Laughing, Loving, Learning:

Nature Study: Dogwood Tree

2011-04-10T12:20:00.006-04:00

This week, our nature study focus was our Dogwood Tree.

The bark of a Dogwood tree is quite distinctive.

We noticed that the leaves came in pairs, with one directly opposite another.

Except this one. It had three leaves.

Here's what the white blossoms look like.

Here's the center of the dogwood blossom.

Is this the fella that's eating the blossoms?

He reminds me a little of a lightning bug.

Cattails in the Springtime

2011-04-01T18:51:00.016-04:00

This week our nature study focus was on cattails. We began our study of cattails on Monday by going to a park where I remembered having seen cattails before. Yet, once we were there, we couldn't find any.

Due to rain, we didn't get outside to look again until Friday. This time we found cattails in several places. There were some on a vacant lot at the end of our street. (For those who have read my Squidoo article about 10 Things Kids Can Do On A Vacant Lot - this was a different vacant lot than that one. The one I wrote about on Squidoo is one my son plays on all the time, so he knows pretty well what's on it and what isn't. It's up high on a hill, so it's very dry there. The vacant lot where we found cattails is at the bottom of a different hill, so I can imagine it'd have more water...although we didn't see any water there yesterday.)

When we headed over to a nearby creek to photograph a beaver dam, we found cattails there too! We also found cattails a couple of streets away near the road. Due to a fair amount of standing water (from the recent rains), it was hard to get close to these cattails.

Cattails look quite different in the spring than they do in the summer. If you don't see any of last year's stalks in the area, you might not even recognize the spring cattails! In fact, I am now wondering if some of the plants that we saw at the first park on Monday really were cattails after all! If so, someone had cleaned up all of last year's cattails, so all that was left was this year's new green shoots coming up.

This photo was taken on the vacant lot. All we saw here was stalks from last year. There didn't seem to be any new cattail growth popping up. To our surprise, we also didn't see any water in the area, so perhaps that's why cattails aren't growing there this spring. We did get to examine and touch one of these cotton like balls of seeds left over from last year. They were a little similar to rough cotton filled with seeds.

We broke a couple of the dry, brittle leaves in half and examined them too. It reminded me very much of the onion cells we looked at under the microscope a few years ago!

We spend some time studying the leaves and how they were attached to the stalk too.

Near the creek, we saw a few of last year's stalks, and made our way over for a closer look. Once we got there, we realized that those green shoots coming up from the ground near last year's cattails are this year's cattails! Notice that there was plenty of water at this location! Much of this was probably from our recent rains.

This was the group of cattails located near the road. They had standing water all around them too, and we couldn't get very close.

This was a photo we took at the park on Monday. The pond has lilly pads in it. Could those be cattails in the water, and also on the right side of the photo? At the time we were at the park, we didn't know what young spring cattail growth looked like, so perhaps there were cattails here and we just didn't recognize them!

This photo was also taken at the park. Don't you love the beautiful weeping willow branches dangling over the water? What are the plants in the front? Could they be cattails?

Now I want to go back to the park again and take a closer look!

Behind the rainbow, the mist, and the fountain,
I think there might be some cattail plants.

These aren't cattails, but we thought they were interesting. Anyone know what they are? They were located in several places in the pond.

Here's another one, along with some gold fish. The stalks of the plants went way down into the water. They reminded me a little of lilly pads, but why would lilly pads grow taller than the water?

Here's another plant we thought was interesting.

At the top of the page, I told you about going to take photos of the beaver dam. When we got to the creek, we discovered that someone had removed the dam! The water was now flowly freely, and many of the logs that the beavers had carefully carried there had been thrown onto the banks of the creek.

This is the location where the beaver dam used to be. Poor beavers. I know they worked hard!

Signs Of Spring: A Spring Scavenger Hunt

2011-03-25T17:03:00.010-04:00

This week the Outdoor Nature Challenge was to look for signs of Spring! One option was to take a Spring Scavenger Hunt, and that's what we decided to do. Here are the things we saw, felt, heard, and smelled:

Things we saw:

New Spring Leaves

More new leaves

Two different shades of green

Tiny WildFlowers

A taller wildflower (With a bug on it!) Notice how hairy the stem and leaf are!

A weed...or a wildflower. Which would you call it?

A tree with blossoms. This is our Japanese Cherry tree.

A bee

A beetle (Okay, this one wasn't on the list, but we found it while looking for ants!) We did find a few ants as well, but they kept dipping in and out of the grass before my son could get the picture.

Things to feel:

A soft smooth petal (It's nice looking at how petals look up close too!)

Actually, we found a bit more than one flower petal!!

Something warm from the sun
This is our cat, Tiger. He got a little too hot and headed for some shade! (We could completely identify! We were hot in the sun too!)

