Homeschool Math: Exploring Pentominoes with Middle Schoolers

Shape puzzles are super fun and excellent for mathematical and logical thinking. I've been trying to strew more puzzles for the kids this spring, along with the sensory materials that I'm already used to offering them, and out of everything that I've offered, I think that shape puzzles have been the most popular.

And, of course, it doesn't hurt when *I* become obsessed with what I've strewn!

I happened upon pentominoes in the book Engage the Brain: Math Games, Grades 6-8. It was the first time I've seen them, and I can't get enough of them! They're diabolically simple: five squares must all share at least one side. Twelve original shapes can be made from that rule.

You can simply fiddle with them, putting them together however you like and seeing what you can make, or you can solve puzzles with them, either trying to assemble them into rectangles or squares or fit outlines that others have made. There are some easy, perfect-for-beginners puzzles out there, but we started with these more difficult ones, specifically the 6x10 rectangle with 2,339 reported solutions.

"Over two thousand solutions!" you say. "Why, that must be simple!"

I'm afraid I must disagree:

The kids and I worked and worked and worked on this! The most frustrating thing is almost solving it but for one single piece. Grr!



The younger kid developed the strategy of drawing her possible solutions rather then putting them together. Took much longer to do, but it did look lovely!

Don't tell the children, but I cheated. We were all working together at the school table, and they were so focused and intent that I didn't want to disturb them by leaving, myself, without a solution. If you homeschool, you likely know that the surest way for a child to lose interest in her work is for you to lose interest first. Go take a five-minute phone call and you'll find that the school table has mysteriously absented itself of children when you return!

I figured that the only way that I could walk away from the table without discouraging the kids is if I'd solved the puzzle, but that darn 6x10 rectangle just would not solve itself! And so I cheated. The puzzle page that I linked to earlier has its solutions diagrammed, so I began sneaking peeks at the solution, giving myself more and more pieces that were correctly placed to start with. I think I'd cheated half the puzzle before I finally managed to solve it:

And then, about ten minutes later and completely on her own, so did my thirteen-year-old.

Grr, indeed!

You can make a simple set of pentominoes using just graph paper (I'd recommend the one-inch grids), but you'll notice that we have these handy-dandy, ready-made plastic pieces:



Super-awesome pro tip: they come from our Blockus games! We own both regular Blockus and travel Blockus--AND an almost complete extra set of travel Blockus pieces--all bought from Goodwill. Blockus and Scrabble are two games that I almost always buy when I see them selling for a song at a thrift store or garage sale. I had it in my head that I really wanted to make DIY versions of pentominoes, so the younger kid and I experimented with some unfinished one-centimeter cubes that I have, and we did manage to end up with a couple of sets that I like okay:

I like that these handmade pentominoes are more tactile than a paper model, and that they're three-dimensional, so they have more utility and scope for creativity than the 2D versions. However, they're impossible to make so that they fit together as snugly as store-bought, machined pieces, and that U piece, in particular, I had to remake about four times, and after painting it I realized that I'll have to remake the purple one a fifth time--it's REALLY difficult to keep that middle space open more than a centimeter!

So in this case, I've finally resigned myself to the fact that store-bought plastic is simply better:

I had additionally been thinking that I should make a DIY magnetic version, perhaps to fit in some sort of metal tin, maybe made of Perler beads and with magnets on the backs, but then I realized: duh. I can obviously just use our TRAVEL BLOCKUS set. So that's one more problem solved!

The greatest thing about pentominoes, especially if you have gifted learners and learners at different levels, as I have both of, is how many enrichment opportunities there are with such a simple toy. There are a million ways to play with pentominoes, a million ways to structure activities, a million research projects, a million projects to solve, a million ways to incorporate them creatively into play. Here are some extension ideas and resources, some of which we've used, and some of which I've put on our to-do list for later exploration:

• Chasing Vermeer. We're listening to this right now as our car audiobook. 
• online pentominoes game. The younger kid enjoyed playing through this online game.
• lesson plan. If you need to more formally introduce the concept pentominoes, here's a full lesson plan.
• pentomino alphabet. These solutions are demonically tricky, but I think it would be really cool to cheat the solutions, then use them as templates and simply draw them and decorate them on graph paper for fun.
• printable pentomino puzzles. These didn't work great for us, because the printout diagrams didn't match the sizes of the pentominoes we already have. If you needed a quiet activity that kids could do independently, though, you could print these and the included pentomino templates. Bonus points for printing the pentominoes on magnet paper, popping it all into a metal tin, and having the travel pentomino set of my dreams!
• 3D pentomino puzzles. Here are some templates especially for pentomino sets made from blocks.

