A Snarky Frankenstein Unit Study Appropriate for Snarky High Schoolers

Listening to audiobooks with my teenager is just about my current favorite thing about homeschooling. So far this semester, we've listened to History of the Kings of Britain, The Haunting of Hill House, and The Hound of the Baskervilles, and we're currently one hour and 40 minutes into 12 Years a Slave, and we're VERY into it.

Frankenstein is a book study that we did last year, but somehow I never got around to writing about it even though it was AWESOME! I don't know if you know this, but a teenager is the best companion to have when reading a book. We speculate on every character's sexuality (*cough, cough* Walton was IN LOVE with Victor *cough, cough*), mercilessly roast every character (but mostly Victor), gasp in shock and horror at the kinds of behavior that was apparently normal at the time but is 100% taboo now (I'm sorry, but Victor and Elizabeth were raised as siblings!), and cheer at all the murders...

... and we sneak in some literary and cultural analyses, maybe a bit of creative writing, definitely some comparative analysis with other books and films. Book studies somehow always manages to feel low-stakes while being quite rigorous academically. It's some of the best schoolwork that we do together, and whatever we're studying, I tend to always have a book unit going.

Here's some of what we did for Frankenstein, and some other stuff that we could have done but didn't.

Pre-Reading

I wouldn't want to do anything that would give away any spoilers for a book, even a book as iconic as Frankenstein. I work with teenagers pretty often, and I am equally as often surprised at the background knowledge that they can lack--I would never assume that a kid who hadn't read Frankenstein knows ANYTHING, no matter how basic, about the plot!

That being said, a good video can often be a good, evocative setup for a book, especially a book with as interesting an origin as Frankenstein! This TED-Ed video sets the scene without giving away too much:

We've spoken about Lord Byron before back when we were studying Ada Lovelace, so mentioning that he was there did quite a lot to explain the setting of the creation of Shelley's novel to my teenager, ahem. Other good pieces of background info could include brief bios of Mary Shelley and her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, alchemy, the Gothic and Romantic movements, etc.

While Reading

Whatever you do, don't incorporate ALL of this into your literature study. I like to see what's intriguing my kids and expand on that, or encourage projects that build up skills I want them to learn, that follow their interests, or that could add a cross-curricular component that I could also count for a different subject.

• discussion questions/essay topics: A nice thing about homeschooling is that we can talk day and night about the books we're reading. We roast main characters over dinner, gossip about who's into who in the car, rewrite minor plot points via late-night texts across the house, and revisit our favorite bits years later--we're still cackling about our recurring joke involving Gandalf's favorite horse, and we finished that book five years ago! I don't usually use discussion questions or talking points to inspire our conversations, but I can see how they'd be useful, especially to set an essay topic.
• family tree/cast of characters. There's not a giant cast of characters in Frankenstein, but enough that it's easy to forget who someone is by the time they wander back into the picture. We do NOT want to forget how Victor and Elizabeth know each other, for instance (barf!), nor who our delightful little William is. There are tons of ways to create family trees and graphic character lists, and I do like to have kids create their own from scratch, illustrations and all... but here's a cheat sheet. 
• food. We usually enjoy cooking recipes themed on what we're reading or watching, but Frankenstein doesn't give one a lot to work with, ahem. Ah, well... perhaps a picnic while we read out loud to each other!
• geography. I LOVE using maps in my homeschool. I think it's so important to be able to visualize places from history and literature, and to build geographic context. Here's a Google Earth tour of the many geographic settings in Frankenstein, but I feel like my own kids don't always look hard enough at already-created maps to absorb the information; I'd rather show them a Google Earth tour of a different book, then have them create one for Frankenstein from scratch, or go completely old-school and create it with a printed map. This Smithsonian article about places that inspired Mary Shelley is another good resource. 
• practice using quotes as evidence: The year that my teenager went to public school, her English teacher had a terrific technique to teach the kids how to respond to a text. She'd give them a text, then ask them to 1) highlight claims, and 2) for each claim, respond with a sentence that agreed and gave a reason, or disagreed and gave a reason, or expanded on/qualified the claim. It was a great way to remind the kids that they did need to have their own opinions about texts, and to model for them how it works. This worksheet encourages the same strategy; when responding, encourage the student to find textual evidence for their response, and then you have a natural entry point for teaching them how to incorporate quotes into their writing. 
• supplemental texts. We do a lot of cross-curricular work in our homeschool, and one of my favorite ways to incorporate that kind of work is a supplementary reading that also applies to a separate study. For a novel like Frankenstein, supplemental texts in the fields of science, history, and mythology would all be easy to source. Or go in a different direction and offer supplemental pieces of artwork!
• travel. I really like to incorporate field trips, day trips, and other types of travel into our homeschool studies. Alas, for my final homeschooling teen haaaates to travel, but I still insist more often than she'd like... but a lot less often than I'd like! Travel to Bath, England, to visit the Frankenstein museum isn't exactly feasible, but I'm always on the lookout for traveling museum exhibitions, festivals, academic presentations at our local university, or high-quality live theater experiences.

