Adventures in Homemaking: Science Friday

Friday in our house is Friday night pizza night. It is a family tradition to make pizza, watch a movie, and pig out. Friday is also our science day. Science Friday has been sadly neglected for the last few weeks (ok, ok, more like a month). I could come up with a ton of excuses why that happened but it basically boils down to my lack of planning (bad mama!).

This week when the husband said he needed to head up the mountain for work on Friday (he works for sixmoondesigns.com), I jumped on the opportunity to pack up the kids and go with him as we re-institute science Friday. I wanted to give the kids tons of time to just enjoy their surroundings, explore, and learn through observation so we needed to have a science activity that would allow for that. Enter the scavenger hunt!

A scavenger hunt is a low pressure activity. It allowed us to have fun while still learning. Our list included objects, shapes, colors, textures, as well as activities. It kept the husband, myself, the five year old, and the almost three-but-I am-not-ready-to-call-him-three year old entertained, happy, and engaged.

The List (I put this together the morning we left. Your list can be way more kick ass if you don't procrastinate like me. Don't be like me)

-Rock

-Leaf

-Pine cone

-Flower

-Evergreen Tree

-Deciduous tree

-Bark

-5 pieces of litter

-Something that is a circle

-Something that is a triangle

-Something that is square

-Something smooth

-Something soft

-Something rough

-Something red

-Something brown

-Something purple

-Something green

-An animal

-Hole in a tree

-Spider web

-Draw a picture of a flower

-Make a leaf print

-Draw a picture of a evergreen tree and deciduous tree (include details)

I wrote the list on our iPad so we wouldn't need to waste any paper. I included the art activities to entertain the boys when Husband had to work and we needed to be out of the way a bit. I also wanted number 1 to show me what he had learned about evergreen and deciduous trees (we had talked about how evergreen trees have needles instead of leaves). We are trying to instill on our kids that we should always leave nature cleaner than we found it so whenever we do outside activities (hikes, camping,etc) we always try to improve the area we have been. Also, if you have a magnifying glass, bring it! Nothing beats looking at weird things in nature up close and personal.

The other awesome things about this activity was that we did our hunt along a river and we discovered a few dead salmon which lead to a discussion about the life cycle of salmon. It was a "homeschooling at its best" moment.

Examining a flower up close and personal

Exploring the river

We found an animal! Plus its empty eye socket was a circle. That marked two things off the list. BAM!

We had a fascinating discussion if this could count as a square. This discussion included terms such as rhombus, parallelogram, and quadrilateral. But our kids are three (ALMOST!) and five so we let it slide...this time...