeds and weight it to see how heavy it is.

3. Charting/Record Keeping

As you measure your sunflower, make a chart to mark how much it grows each day or week. Write down your measurements along with the date and any factors that may have effected growth such as rain or drought. Keep a journal of these statistics.

4. Graphing

Once you have a few weeks worth of record keeping, create a graph to show how much the sunflower grew each day or week. You will be able to pin point then when the sunflower had a growth spurt (if any) or what conditions were most favorable to its growth.

5. Counting

Counting will surely come in handy when your sunflower is ready to be harvested. Count all of the seeds it provided and add the total number of inches it grew. You can also add the rainfall for the season, average daily temperature, or other important data.

See how easy it can be to turn something as simple as growing a sunflower into some easy yet real life examples of how we use math every day?

If you use seeds for the classic sunflower (the variety that grow 6-12 feet tall) then you can harvest the seeds and enjoy them in the following recipes:

Paper Recycling: Why, How & Ways to Recycle

by

Paper Recycling: Why, How & Ways to Recycle | The Happy Housewife

By contributing writer Marci

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, paper makes up 27% of the trash Americans throw away each day. Most of that can be recycled. Paper recycling is important. Here is why, how it can happen, and ways that you can recycle paper yourself.

Why Recycle Paper?

Recycling paper has many benefits. When paper is just thrown into the trash, it takes up landfill space or adds to incineration pollution. When paper is recycled, necessary landfill space is reduced, natural resources are conserved and greenhouse gas emissions are reduced.

How To Recycle Paper

Many municipalities offer curbside recycling pick-up along with their trash collections. Other communities offer a drop-off location where recyclable materials may be taken. People just need to participate.

From the collection centers, the paper is taken to a manufacturer who takes the recycled paper and makes it back into useable paper products. This video shows the entire paper recycling process.

Ways to Recycle Your Paper

Used paper can be recycled in your own household. Just because you have written on it or received it in the mail, doesn’t mean it is useless.

Projects that Reuse Cardboard and Paper

Earth Day Worksheets: Free Printables

by

Earth Day Worksheets: Free Printables | The Happy Housewife

By contributing writer Lauren

Earth Day is coming up on April 22nd!  Do you talk about Earth Day with your children?  If so, download these Earth Day printables to work on during the month of April.

Each worksheet in this 4-page packet is written for First and Second Grade learners.

In this Earth Day Worksheet Set:

  • Earth Day Word Search
  • What goes in the compost bin? – Determine which items can be placed in a compost bin
  • Fill in the Missing Letters – Fill in the missing letters in each Earth Day-themed word
  • Word Jumbles – Unscramble each Earth Day-themed word, including the jumbled sentence
Earth Day Worksheets
Earth Day Worksheets
April Earth Day Worksheets 2014.pdf
1.0 MiB
Details...

You might also like…

Simple Earth Day Ideas

by

Simple Earth Day Ideas | The Happy Housewife

By contributing writer Tabitha

Earth Day is coming up next week, and it’s a good opportunity to get kids involved in simple ways to help preserve our natural resources and teach them awareness of our planet. It doesn’t have to be a big political statement of any kind but just another way to involve our kids in the world around them.

Over the years that I’ve had boys in Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts, I’ve learned a lot about how to be more aware of our world and take care of it. They even have awards based on this principle.

Simple Earth Day Ideas | The Happy Housewife

A deer was checking out our back yard.

10 Simple Earth Day Ideas

Keeping it simple is always good for me, because things aren’t simple around here with 10 kids.

  1. Plant something. A tree is awesome, but not always possible. A garden is good, because it gets kids digging and learning more about plants.

  2. Take a walk. Pick up garbage along the way and talk about how we can take better care of the world around us by not littering and by leaving places better than we found them.

  3. Look around your home. Have your children identify problems that might waste energy or resources. This can include leaky faucets, items plugged in all the time that don’t need to be, windows that are cracked or areas that have a draft, lights left on, etc. Help them fix them or address the problem.