After Reading

After finishing a book is when I like to incorporate comparative analysis. With Frankenstein, there are a lot of different directions you could go with this!

• Frankenstein films. With these, you can illustrate the growth and development of the Frankenstein trope, and critique its various manifestations. In our homeschool, we usually do at least one of these as an official Family Movie Night, with everyone contributing cheezy novelty recipes to a themed meal that we can eat while we watch. Here are a few of my favorite Frankenstein films that go quite well with Frankenstein meatloaf and Frankenstein broccoli florets and Frankenstein pudding cups and a Frankenstein cocktail/mocktail:

• children's books. Usually, the Frankenstein in a picture book is just a goofy-looking Halloween character that doesn't make any particular literary references. For an artistic kid, though, it's interesting to compare and analyze the various kid-friendly depictions of the monster, then create their own in response. Kids who are interested in folklore, anthropology, the organization of information, or books in general can enjoy logging the characteristics of each kid-friendly character and seeing if they can figure out the stereotypes or analyze what the representations are meant to imply. Here are a few of my favorite kid books that feature Frankenstein:

• other Frankenstein retellings. You can make thoughtful comparisons with versions of the story told in different times and places; they highlight different values and fears in our changing cultures, and often speak to the original version in important ways. Here are a few of my favorite Frankenstein retellings:

• secondary sources. I don't always incorporate these, but if a book has really struck a kid's fancy (as with the huge hit that Le Morte d'Arthur turned out to be!), I'll keep those good vibes going, perhaps with a bit of long-form non-fiction! Histories, biographies, and cultural analyses are always a good bet with books. Here are a few good ones for Frankenstein:

While supplementary activities can add a lot of content and rigor to a book study, keep in mind that it's also perfectly okay, and perfectly at-level, to simply read the book, talk about it, and move on with your lives! Discussion is a great way to address the content and themes of a book, so that even if you don't write an essay, if you've have lots of conversations about it you HAVE formed opinions, made claims, supported them with evidence, responded to another's claim with your own thoughts, and essentially performed quite a lot of analytical work. 

You should definitely make thematically-appropriate novelty foods and eat them while watching a related movie, though. that's a very important part of the process! 

P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, dog-walking mishaps, confrontations with gross men, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!

DIY Upcycled Cardboard Polyominoes

 

This tutorial was originally posted on Crafting a Green World.

Polyominoes are a super fun educational toy. When made from upcycled cardboard food packaging, they’re also super eco-friendly!

If you’ve ever played Tetris, you know what polyominoes are, AND you know how fun they are!

Without getting too mathy, because I know that scares some of y’all, polyominoes are shapes that you can draw on a piece of graph paper using the same number of squares.

You know dominoes, right? Those are polyominoes made of two units.

Tetrominoes are made of four units. When you play Tetris, you’re playing with tetrominoes!

Pentominoes, pieces made from five units, are my personal favorite.

There are infinite really interesting math problems–many of which have never been completely solved!–that utilize polyominoes. But even for us non-professional mathematicians, polyominoes remain very fun. You can build cool patterns with them. You can create puzzles from them, then try to solve them! And, if you have a kid around, they’re a sneaky way to build their logical reasoning skills and to teach concepts of area, perimeter, patterning, and other even more abstract, sophisticated geometry and measurement concepts.

