Big Biology Unit!

Sweet Pea really enjoyed our foray into chemistry last year and I must admit it was a great way to cover a lot of science.  It was another thing to pull the information together and figure out the best way to organize it..... Luckily I find I'm really enjoying doing it and my degree in biology may have contributed as well :o)

 

 

I'm not going to bore you with loads of links that will probably expire... but I will list our order of discovery and a couple of fantastic books we found along the way.  If you are looking for a specific resource, please leave me a message and I'll do my best to help you out!!

I needed a spine to help guide our unit study and chose this one.. Evolution Revolution.. I like that it tells the story of creation from a variety of myths and cultures and then shows when science came in and how it changed how we look at the origin of life.

I love this book...Our Family Tree.. it is a great picture book with lovely illustrations....  there is also a great timeline at the back... 

 

And what study of the origin of life doesn't need some Sir David Attenborough...

This documentary called First Life is just fantastic!  I was unable to find a DVD, so here is a link to watch it for free!

Part 1- First Life

Part 2- First Life 

As we did with our chemistry unit, we did a scientist study...  This website is so cool for making your own scientist trading cards!

First up was Aristotle and then Carl Linnaeus... because he was the coolest classifier!  At this point we also talked about taxonomy, and binomial nomenclature :)  Here are some super cool dichotomous key worksheets... we had way too much fun with some of these!

 

DNA!! Once we figured out how things had been classified, we started discussing how we know things are related... this book; Gregor Mendel, the friar who grew peas; was fantastic!

 

We also discussed Watson and Crick, and Rosalind Franklin, who together discovered the shape of DNA, which led to pipe cleaner models and an experiment to extract DNA... so cool!

The Scientific Mom has a great tutorial for the DNA extraction.

The next scientist was Charles Darwin, which I could spend a whole unit on!  My favourite picture book was One Beetle Too Many......

 

 

We watched videos, mapped the voyage of the HMS Beagle, found examples of natural selection and learned about the Galapagos islands. Our favourite documentary about Darwin was BBC's Charles Darwin and the Tree of Life.. Check it out!

We also found this book about a young girl who reads The Origin of Species and wants to become a naturalist... in the year of 1899.  The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate was a fantastic fiction read aloud for this unit!!
 

This was a great place in our unit to look at each kingdom of life in more detail.. BBC Life series was great for this!  We also took a look at prokaryotic vs eukaryotic cells, protists, animal vs plant cells and types of cycles (water, nitrogen, carbon).

 

 And how humans impact, interact and protect life...  Sweet Pea really enjoyed learning about Rachel Carson, author of Silent Spring... this was a great picture book; Rachel Carson and her book that changed the world....

The final product?  A better understanding of the natural world, kidlets that pretend they are naturalists like Charles Darwin and Calpurnia Tate in the backyard, and this completed lapbook......
 How great is Sweet Pea's drawing of Darwin and his great idea!

We found most of the elements for our lapbook at Homeschoolshare, but also made some of our own!

 We all loved this unit.... looking forward to going over it again in a few years in more detail for both Sweet Pea and Goober!  Next up.... physics!