  4. Find ways for your family to recycle paper, cans, and glass. Participate if possible. Talk about why it’s good to recycle.

  5. Learn about the Earth. Knowing more about something helps us to respect and love it more.

  6. Participate in any community Earth Day celebrations.

  7. Learn about plants native to your area and how to keep the ecosystems healthy.

  8. Find out what kinds of birds, animals, and insects are in your area, especially if any are endangered. Talk about how to protect those that can’t protect themselves. Start watching for birds. Build a birdhouse/feeder that would be appropriate for birds near your home.

  9. Talk about how land and water can get dirty or polluted and how we can prevent this and help with cleanup when possible.

  10. Visit a local organization that is focused on local plants or animals, like botanical gardens or a wildlife preserve.

Above all, show respect for the world around you and your children will learn from your example more than from anything you say.

I’ve found that learning and doing things together is one of the best parts of learning as a family. Enjoy your time together!

Simple Earth Day Ideas | The Happy Housewife

Even dandelions can be appreciated

You might also like…

Free Educational Resources: Christian-based Preschool Curriculum, Mammal Themed Math, Books + More

by

Sometimes in homeschooling you need a little something to get you through the week! That is what this weekly post is all about. Every Saturday I will post educational freebies to get you excited about another week of learning. Enjoy!

search1

Educational Freebies

Learning About the Water Cycle (Experiment)

by

Learning About the Water Cycle (with Experiment) | The Happy Housewife

By contributing writer Marci

Water is essential for life. Nothing can survive without it.

The water that we drink today is the same water that has kept living things alive since living things were created! The water that dinosaurs drank might have been the same water that rained upon the Mayans while they built their great temples, or maybe the same water Columbus sailed upon.

The point is that water is very important and we only have a finite supply. We need to take care of that supply.

Water Pollution

The biggest threat to our water supply on earth is water pollution. Water pollution occurs when harmful substances are released into water. This can be caused by sewage, industrial waste, or agriculture.

Pollution can be intentional or accidental. Factories might knowingly dump their waste products into water supplies to get rid of it. On the other hand, rain water can carry toxic substances from roads, work sites, and gardens into water streams.

Learning About the Water Cycle (water pollution) | The Happy Housewife

This polluted water can be harmful to the organisms in the water causing fish and water plants to die. People who drink this water can get sick and possibly die, also. That is why it is so important to both reduce the amount of pollutants that enter our water supply and to remove what pollutants do get into our water.

Nature’s Water Purification System

In our homes, we might have water filters or buy filtered water. Municipalities have water treatment facilities that clean sewer water before releasing water back into nature. These facilities and filters clean water by removing harmful substances and leaving pure water behind.

Nature has it’s own water purification system. It is called the water cycle.

Learning About the Water Cycle | The Happy Housewife

Water on the earth in oceans, lakes, streams, and even plants, evaporates and forms water vapor. As the water vapor forms, it leaves minerals and pollutants behind. As the water vapor rises into the atmosphere, it cools and turns back into tiny water droplets. These droplets form clouds.

The rain that falls from these clouds is essentially pure and free from pollutants.When the rain falls to earth, it starts the whole water cycle again.

Water Cycle Experiment

You can create a small model of the water cycle and see nature’s water purification system in action.

Supplies needed:

  • a large glass bowl
  • 2 quarts of water
  • 4 cups of dirt
  • a cup or glass shorter than the sides of the bowl
  • plastic wrap
  • a rock or two
  • the sun

Mix the water and dirt in the large bowl and stir it well. In the middle of this mess, place the cup or glass. If the cup floats, place a clean rock or other small weight in the cup.

Learning About the Water Cycle (Experiment) | The Happy Housewife

Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and place a rock in the middle of the plastic wrap just above the bowl. Put the bowl in the sun for a few hours.

After the time has passed, you should see water droplets formed on the plastic wrap. The rock should have directed some of the condensated water into the cup.

Carefully, remove the plastic wrap from the bowl and gently remove the cup. Pour the contents of the cup or glass into a glass or jar. Look at the water. Does it look like the dirty water from the bowl?

