My List – Free Science and Nature Study

PharmaOmega Learn is designed for school-aged children who need omega-3 to help them focus and do their best in school.

Interactive Homeschool Fun and Learning find hours of Educational Website for Science, Nature Study, Spaces Exploration and Environment.

ll the activities listed below are free of charge. You may be asked occasionally on a site for your email address, if it wasn’t a safe site it would not have made it on my list!

More of my lists are coming soon and being updated I hope you enjoy them.

4H Virtual Farm

http://sites.ext.vt.edu/virtualfarm/main.html

Learn everything about living on a farm. Dairy, Beef, aquaculture, Poultry, Horse Farm, wheat Farm; view videos, live cam, see live chicks hatched, read all about farming. Meet other Farm kids.

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Virtual Forests

http://sites.ext.vt.edu/virtualforest/

Virginia Cooperative Extension virtual Forest

Click the Tree Detective help identify trees or solve mysteries.

Old Field Succession see how the land is used.

Photosynthesis interactive; very good educational tool that can be used for teaching photosynthesis.

Fun inviting learning activities.

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Zoos

Smithsonian Zoo Animal links

http://nationalzoo.si.edu/Animals/default.cfm

They have live webcams and audio to hear what the animal sound like. They also offer photogalleries.

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Smithsonian National Zoo

http://nationalzoo.si.edu/Education/ConservationCentral/walk/default.cfm

At Conservation Central there are live webcams and audio to hear what the animal sound like. This website also offer photo galleries. The fantastic multimedia section comes with or without narratives. Great for the Charlotte Mason types to use on a rainy day. There are other selections too, such as, Dirt Detective Tree and soil, Forrest layers, Tree ID walk, Observing Seasonal Changes.

Have Fun with this one!

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Bird Habitats and sounds

Your family with have fun with these sites and use them time and again.

Bird Calls by Habitat

http://www.learnbirdsongs.com/habitats.php

Country, Forest, Cityscapes and wetlands

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Bird Calls Audio only

http://www.enature.com/birding/audio.asp

List of several birds by category with their calling sounds, Great for testing Bird lovers

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Fish Game

http://www.epa.gov/fishadvisories/kids/arcade.html

Find and catch the fish that are safe to eat and throw back the fish that are not safe to eat. You think it’s just a game until you realize the types of fish that are safe and which types of fish are not safe to eat. Good Game.

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Nature Sounds – Natural Museum in California

http://www.museumca.org/naturalsounds/home.html

Listen to what nature sounds like in California – from the Great Basin, Coast Mountains, desert, coastline and more. Learn about the animals that live in those areas of California.

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Field Guide Indexes

http://www.enature.com/fieldguides/index.asp

All types of critters and animals. Find a field guide to just about everything, insects, mammals, reptiles, butterflies, trees, seashore, wildflowers, spiders, ocean, poisonous, dangerous, endangered and native plants.

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National Geographic Videos

http://video.nationalgeographic.com/video/

Kids Sections -
Animals

http://video.nationalgeographic.com/video/player/kids/index.html

Games Animals and stories

http://kids.nationalgeographic.com/

Activities

http://kids.nationalgeographic.com/Activities/

Science – Equinoxes, Moon, Solar System, Sun, Solar Blast, Missions to Mar, voyager, Hubble Telescope. Also learn about the environment, travel and culture tells about different countries and hurricanes in the special video section.

http://video.nationalgeographic.com/video/player/science/index.html

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Yellowstone National Park Service

http://www.nps.gov/yell/forkids/index.htm

Main Kids Page includes – website scavenger hunt, Alphabet animal and sounds live book, online Coloring book, print coloring pages, puzzles, word games and Wolf Quest

Game: What’s the difference between Antlers and horns? Match the horns and Antlers to the animal.

http://www.nps.gov/yell/forkids/ahdiff.htm

Go on an electronic Virtual Field Trip to the following locations

http://www.windowsintowonderland.org/

Go on a Geyser Quest, Bison Roam and Yellowstone Exposed field trip. Sounds like fun check it out!