See! Now you can be obsessed with pentominoes, too!

P.S. Interested in more hands-on homeschool projects? Check out my Craft Knife Facebook page!

Homeschool History: The Berlin Wall and Political Graffiti

I haven't posted a lot of hands-on activities from our AP European History study for the sorry reason that we simply haven't done a lot of hands-on activities for that class this year. We're taking a second year to make a second run through the study, however, so that will change, at least.

Silver linings!

Here are the textbook resources for this lesson:

• For the older student
• Palmer, R. R. "Chapter 25: The International Revolt against Soviet Communism," A History of Europe in the Modern World, 11th ed.
• For the younger student
• Bauer, Susan Wise. "Chapter 41: Communism Crumbles." Story of the World Volume 4: The Modern Age

After reading these chapters, the kids and I spent time discussing the Berlin Wall, and then watched this TED-Ed video on its rise and fall:



I pointed out the examples of graffiti on the Berlin Wall, and we looked at several other examples of Berlin Wall graffiti here.

 It's important to note that this graffiti was only on the "Western" side; make sure you look at plenty of examples of what the wall looked like on the Soviet side, as well, as it's shockingly different.

We performed a close reading of all of these images, simply noticing and identifying all of the graffiti we could, marveling at some of it, enjoying the funny bits... acknowledging the dirty stuff...

As we looked, though, I encouraged the kids to point out whenever they saw graffiti that was "political" in nature, something that spoke to how people should govern or be governed, their freedoms and restrictions of behavior in their socioeconomic context, etc. There should be lots of examples! Graffiti is often a form of political speech in that it speaks to these issues, in a far more public medium than even a famous artist or politician could often hope to reach. It's also a form of speech that's culturally assigned to the individual, typically the individual with the lowest socioeconomic privilege in a particular culture, and so is often privileged to represent what "the people" really think.

As such, it's an excellent example of a primary source, visual document to analyze as part of AP European History. Here's are the specific AP European History categories that it touches:

• Analysis as a Primary Source
• Authorship
• Audience
• Format or Medium of that Source
• Assessment of the Usefulness, Reliability, and Limitations of the Source as Historical Evidence
• Historical Themes
• Poverty and Prosperity
• Objective and Subjective Visions
• Interactions with States and Other Institutions of Power
• Individual Versus Society

AP European History students should make good notes about each of these categories, and include specific examples of Berlin Wall graffiti that they could refer to in future thinking and writing. This is also a good subject for an essay!

On this day, however, there was no essay writing--instead, I wanted to combine our lesson on the Berlin Wall with a hands-on art lesson, one that inspired the children to feel the power of graffiti as an art form for themselves, as well as one that got them playing with, and feeling the possibilities of, some art supplies that we don't often use.

Although we do spray paint sometimes--a five-year-old can spray paint with liquid watercolor poured into small spray bottles, and a six-year-old can spray paint with real cans, for the strengthening of their hand muscles for writing at either age--and I do keep several colors in stock for the kids (with the new-ish rule, after Will had a friend over and they got rowdy with it, that they mustn't spray paint anything that is alive, such as OUR TREES!!!), spray paint is a supply that has much more potential than I think the kids realize.

I set the kids up with two different stations for this activity. At one station, out in the yard, they could tape large pieces of newsprint up to Syd's abandoned-while-in-progress pallet play house--

--and at another station on the back deck they made smaller-scale graffiti with our Crayola Air Marker Sprayer:

The kids were really excited to do this project. Like, REALLY excited. We'd flipped through a bunch of books on the art of graffiti before this, as well as looking at all those examples from the Berlin Wall, and as they worked, their eyes were just alight with excitement and, dare I say, maniacal mischief-making possibility. I have designated the chicken coop (because who cares?) and the driveway (it'll wear off) as free spaces to explore more graffiti art, so we'll see if that mania takes fire and political expression comes to life on the chicken coop!

