Cave Unit Study and Activities

We started the school year off learning about Caves because I wanted something I knew would be engaging for Ziggy. There are some really fun field trips to go with caves and I just thought he would love the geology! And he did!

This unit lasted until Halloween so we got to do some fun Halloween tie-ins with bats also. Our previous Cave Unit can be found here (this went along with a trip to New Mexico and Carlsbad Caverns! I wish we could go there again!).

Some miscellaneous resources:

An interesting website: https://www.design42.com/caving/home.htm

Cool movie about The Deepest Cave

A short film about Carlsbad Caverns

Interesting film: Inside Hidden Caves

We also watched a good video called "Hidden Forests" which I can't find right now.

There's a Planet Earth section on Caves: (Season 1 Episode 4)

https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/detail/B09226TR6X/ref=aiv_DVAPI_watchlistToggle

I've always been fascinated by this giant crystal cave. They've learned a lot more about it since I first learned about it ten years ago in our first cave unit!

We learned about the Lascaux caves and other prehistoric cave art and did these "cave paintings" on paper bags. (Something like this.) We used chalk and crayons, and even burned the ends of some skewers so we could use "charcoal" like the ancient people did.

Gus and Clementine joined in too

Clementine (she looks so young here!) was very pleased with herself

Big kindergarten boy

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This was a little activity on dissolution when we were talking about how stalactites and stalagmites are formed. Ideas here:

Dissolving M&Ms and Amazing Solubility

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This was a fun activity (idea from here)—we put a soluble mineral (sugar cubes) under an insoluble mineral (clay) and dripped water through a small hole in the clay. The sugar dissolved in the water, leaving cavities underneath the clay.

We could see how some caves form in the sides of cliffs, and other areas form sinkholes beneath the ground level

Lots of little caverns here—I wish I could shrink myself and go in exploring!

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Best of all were the multitude of drawings of spelunkers Ziggy did during this unit! We watched some movies about cave divers and cave explorers and his imagination was really caught by that. He drew his poor little explorers squeezing through so many tight and winding caverns! (They didn't mind, though, because they were so prepared with lanterns, ropes, hooks, and so forth! And because they got to see so many wonders!)

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For our culminating activity of this unit, we decorated our trunk (for the ward Trunk or Treat) like a cave! We made stalactites and stalagmites, and hung bats from the ceiling. It looked cute, and we were rather proud of it…but then we saw a bunch of other amazing trunks other people had decorated and realized it was not quite as impressive as we'd thought. :) But we had fun making it all the same!

Ancient Civilizations Homeschool Unit

This was the second of only TWO units this school year! Of course there was a lot of other school around the edges. But these two were both just huge units, and honestly, it was quite fun to dive SO deeply and for SO long into these topics. We felt quite experts by the time we were done.

I haven't ever taught or even learned about several of these Ancient Civilizations before, and it was great to do it along with our study of the Old Testament because I finally felt like I understood (at least a little) what was going on with the Hittites and the Amorites and all the warring tribes and other civilizations rising and falling and carrying the Jews away captive and so forth. I've never understood any of that before! 

Because this was kind of a history survey (we used Story of the World, Vol. 1 as a loose spine), we didn't delve into each civilization as much as we could have. They have a lot in common, though, and I hope to revisit some of the most interesting ones. We have studied Ancient Egypt before, and it's one of my favorite units! But I'd love to do separate unit studies of Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome as well. Maybe we'll get to Rome during our New Testament studies!

Here's my old Pinterest board for Ancient Egypt (I didn't make a new board this time, but we did some of these same activities, and some new ones): https://www.pinterest.com/marilynnielson/ancient-egypt-homeschool-unit/

We also watched these videos about some of the first civilizations:

• From hunter-gatherer to Farmer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=teavjYI9pdM&t=97s

• Human Prehistory 101 (part 3), Agriculture: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVHD9wGlbho

I want to write down one of the children's favorite activities before I forget it. It was something I made up on the spur of the moment, but they loved it and wanted to play it over and over! We did this activity after a discussion of archaeology and how archeologists interpret the past.

1. Divide into two teams. One is the Ancient People. One is the Archaeologists.

2. The Ancient People go around the house collecting random objects (stuffed animals, cooking utensils, blankets, clothing, wood scraps, whatever). Then they take their objects outside and hide them around the yard. They decide upon a story for what they are doing. E.g.: "These people worshiped bunnies. They lived near water and traveled in boats. They fought with neighboring tribes and died of a plague." They hide the objects in such a way as to reveal what they can about these details. They take note of how many objects they hid.

3. The Archaeologists go around the yard and find the "artifacts." Once they have found them all, they try to say as many details as they can about the life of the Ancient People. They try to guess how they lived and how they died.

4. Switch teams and play again!