No cost it really is free.

National Park Service

For home school kids who can’t leave the area this Web Ranger option with over 50 interactive games, would make summer a little more fun. You must sign up before you can join in the fun yet, definitely worth it and it’s free.

http://www.webrangers.us/index.cfm

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Printables from National Parks

Find all the Junior Ranger zones at http://www.nps.gov/learn/juniorranger.cfm

Become a Junior Ranger with a Free printable Activities book – Lincolns Historic home

http://www.nps.gov/abli/forkids/junior-ranger-booklet.htm

Big Cypress National Preserve Florida

http://www.nps.gov/bicy/forkids/beajuniorranger.htm

Bandlands in South Dakota – Fun Pages -

http://www.nps.gov/badl/forkids/parkfun.htm

Be a Fossil hunter; learn about Geology, Animal tracks, make an Armored Mud Ball and more.

Find more fun at the National Parks Fun pages for a park near you.

http://www.nps.gov/learn/parkfun.cfm

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Free Public Domain Images from Yellowstone National Park

http://www.nps.gov/features/yell/slidefile/index.htm

Use them for your school Projects! What a resource!

Public Domain – over 13,000 in the collection; over 23 categories main categories and several subcategories to choose from of birds, animals, people, plants, scenery, weather,

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Free Sound Effect

http://www.a1freesoundeffects.com/animal.html

Teach your children what animal’s sound like. This site has a wide selection of animals, just click and listen; very simple. You could also download the sounds if you’re interested in doing an audible story and need the sound of an animal to enhance the story.

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Raggedy Ann and Andy Books and Movie

If Raggedy Ann and Andy are of interest to you and your children and part of a your reading book curriculum, here are some links to free books and a free movie to watch. The movie is on youtube and called Raggedy Ann and Andy’s Musical Adventure. Perfect for someone who just turned 7 year old’s. It’s split into 10 parts.

You can also read the following books for Free. They are Raggedy Ann read aloud audio and reading book with interactive reading exercises included at the end of the story. All the following books can all be viewed at the bottom section of One Step Higher website with best English stories, all free to read.

Raggedy Ann Learns a lesson
Raggedy Ann and the Chickens (19 pages)
Raggedy Ann and the Washing
Raggedy Ann and the Kite (no questions at the end of the story) 19 pages.
Raggedy Ann rescues Fido

Raggedy Ann and Andy Musical Adventure Movie

This movie is split into 10 parts to view the video in full screen – click the square box next to the speaker icon to expand – then when the video is over click the X on the bottom right of the menu. Enjoy.

Part 1

Part 2 Click the box to the right of the speaker to expand the movie to full screen.

Table and Chairs - Raggedy Ann

GUIDECRAFT Raggedy Ann & Andy – Table & 2 Chair Set
From: MyToyBox

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Part 6

Raggedy Ann and Andy Toy box
GUIDECRAFT Raggedy Ann & Andy – Toy Chest
From: MyToyBox

Part 7

Part 8

Part 9

Part 10 Short ending with credits

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Movie Night

Many of us can’t resist a good movie. Are you ready to watch movies but not sure if about finding a good movie and how will you know if it’s a good movie?

Going to the video rental store and looking around for a movie is a thing of the past. It usually ends in disaster too, if you have kids with you. They don’t give you the luxury of remembering why you are there and which movie you are trying to rent. Usually before you know it your faced with options you did not expect to encounter. That’s one of the reason why I decided to go online for movie rentals such as Netflix, PiusMedia, and Graboid.

If you haven’t rented movies like this before you should consider it. You’ll find arguing about which movie to watch can be pretty much eliminated. These movies can generally be rented in two ways, by mail, or watch them instantly online.

The nice thing about Netflix style movie watching, is the way each person in the family can browse through the movies at their leisure. Put them in an instant que or a mail out que. Then you can go in and rearrange them, remove or add movies. Controlling movie watching in your house will be a little easier than watching a movie the television stations thinks you should watch.

