Homeschoolers on TV

Two great video segments related to homeschooling from the Glenn Beck show this past week. The first one is long, it's an entire show. The second one is only seven or so minutes. BOTH are well worth the time to watch.

Tick Tock...Day 3

Parsley has changed a little these past few days. Instead of being a pretty green chrysalis, he's now brown. Not as pretty, but we'll take it! 

It's been 3 days, and we're not sure how many we'll have to wait to see him as a butterfly.The books we've read say Monarch butterflies take about 10 days to emerge, so maybe it's the same for Swallowtails.

So until then...we're reading books about butterflies and learning all we can about them. Here's hoping we see a beautiful butterfly in a week!

Gettin' Gassy - the GOOD Kind of Gas!

Right now, our science studies consist of making things happen through experiments. What' better than changing color, blowing things up, and other things like that?

So here's what we did on Friday...

We used one glass bottle, put about 1/2 cup of vinegar inside, filled a balloon halfway with baking soda and attached it to the bottle.

As we lifted the balloon, the baking soda dropped into the bottle and the resulting gas blew up the balloon!

So what happened? The vinegar reacted with the baking soda creating a carbon dioxide gas. The gas inflated the balloon.


It was a quick reaction and the kids definitely loved it!

S is For...Skeletons!

While I was at class one night last week, I gave the kids and Ric a job to do...make skeletons!

Armed with just  a picture, Dad drew the bones on the paper plates, and the kids started cutting.

And cutting...

 And cutting!

(And cutting some more...)

It took a while, but finally, they were able to lay out their skeleton on the floor! YAY!

We might be missing a "few" bones, but not too shabby, huh?

The next day was assembly day. We punched the holes and tied all the bones together

All strung up...and nowhere to go!

All the COOL stuff happens at night!

Once again, we wake up to change. (Not the kind that the world is hoping for right now....but good change nonetheless! heh)

Parsley decided that he didn't need his skin anymore. He shed it and emerged as a pretty green chrysalis! See the little horns?

You can really see the silk harness he created in this picture.

This picture shows his discarded skin.

Now we just wait...not sure how long, but we'll wait!

(I can't believe how PERFECT this little guy has been for us as a learning experience!)

What a Difference a Day Makes!

Since the container where Parsley was living was just a small plastic jar, we picked up something larger...just in time for him to roam around and check things out.

He took a look at every inch of the new branches we gave him, but didn't touch the parsley for some reason.

 Hmmm....maybe this one?

This morning, we found out why he wasn't eating! He was all DONE eating!

Overnight, he  went back to his original stick and attached himself with silk to it. He's getting ready to create his chrysalis!

We've learned that caterpillars will attach their tails first with a blob of silk, then they swing back and forth to create a silk harness around the top part of their bodies.

If you look closely, you can see the silk harness in this picture. It's almost perpendicular to the branch going from his nose to his back.

He doesn't move much at all right now, and this next part is supposed to take a couple of days, but we'll be watching!

Introducing... Parsley

Peek A Boo! Photo Taken 10.12.11

Ryan adopted this little guy, and named him Parsley. Can you guess where he was found? Yep, hanging out in the pot of parsley that we still have growing.

As soon as we put him into a jar, we started looking to see exactly what kind of caterpillar he is.

Funny thing though, we found out that he's not native to the North East at all! Somehow he got lost! It's especially curious because it's October! At first, I thought that maybe there was something wrong with him because he's such a slow mover, but he definitely moves around and has grown every day!

Photo Taken 10.12.11

He is an Anise Swallowtail caterpillar. He is a HUNGRY Anise Swallowtail! So far, he's eaten ALL the parsley we put into his jar every day...and left a lot of little "poops" (called Frass) too!

Photo Taken 10.13.11

According to what we've read, he will grow to about 5 cm before he turns himself into a chrysalis.

Photo Taken 10.14.11

In just a few days, he's changed quite a bit. We can almost see him growing in front of us!

Nom nom nom... Photo Taken 10.14.11

We'll continue to document this little guy's interesting life for you, but until then, check out this website that shows the whole life cycle and humorous adventures of their Anise Swallowtails.

A Change in Perspective

How interesting what a person can miss...

Life goes WAY too fast, and I've found that becoming a homeschooling family has slowed us down a little AND made us pay attention to the world around us. (EVERYTHING is now a learning opportunity!)

For example...

 

On our way into the house as we arrived home from Church, I saw this little guy. With his wings closed, he's gray. It's hard to see the pretty orange on his wings. But as soon as he moved, we saw how gorgeous he really was! Before unlocking the door, running in to change our clothes, make some lunch, and all the other things we normally do after Church, we took a minute to watch.

He is an American Copper Butterfly, and a lot smaller than he looks in this picture. The flower he is sitting on is the small bloom of a mum. He was only about 3/4 of an inch long.