Something cool in the shade.
Well, Tiger's mostly in the shade anyway! In this photo, he's standing beside our butterfly bush, which will quickly shoot up again before too long. All around Tiger are petals off of our nearby Japanese Cherry tree. The small patches of sunlight on the ground come from the sun peaking through the branches of our Japanese Cherry Tree.

Things we smelled:

The flowers of Red-tipped Photinia smell really nice!

These flowers smelled wonderfully too!

Things we heard:
Birds chirping.

Other things we noticed:

We thought these flower petals were quite interesting!

Last week I posted some photos of our Candytuff plants. They were a Mother's Day gift to me one year! When my family gave them to me, they'd already planted them in our walled garden area. As they've grown, they begun to drape delicately over the wall.

Look how much more the Candytuff flowers have filled out this week! Last week the shape was quite different!

Early Spring Flowers: A Homeschool Nature Study

2011-03-18T16:23:00.014-04:00

This week's Nature Study Challenge was to study and learn about Early Spring Flowers. My son and I didn't have any trouble finding spring flowers to study! We have a Bradford Pear, a Japanese Cherry tree, crocuses, and several other blooming plants in our year right now.

We began our nature study by comparing the blossoms of the Bradford Pear, the Japanese Cherry tree, and an ornamental shrub. We observed the parts of the flower on each one, and also discovered that they all had five petals.

Bradford Pear Tree

Japanese Cherry Tree

I've forgotten the name of this one. I believe it's some sort of dwarf ornamental pear. Whatever it is, it's very pretty when it's blooming! Notice how it has both white and pink blossoms on the same plant.

You can see how the sepals help protect the bud!

We had quite a few bees flying from flower to flower in our yard. Luckily the bees were more interested in the flowers than they were in us, as my son had to get pretty close to the bees and stay there for quite some time as he waited for a bee to land on a flower long enough for him to snap a photo!

Next we explored some crocuses that were blooming in our yard.

We noticed that, unlike the previous flowers we'd studied that day, they did NOT have five petals. They have three petals and three sepals. The sepals are the outer "petals" which help protect the flower, especially while it's developing from a bud.

We observed that our crocuses have grasslike leaves, with a white stripe down the middle of each. In the Handbook of Nature Study, Anna Botsford Comstock explains that crocuses don't come from bulbs. They come from corms, which are thick underground stems. Bulbs have layers, like an onion, and corms do not. Roots grow down from the corm and shoots grow up from it. Each year, baby corms grow on top of the mother corms, causing the corms to be eventually be pushed out above the ground, and necessitating the need to replant them every few years. We're looking forward to planting some crocus corms in the fall, so we can see exactly what the corms look like! We did find a great image of a crocus plant, including the corm: Crocus Corm in Spring. We also found some nice images of crocuses in different stages of developing, including the corms: SRGC Bulb Log Diary

Here are some of the other flowers we found in our yard.

This is a very small flower that was growing in our grass. We noticed that, like the crocus, this one did NOT have 5 petals. It had four.

Our Candytuff didn't have 5 petals either! I found this to be a very interesting petal arrangement! The photo above was taken 4 days ago. When I looked today, the flowers had begun to fill out more.

Here's a side view of our Candytuff, taken on the same day as the photo above.

You can see the additional flowers that will soon be open. They will help make each flower cluster look more round.

Nature Study: Animal Tracks, Sea Gulls, & Fiddler Crabs

2011-03-09T21:42:00.008-05:00

My family took a short vacation to Skidaway Island State Park in Georgia this week. We camped and hiked at the state park, visited the nature center, observed birds with some binoculars, explored Savannah, and also took a couple of trips over to Tybee Island Beach. One of the ideas suggested for this week's Outdoor Hour Nature Study Challenge was to search for animal tracks, so we decided a nature trail at the Skidaway Island State Park would be a great place to look!

The path was mostly sandy, although parts were also covered with boardwalks and bridges. The trees overhead were absolutely covered in Spanish Moss!

The first signs of animal life that we found along the trail were some holes in the ground, with piles of sand standing nearby.

Further investigation showed us that the holes belonged to crabs! Fiddler crabs!

You can tell they are Fiddler crabs because the males have one very large claw which they hold somewhat like a fiddle.

Here's a Fiddler Crab coming out of his den.

Next we came upon some tracks on the path. Maybe these are dog tracks? We did see several dogs go by. We were amazed at how deep the claws sunk into the sand!

This photo appears to have one track (the bigger one) facing left, and a smaller track facing right.

At one place, we were able to get off the trail and explore the wet sandy beach a bit closer! We found lots of snails and crabs here! We also saw some ducks across the river.

Here's a crab leg we found as we headed back to the main path.