These movie rental programs are also great if you sign up your elderly parents or grandparents; give it as gift – many of movie rental companies offer great movie classics. Take it from me, my parents love it! At first, they were very reluctant, saw no purpose in it and now can’t wait to go to the que and rent another movie. Older children can even help grandma and grandpa to show them how it works. Help discuss and learn about the movies (movie reviews) with one another.

I discovered a new site (to me) in the past few months. This movies by mail site is one of the best websites out by far for families who like to watch movies It called Faith and Family Flix their values are high. You may end up paying a little more for the basic plan but the regular plans are very competitive. Their selection on finding good Catholic and/or wholesome movies is also great. Plus you receive One Free Month if you join at this time. I understand it’s run by a Catholic Family. Pius media is also a Catholic based videos by mail organization who offer for rent, the largest selection of Catholic centered videos I have seen! I think every homeschool should should belong to this company to gain access to their collection for teaching purposes. I love the way you can search for saints by the feast days during any given month, that really helps with lesson planning.

Blockbuster is holding it’s own with their Total Access. You can download movies from their site, or by mail or exchange within their store. And they have branched in the UK. My friends and daughter who live in the London as I understand can now go to Blockbuster.co.uk where blockbuster offers a free unlimited DVDs for one month.

`Graboid Video`

Graboid is not necessarily family oriented it offers all type of movies. You should supervise kids when selecting a movie. However, they have a good selection of with 60,000 Movies & TV Shows Basic version is completely free. If you already know which movies you plan to watch, this site can be very nice. You download movies directly to your computer for later or watch it immediately. The cost per usage is determined by bandwidth downloaded. It’s clearly marked and easily understood. They offer a free month and I mean really free , Graboid does not make you put in any credit card info before your trial, just an email (and they don’t bug you.) At the end of the month or when you have used up like 10,000 gigs of download bytes then you decide if you want a monthly rental agreement. They do not mail movie to your house. depending on the amount of download bytes your interested in. Full access only $1.97/month Get it now for FREE Personally, I think it’s worth the trail and the quality is great.

One other Movie access that deserves to be mentioned is RED BOX they look like vending machine at Walmart and other convenience store movies can be rented for $1.00. They began to offer a Free Monday Movie night that was scheduled to end during May. However, recently they extended the promotion you can receive as a text message.

The Free Movie Monday monthly code will be distributed via text on the first Monday of every month, beginning June 1. To register or view promotion details, go to www.redbox.com.

Movie Reviews

Now that you know where to go to watch movies, let me show you where to find a good movie review source.

US Catholic Bishops Conference offers detailed movie reviews with the following codes.

U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ ratings
A-I General patronage
A-II Adults and adolescents
A-III Adults
A-IV Adults, with reservations
L Limited adult audience
O Morally offensive

Motion Picture Association of America ratings
G General audiences
PG Parental guidance suggested
PG-13 Parents strongly cautioned
R Restricted
NC-17 No one 17 and under admitted

Before you watch movies here’s another place to go for a review. It’s called Decent Films they even have a fact checker too. Most everything else will just lead you back to the Bishops website.

Blockbuster Link for the United Kingdom

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Museums, History, Art, free Days and Homeschool Days

Find a Museum Close to You

Many of museums offer “free days” or “homeschool days”

Go to museums in the USA All types of museums to choose from. Art Museums, Science Museums and many more.

Visiting and Learning about Ancient Egypt, Greece and Italy is no farther than a click away.

Atlanta, Georgia has Michael C. Carlos Museum said to be one of the best Ancient Egypt Museums in the US. Admission is $7 per person. See Mummies Egyptian time periods. Items from Greek, Roman and Ancient American time periods as well.

Totally Tut Pyramid Game $17.98

Exploring never got better than with the fascinating Michael Carlos online Ancient Greece Museum there is no explaining this one, it a fun way to read and learn all about Ancient times. Enter into a Flash multimedia presentation with lots of features and choices for teaching things such as architecture, living, geography, battles, God’s Goddess’, heroes, names, and Greek Democracy.