Most days with all the running around and things we "have" to do, we probably would have missed this beautiful butterfly.

It just makes me wonder...what else do we miss?

B is for...

This week's letter is B. We did a bunch of things reinforcing the letter and words that begin with B. We colored a cute little mini book - Megan reads hers over and over! (I found them here.)

We've officially put our "word wall" (word door?) together and made "b"utterflies with paper. I asked the kids to just list all the "b" words they could think of, and they came up with quite a few!

 

We made egg carton bats to hang in our window for Halloween. 

Tomorrow...it's all about "b"anana "b"read.

And next week? The letter "s" so that we can make "s"keletons out of q-tips! :) It's all about the arts and crafts, right?

We've Got TWO Worlds In Our Hands!

We're almost ready to move from our intro to geography and start learning about different countries, but first, we had a BIG project to finish! I had been promising that we would make some papier-mâché globes, but had to track down some balloons.

(Yes, I know, they are easy to come by, but I didn't want a ton left over that would eventually become a chewy "treat" for Willie. Believe me, you don't want to see where balloons end up if he swallows one! ICK! I did end up buying some, but they are under lock and key so that the furry one doesn't get them!)

Anyway... on Wednesday, we jumped into this project and finally finished it up today (Friday), with fantastic results!

First...we got messy!

I know that there are many different recipes out there for the paste, but I used the tried and true flour and water. It was nice and thick, but so messy!

It was fun to get our hands dirty..Megan didn't last as long with it though. Maybe our little "princess" didn't like the gooey pasty stuff that much? :)

We put a few layers of newspaper and paste on our balloons and eventually decided it was time to let them dry.








Of course, the best place to let them dry is the clothes line! We left them outside all night and they were ready to go the next morning!

Thankfully it didn't rain that night!

Our globes weren't very round, but we found out that the earth isn't officially a perfect sphere anyway! According to our local Geography Professor/Celebrity from Church, it's an oblate spheroid and there's an equatorial bulge not to mention the undulating surface. 

Okay then...we'll mention this when we learn about Christopher Columbus next Monday and talk about the Earth being FLAT! hehe


NEXT, it was time to add the water. Actually PAINT the water. We cut off the pointed parts and made that the bottom...Antarctica.


Not much more to say except that we painted and painted until it was all blue! Our globe was blue, our hands were blue, Ryan's shirt was blue, the table was blue...you get the idea...

They kinda look like Blue Man heads...don't they? (By the way...when I was looking for the right link for Blue Man, I saw that they have actually started a "lab school" - a different approach to education. Interesting...I'll definitely be checking it out! http://www.theblueschool.org/)

FINALLY, time to add the land. For Ryan, I drew outlines of the continents that he could paint with green. Of course they were perfectly to scale (HA!) He did such a great job painting in the lines to make his globe look like a real one.

Megan just added land wherever she wanted to. It's her world, right?

We had a lot of fun with this project. It was fun for Dad to come home and see the progress. I have one more little thing to do with the kids to put things into perspective. More on that later!

Math Games!

I have found the BEST things on the Internet! There are SO many creative people out there who are willing to share! Lately we've been playing these fun math games...Ryan LOVES them! He doesn't even realize that he's adding - and even today he did multiplication without realizing it! (A nice bonus!)

I found these Kindergarten math games at http://www.kidscount1234.com/mathcentersandgames.html.There are dozens of them and it was fun to be a little competitve with Ryan to get him excited about math! He was so excited that he tried to teach Megan about the Kindergarted Yahtzee, but that didn't last long. For now, he'll have to play with me or Dad.

The games we played were... Kindergarten Yahtzee, Race to Trace, and Shape Fill In. We also played some Uno too...that's math, right? (At least numbers, patterns, and color matching, right?)

I Just LOVE This!

Two cute kids working on school work together...quietly! (It gave me just enough time to clean up the kitchen! Whew!)

Mushrooms!

While on our little hike on Sunday, we were surprised to find many different kinds of mushrooms growing all over the place. Our favorites were the different colored mushrooms! So now we're trying to figure out what kinds they are. Hopefully we're close as we search the Internet to find them!

I found a page on Facebook where I uploaded a picture of one of the mushrooms. But I soon found out that you can't completely identify a mushroom with just a picture of its top. You need to stalk and the spore print(?) or the underside of the mushroom cap too. We didn't take pictures of those, so I've put here what we could find on the Internet and the rest are just for you to enjoy!

"The Sickener" (Russula emetica). This is the cutest little mushroom, it's the kind you see in cartoons. But apparently, it's not very good for you and can make you sick!

While reading about these, they said that they weren't sure that these kinds were found very much in North America. But we think it's the closest.

Cortinarius iodes?

Another "Sickener" from the genus Russula - not exactly sure the species.

Cortinarius iodes?