Later that afternoon, we headed over to Tybee Island Beach. We searched for tracks there too.

Can you guess what types of tracks these are (photo above and below)?

Have you made your guess?

If you guessed Sea Gull tracks, you're correct!

There were sea gulls everywhere! They moved as a huge flock, from place to place along the beach.

Here are some other tracks we found on the beach at Tybee Island.

It appears to me that this photo has tracks from two different type of animals on it.

It was also suggested that we study one or more mammals this week. We looked up some information about raccoons, hoping to see one while camping. We didn't see a live raccoon on this trip, but found one on display at the nature center at Skidaway Island State Park.

Oh, I almost forgot to mention this part! Although we didn't see the guilty critter who did this, we suspect it was a raccoon who tried to get into our small canvas cooler in the middle of the night one night. He knocked the cooler onto the ground and put three small teeth marks into the side. He was not successful in getting in to the cooler this time.

I do recall watching a raccoon open a cooler when I was a child. My family had already gotten into the tent for the night, when I heard a noise and peeked out. There was a raccoon, up on our picnic table, opening our cooler! He simply turned the locking mechanism and opened our cooler, with no more effort than a human! On another trip, I remember turning around just in time to see a raccoon stealing a hot steak off of a lit grill! Raccoons must be pretty clever!

"One-Small-Square" Nature Study Activity!

2011-03-02T17:53:00.005-05:00

We had so much fun last week completing the Outdoor Hour Nature Challenge, that we decided to participate this week as well! The assignment this week was to mark one square foot somewhere on the ground, and then observe, prod, dig around in, examine, and discover what we could find there!

Here's what we found:

Lots of pine needles (which we moved aside)
rocks
a large root
many small roots (after we began digging in that area)
a twig
leaves
a piece of pine bark
a maple tree seed ("helicopter")

We dug into the dirt some, but didn't find any insects. Nor did we find any worms. My son decided it was too dry for worms there, and he was probably right! Since we didn't find any bugs, we decided to look around for bugs elsewhere.

Here's one thing we found:

This tree had been lying here for quite some time and was already well on it's way to turning back into dirt. It was so interesting looking at the layers of wood that were left!

Here's what we found when we lifted up a section of the tree.

It's a millipede! Look at all those legs!

Look at how the main part of the tree has decayed, and left just the center core.

My son knew where there was another tree that was decaying, and so we went to have a look at it.

He had found this tree while out playing a previous day. He and his friends had discovered that when they stepped on it, it was bouncy - spongy - springy. He had me stand on it too, and it did indeed feel very much like a sponge. (Note: I didn't get a photo of the part that we stood on. It wasn't the core, as is seen in the photo above.)

I don't know about my son, but I certainly learned something new from our nature study. I learned more about the stages that a tree goes through as it decays!

Nature Study: Birds

2011-02-24T21:56:00.005-05:00

This was my son's and my first week participating in the Nature Study activities on the Handbook of Nature Study Blog. This week's focus was on birds.

We began on Monday by covering a couple of pinecones with peanut butter and sunflower seeds, and then hanging them outside for the birds. We also added more sunflower seeds to our feeders.

On Monday afternoon, we went outside to watch the birds some. Content to just sit and watch for a while, my son carried a chair out into the yard, not far from the feeder, and sat patiently waiting. I decided to follow suit, and we sat there together, watching and enjoying being out in nature. Before long, the birds began to ignore us and came to the feeder. My son took several photographs that day, and then took more on Tuesday and Wednesday.

On Wednesday, we selected one photo - a male cardinal sitting on our fence - to draw in our nature journals. I found that I noticed so much more about the cardinal while drawing him (from his photograph) than I ever would have by just studying the photograph alone! In order to draw a bird, you have to look very closely at all the little details...and it was this close observation that helped me to really see, and remember, him!

This was the first bird we captured on film on Monday. It appears to me to be a sparrow. Notice the signs of spring in this photo! We're having warm weather here!

This one is a Chickadee. The Chickadees would fly to the feeder, grab a seed, and then fly away to a nearby tree to eat! It was hard to catch a photo of them! In this photo, it appears that he's holding the seed with his feet, while eating it.

I think this one's a dove.

A Female Cardinal.....

And her mate.

A Robin.

My son also caught several photographs of flying birds, but we weren't able to see the birds well enough, even on the photographs, to identify them.

We really had a lot of fun observing the birds this week! Tomorrow my son has an art class to attend, and he's already asked if we can leave home a little early so that we can stop off at the park to observe some birds there!

The whole experience was so much fun!! Barb, if you're reading this, thanks so much for getting us started on this with your Squidoo page!

