Thursday Homeschool Resource Day -- Link-Up -- Everyday Science Sourcebook

One of the most popular nights at my homeschooling support group is the annual resource night, where everyone brings one or two favorite resources for learning and shares them with the group.  I thought why just have something like this once a year?  So, I'm going to create a weekly link-up where I'll share some of my current favorite resources and you can join-in and share yours as well.  I know that many of you who read my blog are not homeschoolers, but you still do creative and interesting things with your children so feel free to join in as well.

To start things off, I'm going to introduce you to one of my best science resources, The Everyday Science Sourcebook by Lawrence F. Lowery.  We don't use a planned curriculum for very much around here because I prefer to come up with my own ideas.  That's why this book is so useful.  It is really just lists and lists of science activities and experiments.  Some are very simple, some are things you might come up with on your own, but there are also some really interesting things that you might not think of.  I use it whenever we come upon a science topic that we want to know more about.  For instance, once while we were reading The Swiss Family Robinson, there was a passage discussing the use of levers.  People wanted to know more, so I looked up 'levers' in the index and found pages of activities.

Today I dug it out because we've been working on the solar system and wanted to see what activities were listed.  As a result, we went outside and learned the proper way to look (or not look) at the sun:

It would have been far more interesting had there been an eclipse happening, but when one does we're prepared.

We also measured out the relative distances of the planets if the sun were the size of a quarter.  Here they are measuring in front of our house where we put the sun.  The first few planets were all in front of our house:

 But then we went further down as we headed for Jupiter:

And by the time we reached Pluto (we couldn't leave out Pluto), we were nearly at the end of the block.  (Some were rather disappointed that we didn't have to cross the street.)  If you look very closely, you can see D. down the block being the sun while I stand at where Pluto would be:

And I realize I'm due to share some more baby pictures.  Here's L.:

 And L.(on left) with G.(on right).  For some reason G. managed to not get in many pictures this week.

L. once more, this time carrying shoes, which she likes to do.  And it's even better if the shoes can be put into the dishwasher.

And now to the link-up.

Here are the rules:

1.  Post about a resource (book, movie, CD, website, etc.) that you have found useful in teaching your children.  You can also post directions for a learning activity that you have done with your children.  The content of your blog must be family-friendly.

2.  Link your post (use the permalink, not your blog's homepage) below.

3.  Link back to this blog somewhere in your post so others can see everyone's great resources.  At some point I will have a button that you can use, but not yet.