Here are some other resources that we used for this lesson:

• Global Street Art
• This is Not a Photo Opportunity: The Street Art of Banksy
• Exit through the Gift Shop
• The Wall: A World Divided
• The Other Side of the Wall

There are a TON more resources than this, however, both on the Berlin Wall and on the art of graffiti. It think it's good to include at least one live-action video on each subject, so that kids can see the process of graffiti, and you of course have to see some video of the Berlin Wall being torn down by the people whom it had been imprisoning--the power of the individual versus society, indeed!

P.S. Want more handmade homeschooling resources as I come by them? Check out my Craft Knife Facebook page!

I Bought a Camera for My Microscope

We homeschool in Indiana, which offers an "accredited" high school diploma to its public school students. Practically, this means that one cannot easily switch from a homeschool to a public school in the middle of the high school years--if you did so, you simply wouldn't have enough "credits" to graduate on time.

Leaving aside all other debates about homeschool vs. public school, this means that in Indiana, if you choose to homeschool for the ninth grade year, you are essentially choosing to homeschool through high school. You can get around that by taking online classes that offer the types of credits that Indiana accepts, but that's not how we like to homeschool. If Will wants to homeschool in high school, then we're foregoing altogether the idea of an Indiana accredited diploma for her.

And Will wants to homeschool in high school!

The lack of an Indiana accredited diploma sounds dire, but it's really not. Our personal homeschool standards are higher than public school standards, so Will's diploma doesn't need to be accredited by the state of Indiana to have value--her transcript and syllabi and book lists and portfolio will tell the tale, and all will be well.

Having this conversation with Will at the beginning of her eighth grade year, and therefore knowing that we were homeschooling her through high school, I researched and bought a high quality microscope to use in our science studies. We LOVE our Brock Magiscope, and it's still the world's best field microscope, but it wasn't going to cut it for honors biology, alas.

We've been using this particular Levenhuk microscope for biology all year, and so far we love it and it works well for us. We haven't used the oil immersion lens yet, but otherwise we've done just about everything with it that you can do. The kids have gradually become comfortable using it, and it's a tool well worth the budget expenditure.

Except that in our family of near-sighted girls, squinting through the lens means constant adjustments for each person. It also gives me headaches, which isn't great. And I've been wanting the ability to take photos of what we see, because can you really say that you've seen something if you haven't made a poster of it?!?

So I bought the camera that goes with the microscope!

AND I made Will set it up for us and install the software as part of her schoolwork one day, because yep, I am just that lazy.

I'm glad that I didn't go ahead and buy the camera when I first bought the microscope, as I'd been debating doing. I don't think we'd have spent as much time learning to look through the lens ourselves, if I had, and the learning curve is just that much more for the camera than it is for the microscope alone, and that process was already pretty intimidating for the kids. But now that we're comfortable with the microscope, learning to use it with the camera wasn't such a big deal, and I LOVE what the camera adds to our abilities with the microscope. Look at all the pretty pictures we've taken so far!

ascaria eggs 

fish scale

hair follicle

mosquito

pine pollen

So awesome, right?!? The camera also takes video, and the image sizes are quite large, so we should be able to enlarge them as necessary. We'll still take the Brock Magiscope out into the field, but this Levenhuk microscope should see the kids through whatever sciences they want to take through high school and into college.

How We Earned the Girl Scout Cadette New Cuisines Badge

I know I told you over and over that the Cadette Book Artist badge is my favorite, but y'all--that's before the kids wanted to earn the Cadette New Cuisines badge! Even more than the Book Artist badge, the New Cuisines badge is perfectly set up to earn inside or outside a troop setting. It was my favorite blend of cross-curricular activities, incorporating history and geography into the concept of learning how to cook new recipes. And it lent itself well to, as you'll see, some really great family experiences. I think it's actually managed to change how our entire family approaches cooking!

Prep Work

As the first activity in earning this badge, our entire family camped out near the cookbook section of our public library, pulling every cookbook that looked interesting. The kids' job was to choose a recipe to try for each of the first four steps in the New Cuisines badge. I gave them pencils and post-it notes so that they could mark and label the recipes they'd chosen. While they did that, Matt and I looked through cookbooks, too, and I found several of my own to bring home and try out.

Step #1: Make a dish from another country.

