Today we officially started our Family Home School project of building a greenhouse. I’m really excited! This is our 1st official “family style home school project” but we like the idea so much that we already have the second project chosen. 1st step for today was to start notebooks for research. We found plans on the internet and eventually we’ll be estimating materials (next weeks) etc. This will take a month or 2. We’ll answer all of the who, what, why, when, where questions.
In the meantime we’ve decided to put a greenhouse to the test by cutting a plastic orange juice container & planting 2 plants/seeds (per kid). 1 will have the clear plastic bottle on top acting as the greenhouse & the other plant will have nothing. That way we can see which one will grow faster (thus seeing results of a greenhouse long before we get to hammer and nails).
Tomorrow we’ll actually plant and record notes in our science journals about our mini greenhouse project. Today we rinsed out the OJ containers, cut them and talked about the project (and started the research etc)
Lesson for today ending with (for my 4 yr old) a greenhouse doesn’t HAVE to be green (she was obsessed with painting it green during our research to find greenhouse plans) and for Christian my 10 yr old (turns ll in several weeks) we had to learn that it’s a greenhouse not a green house (one word!) Lol!
Anyway… lots of fun stuff going on here today….
We’ll learn math estimating our material expenses. We’ll learn about force and friction building the greenhouse. We’ll put the scientific method to the test with our mini greenhouses long before we start hamering. And did I mention research? We had to reasearch plans, we’ll research the need (or lack there of) for a building permit. There are so many educational benefits. Once the greenhouse is up we’ll learn about growing up – literally with the plants to save space. We’ll learn botany with the plants. Oh and lets not forget NUTRITION way beyond a classroom education of what is good and bad for you – we’ll be living it!
If you’re thinking about a family home school project here are some ideas to get ‘ya thinking;
- Solar (this is our 2nd project of choice)
- greenhouse
- hatch chicken eggs
- raise chickens & sell eggs (small family business)
- Bat boxes
- Purple Marlin boxes
- Start a Butterfly garden
- native insect control with growing lady bugs or praying mantis to release
- Build a tree house or tree fort
- Build an herb garden
- Wood shed
- Tree Bench (wrap around style)
- Outdoor Fire put and barbecue space
- Bird feeders
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