Learning About the Water Cycle (Experiment) | The Happy Housewife

The water in the bowl evaporated and left the pollutants behind. The water vapor cooled and condensed on the plastic wrap turning back into water. The clean water was collected in the cup.

That’s just how nature does it!

You might also like…

Hands-On Volcano Activities

by

By contributing writer Colleen

Kids love volcanoes. We’ve studied them several times in the years since we’ve begun to homeschool. The great thing about topics like volcanoes is that you can make them as technical or fun as you want and your kids can handle.

Recently, my kids wanted to learn about different types of volcanoes, their eruptions, and how islands form as a result of them. So, despite having made volcanoes before, we dove back into a study of these forces of nature.

This time, we focused on hands-on ways to show different types of eruptions.

In the past, we always turned to the standard baking soda and vinegar eruption when we wanted to play with volcanoes, and we did that this time, too. But, we tried other things afterwards to shake things up. Here are four different volcano activities to try with your kids.

4 Hands-On Volcano Activities | The Happy Housewife

Toothpaste Eruptions

Some islands form from lava slowly rising to the surface and cooling, while piling on top of itself. Look up some of these volcanic islands with your child and talk about their landscapes. Then, take a paper plate and a brand-new tube of toothpaste. Poke a hole in the plate and stick the toothpaste through the hole.

Hand it over to your child and let him squeeze gently, allowing the toothpaste to pool up on itself. Talk about the lava build-up and how this can form new land.

Pop Bottle Eruptions

Some eruptions occur in an extremely explosive manner. Gases, heat, and pressure build up and build up until they blow. Try this easy demonstration – take a two-liter bottle of soda and let your child shake. And shake and shake and shake. Then (while standing far away) let him open the top and watch the “gas and ash” blow. You might want to have him wear a raincoat.

Popcorn Eruptions

For a fun way to show how rock and lava disperse in a violent eruption, use a hot air popcorn popper. Put the recommended about of corn inside the popper, place it on a table, and leave the lid off. Turn it on and step back.

Watch how the popcorn explodes high up into the air with parts of the kernel floating higher – like ash. Observe how the majority of the “rock,” or popcorn, settles at the “mountain’s” base. Leave it alone and pop another serving of corn. See how the popcorn continues to build up? It’s just how mountains continue to grow after repeated eruptions.

Hands-On Volcano Activities | The Happy Housewife

Baking Soda and Vinegar Eruptions

Even if your child has made baking soda and vinegar eruptions dozens of times, there’s something about this simple activity that encourages young thinkers. Try making a permanent volcano that your child can erupt again and again.

Using an air-dry clay, have your child sculpt a landscape in a foil tin or other water-tight container. Give him a small tube like a film canister to use as the basis for his volcano, and have him sculpt around it. Let the creation dry, have him paint it, and once it’s all done, he can pour vinegar and baking soda into his volcano again and again.

These are just a few fun ideas to enhance a volcano study. What other projects have you tried with your kids?

You might also like…

Teaching Kids To Plan Healthy Meals

by

Teaching Kids To Plan Healthy Meals | The Happy Housewife

By contributing writer Marci

In this world of fast food, snack packs, and sugar filled everything, teaching kids about nutrition is very important. You can get detailed and teach them about vitamins, minerals, carbohydrates, proteins, fats, and calories in a way they understand. There are lots of great resources for that. But, what do you do with that knowledge?

In our house, the basis of our nutrition education is all about good food choices. When we choose to eat good, quality, real food, we automatically get the vitamins, minerals, and other nutrients that we need for healthy bodies.

A Meal Plan Guide

A starting point for making good food choices is the My Plate campaign from the USDA. This is not a perfect dietary representation for everyone, but that is another topic altogether. The My Plate campaign does teach that our bodies need a variety of food to stay healthy. That’s a good place to start.

Teaching Kids To Plan Healthy Meals with My Plate | The Happy Housewife

Using the My Plate graphic, we can see that a balanced diet is made up of grains, vegetables, fruits, proteins, and dairy. Kids can use this to visualize what makes up a balanced diet. I use this graphic to challenge the kids to come up with their own healthy menus.

