Tips for Homeschool Science

The insect model is of a water strider. Surface tension as well as physical structures of the insect affect the insect's ability to float on the water.

Hi, I am Janice VanCleave. My goal is to create homeschool material on my website to provide ideas that will work for you. Many homeschoolers ask for ideas to expand experiments. In response to this, I have designed teaching tips that can be adapted to even the simplest experiment. But, these are just my ideas [...]

How Do Flies Eat?

straw boy

Flies have a special mouth part called a proboscis. Much like the way the boy in the photo is using a straw, a fly uses its proboscis to drink liquids. Since flies do not have teeth, can they eat solid foods? Yes, and it really is gross, so get prepared: Flies vomit their stomach contents [...]

Are Flies Harmful?

A Boy is Eating A Cookie

When a fly lands on your food, it first uses sensory organs on its feet to “smell” the food. Unlike the boy in the diagram, flies do not have teeth to bite a chuck out of food. The boy is able to dip his cookie into the glass of milk to make it softer is [...]

Butterfly: Open Wings

butterfly open  wings

Butterflies areĀ  cold blooded. This means they must warm themselves in sunlight. When a butterfly is chilled, it opens its wings as shown in the photo. This allows sunlight to warm each part of their wings. Kids can use their hands to model a butterfly with open wings. Janice VanCleave’s Teaching the Fun of Science [...]