For this step, the younger kid found a rice recipe in Flavours of Aleppo: Celebrating Syrian Cuisine. Just between us, the recipe is a pretty standard way to prepare rice, but the rice cooker that we've had ever since our wedding day finally died not too long ago, and so you'll forgive the kid if her mind is still a little blown by the idea that one can cook rice in a pot on the stove.

And now she can cook rice! I have known several young adults in my time who could not do that.

Also, I need you to know that we eat white rice, not brown. Feel free to judge me. Actually, in some conversation years ago with another mom I know, when that fact got mentioned the mom actually said, "Hmm. I'm a whole grains snob," so I've already been judged and you can take a break. 

Side note: it's a discursive trope in the area where I live for someone to humble brag about their advanced tastes by claiming that they're a "snob" about something. Every time someone says that, I'm thinking quietly inside my head that they ARE being snobby. I don't know why I needed to digress about this, but there you go.

Other members of the family also have marked Aleppo-style spicy sausages and kebobs with cherries in Flavours of Aleppo, so we'll be doing some more cooking from that book before we return it.

The older kid made rosenkuchen, a spiced cocoa pinwheel cake from Classic German Baking (you will soon note that kid mostly made sweets for these steps...). You couldn't taste the cocoa in this cake (there were only 2 tablespoons of cocoa for the whole cake), so instead it tasted like a batch of cinnamon rolls with lots of lemon in the glaze. It was VERY good.

Step #2: Create a dish from another region of the United States.

For this step, the older kid went back to her roots and learned how to make cornbread. I cooked a big pot of pinto beans to go with it, and I was taken aback when both kids exclaimed several times how good their bowl of cornbread and beans was. I can't even tell you how many times I ate a bowl of cornbread and beans as a kid--hundreds? Thousands?--and why it had never occurred to me before then to offer it to my kids, I do not know.

The younger kid made French toast casserole from 100 Days of Real Food, although she insisted on using white bread instead of the whole wheat bread that the recipe calls for. We do always eat whole grain bread, so I think she was just looking for an excuse to get that much longed-for white bread on the menu.

Step #3: Whip up a dish from another time period.

For this step, the older kid found a recipe for English trifle in The Unofficial Downton Abbey Cookbook (side note: I have been watching Downton Abbey, and I LOVE. IT! I am obsessed. I am also most of the way through Season 2, so don't spoil it for me!). Who could possibly resist pieces of cake with sugared strawberries, blackberries, whipped cream, and pudding? It was delicious!

The younger made lemonade from The Little House Cookbook, which we've owned since the kids were very small. She said it was too much work for what you got, but that it was good, although she inevitably adds that she only "got one sip" of it because she caught her sister drinking it straight out of the jug. The older kid had to earn and pay me six dollars for the organic lemons thanks to that infraction, but jeez, Younger Kid. It's still drinkable!

Step #4: Cook a dish that makes a statement.

Both kids were uncertain about the requirements for this step, even after reading the full entry in their badge book, so I encouraged them to think of it as cooking a "makeover" recipe. 

For this step, the younger kid made the raspberry lemon gelatin from Meal in a Mug--both children were absolutely enchanted by the idea of cooking! In a mug! She and I disagree about this step, actually; she decided mid-way through making the recipe that pouring the gelatin into individual glasses was silly (I agree, but still...), so she simply made it in a bowl. I pointed out, however, that Jello in a Bowl is NOT a recipe makeover, but simply the most basic way that one makes Jello. The kid then tried to convince me that adding fruit is the makeover part. I counter that adding fruit to Jello is the second most basic way to prepare it, and she should redo this step. She disagrees. Negotiations are ongoing.

The older kid made the Melting Chocolate Cake from Meal in a Mug. She says it was excellent, but I will say that a coffee mug in which a cake has been baked is super annoying to wash. 

The older kid also marked the chicken stew with herbed dumplings in Meal in a Mug, and I'm curious to see how she likes it. I am always on the lookout for easy lunches that the kids can prepare for themselves!

Step #5: Share your dishes on a culinary tour!

Our family often makes themed meals together, so when the older kid, still inspired by The Unofficial Downton Abbey Cookbook, suggested afternoon tea as a fun project, we all jumped on board! The kids and I each made one sweet recipe and one savory recipe. Matt made a savory sandwich and champagne cocktails for the adults, while the kids had tea, of course. The kids also helped me pick out some tea cups and plates from Goodwill, and I made a tea service from them!