Also, I’m just going to say it one more time–they’re really fun!

You don’t need another set of plastic game pieces kicking around your home, though. Instead, here’s how to make any set of polyominoes that you want from sturdy, upcycled, recyclable cardboard.

To make your own set of upcycled cardboard polyominoes, you will need:

• upcycled cardboard. Cardboard food packaging is perfect for this project–for this tutorial, I’m making all my polyominoes from Girl Scout cookie boxes! It would be VERY fun, though, to make “life-sized” or giant polyominoes from corrugated cardboard.
• graph paper. Once upon a time, I scored the rest of someone’s stash of 1″ graph paper at a yard sale, but the internet exists now, and so you can just print graph paper at any size. Or if you, like all the other cool kids these days, don’t own a printer, you can buy it commercially.
• measuring and cutting supplies. I made all these polyominoes with a pen and a pair of scissors.
• double-sided tape (optional). All polyominoes other than Tetris pieces are meant to be able to be flipped over, and if you get into doing polyomino puzzles, solutions will often require it. For that reason, I make most of my own polyomino pieces double-sided. But if the difference between the front and back of a polyomino piece doesn’t bother you, then don’t bother with this extra step!

Step 1: Create the polyomino patterns.

This first step is my favorite!

On graph paper, sketch out the outlines of your polyominoes. You can easily Google patterns for various polyomino sets, but kids, especially, find it VERY fun to create their own polyominoes from scratch.

Cut out your polyominoes, and you’re ready to apply them to the cardboard.

Step 2: Use the paper templates to make cardboard polyominoes.

Trace around the polyominoes and cut them out of the upcycled cardboard.

Using upcycled cardboard food packaging gives you a lot of scope for creativity! If you’ve got a variety of colors, like I do with my Girl Scout cookie boxes, it can be fun to make each type of polyomino a different colors. Or, decide that the plain cardboard side will be front-facing, and decorate the pieces with markers.

Step 3 (optional): Make the polyominoes double-sided.

Tetris gets away with not letting you flip pieces by making the flipped side a completely separate piece. For every other use, though, you’ll generally want to be able to flip your pieces over. If you’re using cardboard that’s roughly the same on the front and back, that’s not a problem, but with this cardboard food packaging that has a printed side and a plain side, I’ve discovered that many people, and especially kids, find it non-intuitive to have to flip pieces. We’re just not used to working with both the “front” and “back” of a puzzle!

To solve that problem, make your polyominoes double-sided.

Just cut out a second piece (flip the pattern over if the piece isn’t symmetrical!), then attach the two with double-sided tape. Now both of your sides look cute, and it’s easy to realize that you can flip them!

There are so many ways to extend the fun of polyominoes while exercising your brain and developing numeracy and logical reasoning skills. A mini set taped onto a magnet sheet and put into an Altoids tin is a terrific little travel game; for even more fun, hand-draw or print puzzle templates on plain paper and cut them out to fit in the tin, too. A larger set of tetrominoes and a few pieces of grid paper taped together make a fun two-player, analog Tetris game; for more fun, add more magnets and place on a wall-mounted metal sheet.

P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, dog-walking mishaps, encounters with Chainsaw Helicopters, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!

The Poured Rice Fantasy Map Project

I've seen the poured rice fantasy maps being made on Tiktok and YouTube, but my actual inspiration for this project was subbing in an art class in which the kids were hard at work on their own fantasy maps. They'd already done the poured rice step and were deep into embellishing their maps with fantasy and cartography elements. Their teacher had a long list of categories and a Google Slide Deck of reference images for them to use, and I spent two days in that class walking around and cooing over everyone's maps, encouraging them to add elements from a new category, debating river placement and what kinds of sea monsters are the scariest and how many volcanoes one island can reasonably contain.

You know who else is currently writing a fantasy novel AND loves art? My very own homeschooler!

For a Creative Writing/Studio Art enrichment lesson one day, she and I sat down with some large-format drawing paper, our eight-year-old kilogram of rice, and my favorite drawing pens (these are the teenager's favorite drawing pens). 

