Homeschool Resources

Several of my readers seem to be teaching children science and mathematics at home. For their benefit, here is a list of resources, which I will keep updating.

Blog posts here

    

Posters

For people with children, these high-resolution posters are intended for printing on A3 paper, and can be freely downloaded:

  
Mathematics posters: Flat shapes, Solid Shapes, Prime Factors (colour-coded)

  
Biology posters: Ladybirds of Australia, Plants and Fungi, Some Flowering Plants (monocots marked with a dot)

  
Astronomy/geography posters: Southern Cross (showing colours and magnitudes of stars), Orion (ditto), Geographical Features

 
Technology posters: Vehicles, Milestones in Materials

Nature study – Websites

Nature study – Dioramas

     

These cut-out dioramas are intended for displaying plastic animals, and for a discussion of animal habitats (click for hi-res images). There is also an Australian scene and a pond scene.

Space-related and other scientific paper models

Other cut-out dioramas here include a chemistry laboratory, the interior of the Space Station, the surface of Mars, and “Earthrise” on the Moon. Related paper models on the web include:

Solar System scale model

The following images of the eight major planets and Pluto are to scale, with each image 500,000 km in width (the third image also includes the Moon). For comparison, the diameter of the Sun is 1,390,000 km, so you can team these planets up with a big yellow circle which is 2.8 times the width of each image. Click on the images to zoom.

    
    
    

If you want distances from the Sun to each planet to be to scale as well (like this or this), they are shown below (in millions of km and multiples of the width of each image). If the images above are printed out 5 cm or 2 inches wide (i.e. at a scale of 1 cm = 100,000 km), then the sun would be 14 cm (5.5 inches) wide, and distances from the Sun to each planet would be as per the bottom two rows of the table.

58 108 150 228 779 1,434 2,872 4,495 5,906 million km
120 220 300 460 1,560 2,870 5,700 9,000 11,800 multiples
6 11 15 23 78 140 290 450 590 metres
19 35 49 75 260 470 940 1470 1940 feet

This image shows the complete solar system, but most planets are too small to see.

Mathematics – Paper models of polyhedra

    

Mathematics – Fun with Möbius strips


Photo: David Benbennick
  • www.wikihow.com has good instructions on colouring and cutting a Möbius strip

Mathematics – Fun with tessellations

    

Chemistry – Up-to-date periodic table

Clck to zoom the periodic table. For more on the elements, see:

Science – Home experiments


Photo: Travis V

Educational board and card games

Last updated 3 Feb 2021