Thursday, October 31, 2013

Memorize the Presidents

There are songs, there are raps and then, there's a story…


Song…quite sedate.


This has additional information about most presidents.


We're working on the "President's Comic" based on a YouTube video I found, but I'm no longer posting the link here. Naturally, if students' creative genius takes them into a different way of memorizing the presidents, that's perfectly OK. This is what we have so far…

An alien named WAJ (George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson) comes out of his spaceship eating M&Ms (James Madison, James Monroe) and wearing a hat with the letter A (John Quincy Adams) on it. He is met by Michael JACKSON (Andrew Jackson), who invites him to go for a drive in his VAN (Martin VanBuren). 

Michael’s very HAIRY SON (William Henry Harrison) is with them. The TIRES (John Tyler) of the van are huge (picture monster truck wheels)...but as they’re driving, one gets POKED (James Polk) and gets a rip in it. They have to take it to a TAILOR (Zachary Taylor) who fixes it. Then they have to go to the gas station to FILL MORE air  in the tire (Millard Fillmore). We hope the tires will never get PIERCEd again (Franklin Pierce).

Then there’s a big celebration because the tire got fixed -- it’s like a 4th of July celebration and they shoot off the CANNON (James Buchanan) and along comes the parade, led by President ABRAHAM LINCOLN. After Lincoln, there’s JOHNSON (Andrew Johnson -- 2 of the 4 assassinated presidents were followed in office by a Johnson). Lincoln & Johnson go and write a GRANT (Ulysses S. Grant) to buy 19 bales of HAY (Rutherford B. Hayes, 19th president). While they’re writing the grant, GARFIELD the cat (James Garfield) is there to help.

They get the shipment of hay from King ARTHUR’s (Chester Arthur) Round Table and ask to have it shipped to CLEVELAND, Ohio (Grover Cleveland). But then Michael Jackson’s HAIRY SON (Benjamin Harrison) gets things mixed up and he sends it to CLEVELAND, Tennessee (Grover Cleveland served two terms not in a row) instead. People are so angry that the order got messed up that they banish everyone involved to the top of Alaska’s Mount McKINLEY (William McKinley). 

On the way up Mount McKinley, they see a whole bunch of Teddy Bear ROSES (Teddy Roosevelt). It’s really cold on the top of the mountain -- the wind is blowing such a DRAFT (William Taft) that they get the shaky shaky WILLIES (Woodrow Wilson) and they start to HARDEN (Warren Harding) into ice because they’re so COOL (Calvin Coolidge). They pull out their HOOVER (Herbert Hoover) vacuum cleaner to try to warm themselves up, but it doesn’t work, so they head back down the mountain, again passing the ROSE bush which now has pictures of Ben Franklin on it (Franklin D. Roosevelt) and is the biggest rose bush they've ever seen (FDR had the longest presidency).

Saturday, October 26, 2013

History 5/6 links - 3 Branches of Federal Government; State & Federal Governments

Here's a diagram showing the three branches.  Important phrases to understand are "separation of powers" and "checks and balances."

Ben's guide has an explanation of this, starting here.

Wanna rap about it? You can!

Compare: state & federal powers

Limitations of state & federal powers

I've only skimmed a couple of the articles linked here, but About.com's quick study guides look helpful.






Saturday, October 12, 2013

Botany Class - reproduction in Flowers

Simple animation of the process of pollination & seed development in flowers

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMQtLWpAdXI

You think this was done by a homeschool family? Caution: name-calling/pre-school style potty talk at the end.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=htMZYR1nCOQ

Wednesday, October 9, 2013

Botany Class Alert: Carnivorous plants videos (she said, hopefully)...

I'm gathering a few videos of carniverous plants and thought I'd post them here. We'll be watching a few in Botany on Monday.

Here you can watch a pitcher plant growing...the music makes it almost creepy.

This shows some of the plants in action.

This shows the partially digested bugs inside a pitcher plant.

As always, be careful what else your kids may see if they go on YouTube!!!