To make the map, you simply pour out your rice (I've seen some people use lentils, but I loved all the fjordy bits that the rice made)--

--then trace around it!

You can, of course, artificially manipulate the rice to spread it however you want, but the idea is that by letting it do its thing you make a map that looks organic and random and has a particularly detailed coastline.

After that, you listen to music, and you draw!

The teenager was quite happy with creating from her own brain, but I preferred to use reference images. Here's the teenager trying to show me how to draw cliffs like Dover:

I kind of got the idea, but I couldn't make it look good on the map. Oh, well--at least my barrows look awesome!

It's impossible to do any work whatsoever without Mr. Jones being actively weird in your face:

The art class kids who were spending several days on this project had to add a billion details, a compass rose, and a banner title, but the teenager and I were satisfied with our maps after just a couple of hours hanging out together, drawing and listening to music. Here's my fantastic fantasy map:

A henge is OBVIOUSLY at the center of my island, with various barrows around the outskirts. My snowcapped mountains are an embarrassment, but I'm quite proud of my road and my swampland. 

And here is the teenager's. She packed a LOT of detail into just a couple of hours!

I LOVE that her map also has a henge! All the Giant Rocks Day is such a good memory!

I'd suggested that the teenager might want to use her fantasy map as THE map for her fantasy novel, but she preferred to make it just a fantastical fantasy of a map, no lore included. But it did get her thinking about geography and place in her story, so I'm keeping this project as a cross-curricular Creative Writing/Studio Art effort.

If a kid is up for an entire world-building experience, I do think it would be cool to actually make this map in coordination with creative writing, perhaps adding new features to the map as you think of them for a story, and vice versa. Otherwise, this project lends itself to all kinds of geography extensions, from basic map-reading to AP Human Geography. Or make up your own coordinate system and then locate places on the map using it! Model the terrain in salt dough! Photocopy the outline and create a political map showing population and government! Invent a flag, then sew it! Find a partner who also created a map, pretend their island is in the same world, and form a political alliance... or declare war! 

This was our eight-year-old kilogram of rice's final act of service. It began its time as a sensory material, lived most of its life as a kid-measured exact kilogram for admiration and reference, and after this, its last hurrah as an implement of cartographic creation, it was ceremoniously retired around the backyard, where it can end its days by offering sustenance and enrichment to our flock of half-wild chickens.

It's only now occurring to me to wonder if whatever I used to dye that rice eight years ago is okay for chickens to eat now. OMG ISN'T A THING THAT BIRDS AREN'T ACTUALLY SUPPOSED TO EAT DRY RICE?

You know what? Whatever, I'm sure it's fine. If you come back to my blog and find this post deleted, though, it's because I accidentally killed our flock of chickens and I need to cover my tracks.

P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, dog-walking mishaps, encounters with Chainsaw Helicopters, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!

Homeschool AP US History: American Cake

There's a certain view of history pedagogy that feels that hands-on projects do not belong in history study. When you make a paper model of Jamestown, this view would say, you're learning not about Jamestown, but about making paper models.

In some ways, I do get where this is coming from. Lots of hands-on projects, especially for preschool/early elementary, are garbage. Like, garbage in general, as well as garbage at helping a kid explore history. Hint: anything involving a paper plate or paint chips or a brown paper lunch bag is probably garbage.

But other hands-on projects, I firmly believe, are indispensable, at least in the homeschool environment which is where all of my experience lies. And it's not so much because the craft, itself, is just that amazing--it's the context! When my kids built their paper Jamestown models, we read children's books about Jamestown and looked at images online and talked and talked and talked and talked about Jamestown together. Tiny Jamestown lived in our house for years, and we talked even more about it whenever the kids brought it out for their small-world play. When the kids created World War II propaganda posters, we read about propaganda posters and looked at images of propaganda posters online and talked and talked and talked and talked about propaganda posters together. Printed copies of their hilarious propaganda posters lived on the walls, and were subjects of family inside jokes, for years. 

So, yeah. If I just told the teenager to make a cake, a modern replica of a popular cake from the 1700s, for an AP US History enrichment project, that wouldn't be very educational. It certainly wouldn't be AP-level rigorous.