As part of our research, the kids and I spent a lesson during one school day watching these YouTube videos about afternoon tea--this is where we learned that we were planning to make afternoon tea, actually. Until then, we'd been calling it "high tea!" Gasp!







The older kid made cheese and pickle sandwiches with mustard, and a lemon tart. The younger kid made a paste from cheese, tomato, and onion for sandwiches, and blueberry scones. I made sandwiches using the veggie cream cheese recipe from 100 Days of Real Food, and an actual Victoria sponge from Say it with Cake. The older kid unearthed our family china, and she and Matt moved the school table out onto the back deck. I think the end result is absolutely delightful:

Our champagne cocktails are blue because we were experimenting with curacao liqueur. The younger kid found a recipe for a punch that uses it, since of course the punch MUST be blue (it's for her upcoming mermaid-themed birthday party), so although we'll be substituting curacao SYRUP for the party, we just wanted to try the liqueur. It's quite tasty!

We had a fun afternoon at the table, eating too many little sandwiches, speaking to each other like proper lords and ladies, and listening to classical music from the stereo.

Even though this badge is technically finished (other than maybe the younger kid and that makeover recipe...), it's inspired us to plan some other activities. I found a tea room an hour away that does a full English breakfast and an afternoon tea, so we're planning a couple of weekend trips to eat there. The older kid found a recipe for Philadelphia Turtle Soup in The Founding Foodies, a book about the culinary experiences of our founding fathers, so Matt has promised to ask our local butcher shop, which does, on occasion order in exotic meat, if they can obtain farmed turtle meat--I assure you, this is a thing. Apparently. And I think we'll do more cooking from library cookbooks! All of us have been getting our recipes primarily from online sources for everything that we cook, but the act of researching cookbooks and cooking from them for this badge was a lot more fun than I think any of us had anticipated, and with the huge variety of cookbooks in our library, it was quick and easy to find recipes that looked novel and interesting.

Here are some other resources that we used for this badge, generally either to add depth to something that we're already doing or to bring the idea of cooking into a separate subject or activity that we're studying or planning:

• The New Camp Cookbook. We're planning several backpacking and backcountry camping excursions this summer!
• Greece: The Cookbook. It hasn't even been a year since we were in Greece! I still long for several of the foods that we ate there.
• London's Afternoon Teas. This is a travel guide to the best spots to have afternoon tea in London, with lots of lovely photos.
• Cake: A Slice of History. The history of cake is surprisingly interesting! Will is currently reading this as an enrichment to her AP European History course.
• Colonial recipes with modern instructions. For when you just can't get enough of colonial American history!
• Wartime recipes in the UK. The site includes a list of per-person rations, and recipes for what people made with them. 

P.S. Want more deets on all the fun Girl Scout and homeschooling activities that we do every day (and whether or not they work or are disastrous)? Check out my Craft Knife facebook page!

Montessori Pink Tower and Cuisenaire Rod Extensions for a Sixth-Grader

When Syd's sixth-grade Math Mammoth curriculum covered exponents, she and I (and her sister, on occasion...) did a lot of hands-on sensorial work with exponents. It's easy to forget that even bigger kids benefit from hands-on math, but when you set something down in front of them and watch them become totally immersed in it, you're unlikely to forget again.

Soon after seeing how invested Syd was in working all the Montessori pink tower extensions, and how quickly she moved through them, I asked her if she wanted to join me in creating some extensions for the pink tower and Cuisenaire rods. Both sets of manipulatives are keyed to the centimeter, and so we found that they worked quite well together!

Here are some of the combinations that Syd and I found:

For some reason, Syd really enjoyed making a pattern with the pink tower, and then repeating it with the Cuisenaire rods. It's none of my business why or what she's getting out of a particular experience--the fact that she's happily engaged and invested in her work is proof enough that there's something of value in it for her.

We made a log cabin quilt block!

You can play a lot with perspective when you explore these two materials together. Each Cuisenaire rod is only one centimeter wide, so many of the patterns are best seen looking straight down from above.

I thought that this diagonal patter that Syd made was extremely clever. You can see that she doesn't have it quite worked out in this photo, but I can tell that she's noticed that two pink tower blocks can share a Cuisenaire rod. 