Art Institute of Chicago

View an entire multi-media guide to the Ancient World and choose from Ancient Egypt, Greece, and Italy when visiting the the Art Institute of Chicago. Cick the stories button (link) if that option is available that goes along with the images. The story runs a quicktime movie that explains the history surrounding the image. For example, here is a video telling about the Ancient Boats used in the time of Cleopatra in Egypt. Explaining how the boats sailed up and down the Nile River. These would make great history lessons for younger grades as an introduction to Ancient History.

Lesson Plans for the Ancient Studies are also available at the Art Institute of Chicago for teaching Math, Fine Arts, Language Arts, Science and Social Studies. These look like they would make great unit studies. Note: these lesson plans are main focus includes those in 4th and 5th grade.

Then go and learn about Ancient Egypt at the British Museum in the UK learn about hieroglyphics writings.

Vatican Online Museums

You don’t have to go any farther than the tip of your fingers to find loads of Ancient history. Here at the Vatican Online Museum you will find quality Christian history, art history and more.

St. Louis Art Museum

The St. Louis Art Museum is a spectacular Museum if you ever get the chance to go there. It’s free every day and on Friday’s their special exhibits are free too. They have beautiful Ancient Art and quite an extensive collection of religious and Chinese art. They also have educational programs some for free depending on the time and season.

Parthenon in the USA

One of the most awesome things I ever saw in the United States was a life size replica of the Greek PARTHENON – in NASHVILLE, TN!! It was unbelievable. I felt like I was in Greece. Inside there is a Colossal statue of Athena holding Nike It’s located in down town Nashville and at this time it cost $6.00 for adults and $3.50 for kids 4- 17, if your younger than that you get in free. they are open year round from about 9-4 except Sunday it’s 12:30 – 4:30. View the photo gallery

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Ancient History

Here is a simple Ancient history link on Teacher’s Vision secular based on the 7 Wonders of Ancient History.

Good link to a fun Hieroglyphics site. Get as detailed as you want with Egyptian writings, numbers, fractions, downloads and links.
Totally Tut Pyramid Game $17.98
Good site, claims to be a kids site on Mummies of Ancient Egypt but I think it may be a little advance for 2nd and 3rd grade without parental guidance and interpretation. It includes a timeline, what mummies are, who they are and how they are made. Even includes what they thought about afterlife. With your guidance through this site it definitely has potential.

Another fun site I ran across are mummy projects; one is, How to Mummy a Chicken!

A very nice 4 volume collection of World History books is called “The Story of the World: History for the Classical Child” they deal with all types of history from Ancient to modern. These books are not free however, you can find them on Amazon.com for really good prices. This collection even offers test books for each of the volumes with the answer keys

Volume 1, Ancient Times: From the Earliest Nomads to the last Roman Emperor Volume 2, The Middle Ages: From the Fall of Rome to the Rise of the Renaissance Tests and Answer Key (2: The Middle Ages) Volume 3: Early Modern Times Volume 4, From Victoria's Empire to the End of the USSR

On to the Free Books and Stories online

Greek Mythology:

Looking for a Greek Mythology book? Here is one to investigate. It was written in 1896, yes, 1896. It claims to be the best introduction to Greek mythology for children and it is free to read online. The book is called Gods and Heroes It includes all the prominent gods of mythology such as Neptune, Mercury, Isis and heroes such as Hercules and his twelve labors. Done very well as a narrative.