Instead, with an eye to building context, it was a family event that kept us up until midnight but built valuable historical and cross-curricular connections for the teenager. 

And it resulted in what is our new favorite family cake!

American Cake tells the history of the US, and the history of cooking, AND the history of food production, through cakes. Throughout the course of the book, you follow the evolution of ingredients like butter and eggs and milk from the organic, unpasteurized, produced-at-home product to what it is today. Same with flours, sweeteners, and all the other ingredients we commonly use in cakes. As well, you get a history lesson about the overall time period for each cake, and the specific history involved with its creation and consumption.

The cake that the teenager chose to make on this night, for instance, is the Fraunces Tavern Carrot Tea Cake. Fraunces Tavern, in New York City, is where General George Washington hosted a magnificent feast on British Evacuation Day, and this was one of the cakes on their menu at the time. It's an interesting cake because it includes cooked carrots to add sweetness in concert with the expensive white sugar, and instead of baking soda, which wasn't available then, you have to cream the crap out of the butter and sugar, whipping enough air in that it'll expand in the hot oven and make your cake rise a bit.

While the teenager made the cake, Matt and I served as her sous chefs, and we all used the time to talk about George Washington and the Revolutionary War. The teenager remembers, a little, our trip to Fort Necessity one autumn, which, along with our other side trips to Valley Forge, the Delaware River crossing site, and Mount Vernon, make a fairly decent timeline of Washington's life and career. Fort Necessity and Valley Forge are especially important to helping one remember that Washington was a nepotism baby who got his big break, a surveying job (scored without the usual required apprenticeship, because nepotism), from his brother's father-in-law, and Mount Vernon, itself, from his brother, who died young from tuberculosis.

Here's the carrot cake batter, poured into a springform pan that I did not realize we owned:

Another new-to-me appliance: a carrot peeler! I've just been using a paring knife like a jerk, but apparently the teenager has owned a carrot peeler for a decade or so, ever since that year she had a subscription to a children's cooking club that sent her a little kit every month, and this was the first time she decided to let me know about it.

I had never in my life used a carrot peeler before. It is BRILLIANT!

Because we were baking a tavern cake from the time of the Revolutionary War, it seemed appropriate to listen to Revolutionary War-era tavern music while we worked!

And then that reminded me that I should show the teenager the pro-shot Hamilton musical before our Disney+ subscription ends next week, so that's this Sunday's Family Movie Night sorted!

You won't be surprised to learn that without baking soda or baking powder, the cake didn't rise a ton, but still, it was fluffy and moist, even though the teenager and I cut it open piping hot from the oven at the stroke of midnight. We were pretty sure we'd ruin it by doing so, but we could NOT wait until morning to try it, so we cut ourselves fresh pieces, I slathered mine with clotted cream, and we had ourselves a little midnight party.

By the next morning, there was just three-quarters of the cake left, and by that night, all that was left was this:

This cake? Was DELICIOUS! I already love carrot cake, and this is a less-sweet version. It's carrot cake that doesn't give you a headache ten minutes later! Carrot cake, but when you eat it you can actually taste more than just sugar!

Fraunces actually became Washington's steward during his presidency, so it feels safe to assume that his tavern's special cake was probably on the menu at least occasionally. I'm sure the sugar didn't help the terrible state of his teeth, but cake IS pretty soft...

Pumpkin Pounding: A Halloween Project for Small Children

 

This tutorial was originally posted on Crafting a Green World way back in 2009! 

Encouraging my children's independence is VERY important to me. Not only is it easier for me to parent two small children who can pour their own milk and put on their own coats and carry their own balance bikes up and down the front porch stairs, but it's also a priority in my parenting that my girls see themselves as capable individuals who can handle challenges and perform the meaningful work of day-to-day living. 

Because of that, carving pumpkins into Jack-o-lanterns can be a really frustrating experience. 

I do permit my children to cut with sharp knives (with supervision), but not to use them on something as thick and unwieldy as a pumpkin. Although there are around-the-house materials that make pumpkin carving an activity more appropriate for small children (subject for a later post), my girls' favorite Jack-o-lantern craft is something that we call pumpkin pounding.