I think she might be exploring along the same lines here, as she's omitted the centimeter cube that she was originally using to cap all the corners of her creations.

This was just a "play" day for us, but you could make this activity more academically rigorous, and in some cases cross-curricular, by adding more investigations to it:

• Children could be the ones in charge of photographing their designs.
• Children could diagram their designs on graph paper. To continue extending it, they could add photographs of the completed designs, write a description or instructions, hand-paste or use a graphic design program to make a book, and then bind that book themselves.
• Children could use clip art versions of pink tower blocks and Cuisenaire rods in a graphic design program, designing patterns that are impossible to create in real life.
• Children can design and perform STEM challenges, such as creating the tallest free-standing tower or the longest possible bridge with supports.
• Combine these materials with the decanomial square to explore cubes, or add more pattern possibilities. Bonus points if you use foam core and/or foam sheets to make your decanomial square pieces one centimeter thick!

Most outside resources for these materials focus on extensions best suited for young children, but here are a couple that I've found that are sophisticated enough to intrigue an older child:

• Build a tower, an inverted tower, and connecting towers from Cuisenaire rods. You can challenge your fine motor skills with this one! This takes some serious problem-solving, and you'll be well-suited for architecture or engineering afterwards.
• Long division with Cuisenaire rods. This is how I modeled long division when the kids were first learning it, but it's a useful--and mind-blowing!--model to use anytime to make the connection that MATH MAKES SENSE.

Homeschool Science: CK-12 Biology Chapter 7: From DNA to Protein Synthesis

The kids and I are using CK-12's 9th/10th grade Biology textbook as the spine for this year's biology curriculum--for Will, who is in the eighth grade but who is taking high school-level coursework, this will be recorded as Honors Biology on her transcript.

In addition to that textbook, we're using The Illustrated Guide to Home Biology Experiments as our lab manual, and of course we've got a plethora of other reading/viewing/listening resources and hands-on activities to enrich our study.

• Lesson Plans for Chapter 1
• Lesson Plans for Chapter 4
• Lesson Plans for Chapter 5

The kids read chapter 7 in sections, completing the questions at the end of each section. At the end of the chapter, they took the test (from the CK-12 Biology Quizzes and Tests book) with an open book.

For Section 7.1: DNA and RNA, Syd also watched the BrainPOP videos "DNA" and "RNA," while Will read the entries "DNA" and "The Double Helix" in The Biology Book, a terrific resource that adds historical context to the science that we study. I had Will watch "Lecture 6: The Double Helix" in Great Courses Biology: The Science of Life, but honestly, the lecture seemed even more dry than I'd first thought it was when I was previewing it, so I likely won't assign anymore of these lectures. There are several that do align with CK-12 Biology, though, if you think you can sit through them.

After reading about DNA, I challenged the kids to make models of DNA. They did the research, followed through with construction, and their DNA models, each very different from the other, both turned out great!

Honestly, I could have done DNA models for weeks! I've discovered that I am a BIG fan of crafty science.

The big hands-on activity that we did for this section was from The Illustrated Guide to Home Biology Experiments;extracting DNA from beef liver was quite the scientific adventure! Will needed two tries to get this procedure right, but she was able to work independently from the instructions. Syd needed a lot of guidance, but her Type-A fastidiousness meant that she also got a workable DNA extraction on her first try.

For Section 7.2: Protein Synthesis, I wanted to make the process perfectly clear, so I relied on the same trick that I've used since they were toddlers--the hands-on model! The kids constructed this model of DNA to mRNA to ribosome to tRNA, and it was a comfy way to spend part of a rainy afternoon. After all, don't most kids do their best science snuggled up on Mom's bed?

On a different day, I had the kids practice transcription and translation using this Protein Synthesis and Translation activity from my favorite Teachers Pay Teachers seller, Amy Brown Science. It was a little spendy for a one-time activity--I mean, at $3.25 it's not *really* pricey, but I certainly am not going to budget to pay $3.25 for every lesson I ever do with the kids, you know? Might as well by an out-of-the box curriculum for that money! BUT I already know that Amy Brown Science is high quality, and this activity has the kids practice exactly what I want them to practice, and it's academically rigorous, AND I didn't have to make it up myself. 

$3.25 well spent in this case! 