Book with a mix of Greek Mythology with historical stories of the Ancient Greece

Book is Called Stories of Ancient Greece

The Gods of Greece
The Fire from Heaven
The Magic Box
The Voices of the Gods
Deucalion’s Flood
In the Woods
Under the Waves
In the Moonlight
Among the Stars
The Kingdom under the Ground
Sowing Dragon’s Teeth
The Race of Atalanta
Men Turned to Stone
Black Sails or White
Wings of Wax
The Good Ship Argo
The Golden Fleece
Lost by Looking Back
The Horse with Wings
The Singer and the Dolphin
A Fiery Runaway
What a Strong Man Did
A Golden Girl
How Death Was Conquered
The Shepherd Prince of Troy
The Trojan War
The Wooden Horse
The Giant’s Cave
The Enchanted Island
Dangers of the Sea
A Friendly Land
The Wanderer’s Return
The Splendid City
The Boy and the Fox
The Olympic Games
The Great Lawgivers
The Ring of Polycrates
“I Will Be the Greatest”
The Poets
The Three Orders of Architecture
With Chisel and Pencil
The Battle of Marathon
The Greatest Army
The Brave Three Hundred
The Wooden Walls
The Seven Wise Men
The Richest King
Glorious Days
The Wise Man with the Snub Nose
A Wasted Life
The Retreat of the Ten Thousand
False and Cruel
The Theban Pair
Philip of Macedon
The Man with the Silver Tongue
The Man Called “The Broad”
The Faithful Friends
The Wise Man Who Lisped
The Man Who Was Called “The Good”
Alexander the Great
The Wise Man Who Lived in a Tub
The End of Glory
The Great Mechanic
Conquered by Rome

Stories from Greek History:

Alexander the Great Free to read online book.

Lapbooking on the subject of Ancient Greece Videos

Part 1 on Lapbooking about Ancient Greece

Part 2 Ancient Greece homeschool Lap Book Explained.

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Showing kids Science

Even if you don’t live near a science museum you can still show your kids the wonders of life.

Video from the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, Illinois. Chick hatchery, see baby baby chicks being hatched from their eggs.

More from the Museum of Science and Industry:

Click here to learn how to construct a worm farm

2009 Free Day Schedule for Museum of Science and Industry General admission is free on the following dates*:
June	1 2 3 4 5 19
October	8 9 12 13 14 15 16 19 20 21 22 23 26 27 28 29 30
November	11

2009 Free Day Schedule for

Museum of Science and Industry

General admission is free on the following dates*:

June

1 2 3 4 5 19

October

8 9 12 13 14 15 16 19 20 21 22 23 26 27 28 29 30

November

* there is still a charge for parking and omnimax on Free days check the Museum of Science and Industry Website for full details.

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Schoolhouse Rocks Grammar

Learn Nouns through songs

These Grammar Rock songs from school house rocks are a great supplement to learning for the Catholic homeschooler. Kids love them so much they don’t consider it learning, to them its just another song to learn.

Grammar Rocks: Nouns

Grammar Rocks Schoolhouse Rocks:

Learning verb through music and songs:

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Skip Count with Ease

Choose a number to begin your skip counting and choose increments your child needs to learn.. Here is a link to a website that is fun to “play skip counting” Your child may not realize they are learning!

The nice thing about this supersequencer is that you can adjust it to go slow, medium or fast. You can skip count what ever number you want skip count 2, skip count 3, skip count 4, skip count by hundreds, or tens. Have a race with it or play a game with it. Let your child see it and say it. Great for an homeschooling an only child who needs to practice math.

Go to link here Supersquencer

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School House Rock 3’s and Zero still lots of Fun.

PharmaOmega Learn is designed for school-aged children who need omega-3 to help them focus and do their best in school.

Music is such a fun way to learn math! Learn anything…

Did you know you can find old and newer school house rock videos on Youtube? It’s not the same as having your own collection but it sure makes you reminisce back to the days of singing these tunes. I am sure once you see some of these, like so many of us you will be hooked and want the whole collection. But if your strapped for fund at least you can be safe viewing these videos from this website.

I don’t recommend you sending your kids to youtube unattended by a parent. Parents should always search first and view first. That’s why I post good videos on my site. Don’t get me wrong, I love Youtube it’s got some awesome videos on it, anything you could possibly want. Yet therein lies the problem. You don’t have to worry about clicking the a video here and having it turn out to have inappropriate content.

School House Rock, Magic number 3:

Learn how to multiply and count by 3’s through songs.

This video is unofficially claimed as the first Schoolhouse rock video.

School house Rocks, My Hero Zero: Learn about multiplying by zero through music.