Pumpkin pounding is a hands-on activity that uses real tools on a real pumpkin, and each of my girls was able to do it with help at age two, and independently by age three. The best part, however, is that in the end, depending on how enthusiastic a pounder your kid has been, you end up with a real, live Jack-o-lantern for sitting on the porch steps and popping a candle inside. 

You will need:

• field pumpkin that's not too round. You want to be able to sit it on its various sides, as well as its butt, and not have it roll all over creation.
• hammer. You can lay out a variety of hammers for your kids to experience, but the best tool for them is one that's as light as possible but has the widest hammer head
• nails. Again, lay out a variety to try out, but the best ones are as wide as possible with the widest head
• knife and scraping tool and whatever else you'll need to cut the top of the Jack-o-lantern and scrape the insides

1. Set the pumpkin up in a space where kids have enough room to swing a hammer, and where they can get in the correct hammering position--a low table or the floor or a bench, etc. 

Be prepared to leave the pumpkin in that space for a few days, to give the kids the chance to come back over and over to this activity independently. 

2. Show your child how to press the tip of the nail into the pumpkin flesh until the nail is held there by itself. That's the safest way to hammer, but older children can also be taught how to gently tap the nail into place with their hammers. 

For kids younger than three, you may need to set up a handful of nails like this for them to hammer. 

3. Let your child hammer nails into the pumpkin. 

Remind them not to hammer the pumpkin just for the heck of it, but pumpkins are extremely sturdy and surprisingly forgiving, and even though your kid will hit the pumpkin a LOT, and HARD, as they're aiming for that nail, it's not going to crack.  

4. At about five years of age, your kid can also learn how to use the claw end of the hammer to lever the nails back out of the pumpkin when she's done hammering. Otherwise, you'll probably need to do this, so give her plenty of nails to work with before she needs your help. 

5. The Jack-o-lantern will show best with as many nail holes as possible, so feel free to take a whack at the pumpkin yourself. It's amazingly cathartic. 

6. When everyone is completely finished with the pounding (and this may take several days), cut off the top of the pumpkin, and scrape out the insides to finish it. Pop in a candle, and enjoy your pretty pumpkin. 

My kids and I are, for some reason, inordinately fond of our autumn-themed craft projects. What are your favorites?

Homeschool Science: How to Grow a Pumpkin out of Another Pumpkin

 

This tutorial was originally posted on Crafting a Green World way back in 2015!

My kids just harvested the pumpkin plants that they've been nurturing all spring and summer. It was quite an exciting achievement for them, and even more so because they've actually been following this process for almost a full year now. 

Almost a full year ago, they first picked out some organically-grown, heirloom pumpkins, and these newly harvested pumpkins came directly out of the body of those. It was a fascinating process, a pretty easy way to grow pumpkins, and a great way for a kid studying botany to follow the life cycle of a plant throughout its entire lifespan. 

Here's what we did: 

1. In the fall or winter, choose your pumpkins. Have the kids look for organically-grown, locally-raised, heirloom pumpkins. We found ours about this time of year--I can tell, because the kids drew Jack-o-lantern faces on them in Sharpie, since of course we weren't going to cut them. 

2. Store them all winter. I don't have any great tips for this, and our own storage didn't go perfectly. The kids had chosen several, and we kept them all winter on our nature table. Every now and then, I'd walk by and notice that a pumpkin was starting to rot, and so I'd toss it out in the bushes for the chickens to eat. Now that I think about it... THAT'S why we have two volunteer pumpkin plants in those bushes this year! We actually got loads of pumpkins from those two vines! 

This winter, I plan to store our pumpkins in our root cellar. We'll lose the opportunity to have all those conversations that naturally occurred as the sight of a pumpkin caused a question to pop into a kid's head, but more pumpkins should survive the winter that way. 

3. In the spring, cut them open and fill them with dirt. Set up a work space outside, give the kid a knife, and have her cut open the top of her pumpkin. Note all of the seeds inside, chat about it, remove a seed for dissection and study under the microscope, etc. 

Have the kid fill her pumpkin all the way to the top with good-quality potting soil, then water it. 