The Planning

First, the kids make lists of their favorite foods in each category. Remember, kids might need a little reminding of what is in their favorite family dishes. For instance, lasagna contains grains, meat, dairy and vegetables. So, there might be some overlap of the categories.

Then, the kids put the foods together into healthy meals they will actually eat. The ChooseMyPlate.gov site gives serving size recommendations for each food group, so the kids can choose the right serving sizes for their age.

Having the kids plan their own healthy meals is a great nutrition lesson and makes life easier for mom. They won’t plan meals with foods they won’t eat! Try this with your kids.

You might also like…

Play Gardening with Kids

by

By contributing writer Colleen

I don’t know about you, but I am  ready for spring! This has been one of the longest, coldest winters I remember, and I’m tired of being cooped up inside.

And, even though there is still snow on the ground, I’m anxiously awaiting the time when I can get outside in the backyard and start planting seeds with the kids. If you’ve never gardened with your kids, I highly encourage it. Not only do I encourage you to have your children help you with your family garden — from seed to harvest — but I hope you give them their own play garden too.

Play Gardening with Kids | The Happy Housewife

Last year, on a whim, I took a look at the kids’ plastic log cabin playhouse and convinced my husband to break up the ground on one side of it, fence it in with cinder blocks, and turn it over to them.

It was one of the best parenting experiments I’ve done so far. 

Faced with the open-ended possibilities of a patch of ground to call their own, the kids talked (or fought) together to come up with a plan for what they wanted to plant. They decided to plant pumpkins, squash, sweet peas, carrots, and watermelon.

See any problems with their plan yet? Several of the plants that they chose spread — widely.

I let them go with it, and handed over shovels and seed packets and let them plant the seeds however they wanted to. 

They started out with a plan, and planted seeds in rows and then got tired of the organization, threw the rest of the seeds in the garden, forgot to label their rows, and moved on to ride their bikes.

Unfortunately, they’re lack of planning made for an out-of-control garden where plants overtook other plants, and squash and pumpkin plants grew outrageously big leaves that covered the roof of the playhouse. And, since so much energy went to the leaves, the entire garden yielded only three pumpkins at the end of it all.

Play Gardening with Kids | The Happy Housewife

So, why didn’t I correct them?

Why didn’t I organize their garden according to what the seed packets directed?

Because the product wasn’t the point. 

We planted a family garden in our backyard together. The family garden’s purpose was to feed us and do things by the book. The kids’ garden was for play and learning.

The imaginative play that developed out of their simple garden was amazing. They played house. Their simple log cabin was a castle with magic beanstalks. It was a fortress on the edge of a jungle. They were poor farmers dependent on the crop outside their door for food. It was fabulous to watch, and I can’t wait to see what they come up with this summer.

Have you ever considered turning over a plot of land to your kids? Give it a try this summer!

You might also like…

Fruits and Vegetables Worksheets: Free Printables

by

Fruits and Vegetables Worksheets: Free Printables | The Happy Housewife

By contributing writer Lauren

Any time is a great time to think about nutrition!  When teaching your children about healthy foods, you can use these worksheets that focus on fruits and vegetables. Each activity in this 4-page packet is written for first or second graders.

In this Fruits and Vegetables Worksheet set:

  • Vegetable Cut & Paste – Determine if the equation is correct or incorrect by matching the vegetable
  • Matching Sums – Practice addition facts; several fruit-themed word problems included
  • Fill In the Missing Letters – Fill in the missing letters in the name of each fruit
  • Dictionary Practice: Fruits & Vegetables – Practice alphabetical order and finding words in the dictionary
Fruit and Vegetable Worksheet Packet
Fruit and Vegetable Worksheet Packet
March Fruit and Vegetable Printables 2014.pdf
887.7 KiB
Details...

You might also like…

STAY UPDATED!

Get every article delivered to your inbox!

homeschool curriculum reviews

CONNECT WITH ME