News
Revisiting Ecology and Plant Nutrition
As we are coming towards the end of term, children have been revisiting topics of Ecology and Plant Nutrition/respiration in plants as well as many other areas.
Display posters were created which involved diagrams and pictures showing the part that flowers play in the life cycle of flowering plants.
By the end, the children were able to demonstrate understanding of the process of seed dispersal, the processes of pollination, fertilisation and germination as well mention the different stages of the life cycle of a flowering plant.
Exploring Earthworms- Miniature Ecosystem
Our home-schooled children have been working together to make a mini-ecosystem for earthworms, using a soda bottle and a little creativity.
As with all other organisms, earthworms occupy a certain niche: They are both decomposers and consumers, feeding on things like decomposing remains, manure, and other small underground organisms like nematodes, bacteria, fungi, and rotifers.
Earthworms breathe by coating themselves with mucus, which allows dissolved oxygen to pass into their bloodstream, so living conditions must be moist and humid, or else the worms will dry up. They are ecologically important because they loosen and mix up the soil, enabling water and nutrients to seep through to plant roots. Since they can’t walk, earthworms move with tiny bristles, or setae, which are paired on each of their segments and grip onto the worms’ tunnel walls. Then the worms push themselves forward with strong muscular contractions.
Sheep Heart Dissection in Science!
By studying the anatomy of a sheep’s heart, children learned about how our own heart pumps blood through your body and keeps us alive.
The experience of dissecting real animal material adds an extra dimension to understanding the structure of the heart and the relationship of structure to function.
The activity allowed the children to investigate and explore the texture and thickness of the vessel and chamber walls, and the movement of the different kind of valves.
Using handouts with pictures/diagrams the children could also see what was going on with the heart in different stages of the dissection.
Learning Arabic Human Body Vocabulary!
Our home-schooled children have been learning Arabic vocabulary and labelling parts of the human heart.
The activity involved using online and paper resources to identify and label the main parts of the heart in Arabic.
They then went on to describe the functions of the different parts of the heart focusing on spoken and written language.
Tutor Led Hands-on Blubber Glove Activity!
In Science our home-schooled children have been busy making a blubber glove and have been exploring what blubber does in the cold and in the heat.
To prepare, the children gently kneaded the vegetable shortening and distributed it evenly between the bags.
They then placed their hand inside the blubber glove and dipped the gloved hand into the cold water for one minute.
After this, the children were instructed to place the warm washcloth inside the blubber glove and feel the outside of the glove.
This activity helped the children investigate the insulating properties of blubber.