These pumpkins are a little tricky to put under grow lights, since they're so much taller than the other seed flats that you'll also have under there, but if you can manage to start them indoors, it'll be well worth it. On the other hand, this year I deliberately had the kids choose small varieties of pumpkins, so that they could plant them directly in the garden and still have time for the pumpkins to mature. 

4. Plant the pumpkins. Have the kid dig a hole deep enough to cover the entire pumpkin, and then plant it. You don't want any pumpkin sticking up out of the soil to rot, but covering it with dirt will allow it to decompose in the ground and turn into lovely nutrients for the pumpkin seedlings.  

5. Cull the weaklings. One of the coolest things about this project is that your kids will see a LOT of pumpkin sprouts coming out of that pumpkin! Even at nine and eleven, my two thought that this was pretty awesome. 

Of course, they'll have to continually pinch off the weaker ones--I had mine pinch off half of the seedlings at a time, every time, until they were left with one lone winner. 

This step does take supervision. My younger daughter accidentally pinched off her best seedling pretty late in the game, and ended up not getting a pumpkin at all from that particular plant. She was SUPER bummed! 

6. Weed and water. For the rest of the summer, the kids can care for their pumpkins just as they do the rest of their garden. This is a great opportunity for a garden journal, or weekly measurement, or other monitoring of the plant's progress. 

7. Harvest. In the late summer or early fall, your kid can harvest her pumpkin, knowing that she not only grew it herself, and not only from seed, but actually from last year's pumpkin that she also picked out. Does she want to make it into a pie, or save it to make a pumpkin next year?

Homeschool High School Biology: The ProtistsThat Live in the Local Lake

You will never want to even touch pond water again after completing this biology lab.

But you WILL want to have an aquarium full of pond water living in your home so you can keep hundreds of thousands of microscopic protozoa pets!

This lab is a companion to CK-12 Biology 8.4, which is the chapter on protists.

Observing prepared slides of protists is a good preliminary lab, because it allows your high schooler to review proper microscope usage and how to make microscope drawings, and to get an idea what the live protists might look like. 

Here are the lab instructions that I wrote for my teenager, and here are the materials that we used for the lab:

• packaged sterile sample container
• eyedropper
• microscope
• (optional) microscope digital camera and software
• protist diagrams
• blank microscope slide and blank slide covers
• lens cloth

There was a blast from the past on the package of microscope slides:

I used to shop in that independent educational toys and teaching supplies store ALL THE TIME when my children were wee. The dollhouse I bought one toddler to celebrate her toilet training came from there, as did the PlaySkool circus set that the other kid picked out for her sixth birthday present, about an hour before she broke her leg on the playground and it turned out that a huge Playskool set was absolutely the perfect thing for a kid with a cast on her leg to play with for a solid month!

Fifteen years after picking out that dollhouse, my teenager collected water from a local lake, brought it home, dropped a single drop onto a microscope slide, and put it under the microscope to see what lives there.

A lot, it turned out!

In the above video, I think I see an amoeba, but I think that all the larger creatures are perhaps nematodes? I haven't even looked to see what the teenager identified them as in her lab notebook, but I'm sure her guess is better than mine!

The next video is by far my coolest:

I'm pretty sure those are stalked ciliates! The teenagers and I have done this lab several times, and I've only seen these particular critters once! I'm think all the critters swimming around them are Euglenae. Or maybe Paramecia? 

Those two videos are taken at just 100x, so you can see how much you can see even at that low magnitude. 400x, below, gives you more detail, but we don't use any additives to slow down our protists, so anything speedier than that oozy amoeba at the bottom right is hard to see.

This is a different water sample on a different day. I think that might be another Euglenoid because of its chloroplasts, which perhaps makes the critters that I previously thought were Euglenae actually Paramecia. I should probably get off my butt and go see what the teenager identified everything as, because I'm sure that she did more research than I'm currently doing!

The identities might be a bit sketchy, but the point of this particular lab isn't specifically to correctly identify every protist. Think of how much the teenager learned about sample collecting, microscope usage, and protists in general, as well as the practice that she got writing a lab report, problem-solving in science, and making decisions about identification. 

And most importantly, she got to see all the magic that lives out of sight in our local lake!

This protist lab pairs well with this macroinvertebrate identification lab, as well as this larger Water unit.