Apocalypse homeschool: lessons I’ve prepared, resources I’ve used

For a broader overview of our pandemic homeschooling, see here.

What’s the brain made of?

• We read the section on neurons in their human body book, and then made a neuron out of beads based on the instructions on Neuroscience for Kids.
• I wanted to show them a video on parts of the brain and what they specialize in. This one was too advanced, so I made a worksheet to  help them focus on the main points (e.g., “The part of your brain that’s busy when you play sports is called the ____________.”) I’d pick a simpler video if I did it again. I wasn’t calibrating well for a 5th grader.

What are cells?

• Magic Schoolbus 4:6 (it’s on Netflix)
• Coloring pages from biologycorner.com. I’m not gonna lie, I don’t know what endoplasmic reticulum is. Zoe read us the descriptions and we each colored our own.
  I still don’t really know what endoplasmic reticulum is, but Z has a firmer grasp on the fact that a cell is alive and all living things are cells or made of cells.
• This one’s cheating, but I bought a cheap microscope on Amazon and we’ve been looking at cells under it. I hope to get a lot more use out of this over the next few weeks — gather water from the local stream, swab our cheeks, grow brine shrimp, etc. We’ll see. There are some cool ideas here.

Viruses & bacteria

I haven’t done this yet, but the cellular biology stuff is laying the groundwork for talking about what viruses & bacteria and then vaccination stuff.

Microbes coloring pages from the American Museum of Natural History

Videos I’m contemplating include:

• Viruses and Bacteria, by Else-Vet
• What is a microbe, by OceanLeadership
• How do germs spread, by TedEx

Simulations of epidemics, vaccination and herd immunity:

• Herd immunity simulator
• Prettier but less interactive
• Less pretty but more interactive

How we conquered smallpox Ted Ed lesson

Dogs Decoded

This looks up Z’s alley. I like the idea of watching educational TV and doing a worksheet.

Masque of the Red Death???

Is having Z read Masque of the Red Death during a pandemic a terrible idea??? I haven’t decided yet. If we do, I have an annotated version with advanced vocab defined, and I have printed a floor plan for Z to color. I even printed windows and lamps to add to it, lol.

Random topics

We’ve watched a bunch of YouTube videos related to things Zoe is interested in, for example this guy making an A-frame hut. Is that even science? I dunno. It’s cool, though!

Other cool-looking resources

Z loves learning languages on Duolingo.

You can learn anything on Khan Academy (and it’s easy to find grade-appropriate stuff, e.g. fifth grade math). Z loves these.

TedEd has few topics and the videos don’t always seem super well leveled, but there’s some fun stuff there.

CrashCourse, meanwhile, is meant more for high schoolers, but I think parts of it may be useful. I might use his stuff on the immune system.

ReadWriteThink has lesson plans and printouts and such for language arts stuff.

Study.com lets you sort online classes by grade level but it looks like you have to pay.

BrainPOP has some really cool-looking stuff, but it’s also pay-only.

There’s a lot on Teachers Pay Teachers, of varying value. Sometimes I use it as a starting point for searches, but then end up finding other stuff elsewhere.

I’m installing more educational stuff on Z’s tablet, e.g., an app with a daily drawing prompt and an app called Quandary that lets kids research and make difficult decisions for a community of people colonizing a new planet.

Things I’m still on the lookout for

Self-study stuff for music — like Yousician but free?

Something to dig into for history or social studies. Z absolutely adores history of the entire world i guess and I’m hoping that can be a jumping-off point. I’ve found some good stuff for learning about Celts and Vikings before, but I’m holding off on researching more till I know what Z wants to study.