I spent a LOT of time supplementing Sections 7.1 and 7.2, because the kids really need to understand DNA and the processes of transcription, translation, and protein synthesis. A deep understanding of molecular genetics is not optional! I spent a little less time supplementing Section 7.3, but I did want the kids to understand how the process can go wrong, so I found another Teachers Pay Teachers resource--a free one, this time!

The Genetic Mutations Scrabble Challenge is pretty brilliant--it uses Scrabble tiles and simple phrases to model how genetic mutations occur, and the types of genetic mutations that occur:

It was pretty quick and easy and the kids could both do it independently, but it also made the concept perfectly clear to both of them. This turned out to be an easy chapter to plan!

Only Will had a supplemental activity for Section 7.4: Regulation of Gene Expression. By this section, we'd spent a LOT of time on DNA through protein synthesis and both kids were ready to move on, so I had just Will view this presentation on Visualizing Gene-Expression Patterns, and even then only through Slide 8. Comparative biology is fascinating, but no need to dig in too deep when we're excited and ready to get going on the next chapter.

We watched two Crash Course videos during the course of this chapter:





We used several other resources to supplement this chapter:

• Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA
• Guilty By a Hair! Real-Life DNA Matches
• The Violinist's Thumb
• The Annotated and Illustrated Double Helix
• NOVA: Cracking the Code of Life

Finally, here are some resources that I collected for this chapter, but that we did not use:

• extract DNA from fruit
• paper lab on transcription and translation

There's a smooth transition from this chapter to the next on heredity, and then we leave molecular biology and spend a good, long time on evolution!

Homeschool Biology: Extract and Visualize DNA from Beef Liver

The kids and I are using CK-12's 9th/10th grade Biology textbook as the spine for this year's biology curriculum--for Will, who is in the eighth grade but who is taking high school-level coursework, this will be recorded as Honors Biology on her transcript.

In addition to that textbook, we're using The Illustrated Guide to Home Biology Experiments as our lab manual, and of course we've got a plethora of other reading/viewing/listening resources and hands-on activities to enrich our study.

Extracting DNA from fruit is one of those go-to hands-on science stations that my kids have already done at oodles of programs and festivals (and in fact, just a couple of weeks after we did this lab, Syd attended a Girls in STEM conference one Saturday morning and lo and behold! One of their workshop activities was extracting DNA from strawberries!), so I wanted to make its iteration in the DNA chapter of our biology textbook more rigorous for these little DNA extraction experts.

Want roughly the same process as extracting DNA from fruit, but with a more involved and complicated procedure? Extract DNA from beef liver!

We followed the procedure from The Illustrated Guide to Home Biology Experiments for this, using beef liver from the local butcher shop. The process included a lot of excellent practice in making and staining slides (I still have not mastered the method of drawing stain underneath a slide cover using the corner of a paper towel) and using the microscope at different magnifications. The kids are still a little uncertain when they handle the microscope, mostly, I think, because they know how expensive and delicate it is, but after helping them run through this procedure, I feel like an old pro!

Look, everyone! Beef liver!

Syd, as you can tell, did not love mashing beef liver in a ceramic egg cup:

The coolest part of this procedure--though it's also tedious, I'll be honest--is determining the correct amount of sodium dodecyl sulfate to add to the strained beef and saline solution. The kids had to add a specific amount of sodium dodecyl sulfate to the strained beef and saline solution, make and stain a slide of that solution, and then observe it under the microscope, and then do it again. And again. And again. And again.

Worth it, though, when you finally hit the sweet spot and the cell membrane breaks down. Syd described it this way: "The cells all exploded!" Indeed, it was pretty cool!

When the cells have "all exploded" you can gently and carefully introduce the chilled isopropanol into the solution--

Here you see beef liver and saline solution in several states--the one on the left has isopropanol introduced.

 --and you can see with your naked eyes when the DNA has precipitated out. Remind the kids of all the experimenting that you did with liquid density!

As a final step you can extract the DNA from this, make and stain a slide, and observe it under the microscope.

I won't tell you what it looks like, but it was so cool--in fact, everything under the microscope in this procedure was so cool!--that I spent a hundred bucks of my homeschool budget on a digital camera/video camera that's made to go with our microscope. 

The next time we explode a cell, we'll have photographic evidence!