Stone Mountain Campground

2010-11-14T22:05:00.007-05:00

My family spent a weekend at Stone Mountain Park in Georgia a few weeks ago. We camped in the Stone Mountain campground and had such a beautiful lake-front site! Actually, there's a story behind how we got our site. When we pulled into the campground, we were told that the campground had been completely full, but then just an hour before we got there, one person had canceled one of his sites, and so we got it! We couldn't have picked a nicer site! It had two levels to it. One was on the same level as the road. The other was down a short drop off, closer to the level of the lake. Both levels had their own picnic table, spot for a tent, and grill. Yet it was all considered one site! The site was shady and beautiful!

Here's a photo we took of our campsite. This is the lower level of our campsite.

The Interesting Life Of Meerkats

2010-11-14T21:40:00.004-05:00

My homeschooled son did some research on meerkats and found out such neat things about them! We took a field trip to our zoo and took plenty of pictures of their meerkats too.

What do meerkats look like?"
Where do meerkats live?
How do meerkats survive in the dry savanna?
What do meerkats eat and drink?(Guess what their favorite food is!!!)
Did you know meerkats can close their ears, without using their paws?!!
Sentries are look-outs for the rest of the mob!
Look at those CLAWS!
And a bunch of other interesting facts! I really enjoyed learning more about meerkats along with my son!

Vegetarian Baked Eggrolls Recipe

2010-11-11T20:40:00.003-05:00

Vegetarian Baked Egg Rolls

Do you love egg rolls, but don't love all the oil that comes with deep frying? Here's a recipe for crispy, yet healthy, vegetarian baked egg rolls. They really are delicious!

What Is It Like To Homeschool?

2010-01-15T14:19:00.005-05:00

Do you ever wonder what it's like to homeschool? Or are you already a homeschooler, but you're looking for new ideas?

I've been homeschooling my son for the past 7 1/2 years. I'm often asked by friends, "What is it like to homeschoool?" So, not to long ago, I created a mini website / blog on Squidoo called, Ever Wonder What It's Like To Homeschool? On that page, I try to answer that question by describing a typical day of homeschooling at our house. I include information about the types of curriculum we use, as well as our overall style.

By the way, I'm happy to report that Ever Wonder What It's Like To Homeschool? recently won a special honor! You can read more about that on the Giant Squid Community Showcase.

Corn Bean Avocado Salsa

2009-07-07T09:32:00.009-04:00

Corn, Bean, and Avocado Salsa is one of my family's favorite vegan recipes! It has cilantro and a hint of lime, along with fresh tomatoes, corn, beans, and small pieces of fresh avocado. We eat it with chips, or sometimes on veggie burgers.

If you'd like to try it, you can find the recipe for it, and for Vegan Nachos, posted at the following site.

Corn, Bean, and Avocado Salsa...& Vegan Nachos!"

Vegan Nachos

Meeting Your Unborn Baby In A Dream

2009-07-06T11:39:00.004-04:00

Many women dream of being pregnant, or experience a dream in which they meet their babies-to-be, either before or during pregnancy. Sometimes they are able to accurately determine the appearance, gender, personality and/or health concerns of their baby to be from these dreams. Other times they are simply provided with the information that they are pregnant, or that they will be soon.

Mothers and fathers-to-be are also often given a name for their new child. Although of course there are exceptions, most parents who are given a baby's name feel strongly enough about the validity of their dream or intuitive experience that they do go ahead and name their baby the name that's been given them.

Some parents dream of complications within their pregnancies. These dreams can serve to prepare the parents-to-be for the complication, or even provide them with hints on what to do to avoid the complications.

I am currently collecting stories about women's spiritual pregnancy dreams for a book that I'm writing. If you have a spiritual pregnancy dream or other story to share, I'd love to hear it!

If you'd like to read more about pregnancy dreams, please check out the following links!

Spiritual Pregnancy Dreams

Dreams of Being Pregnant

Dreaming About Your Baby's Gender

Our Tadpoles Have Legs Now!

2009-05-25T16:39:00.004-04:00

When we woke up this morning, we discovered that three of the tadpoles we're raising now have hind legs! Here's a picture of two of them.

Tadpoles, which hatch from frog eggs, grow their hind legs first. Next their front legs pop out. Then gradually they reabsorb their tail, which shrinks and finally disappears. They begin breathing with lungs (as well as continuing to breath through their skin) around the time their tails have almost disappeared.

I've posted additional photos (including a close-up of one of our tadpoles brand-new legs!) and information about tadpoles and frogs on Tadpoles To Frogs.

Our Tadpoles Are Growing!

2009-05-09T09:57:00.011-04:00

Our tadpoles are really growing and changing shape!

(The photo above is enlarged.)

You can clearly see eyes on our tadpoles now. And their shape has changed in the past few days. Now their bodies are rounder and their tails are skinnier. Even though the tadpoles have lots of room to swim, they spend most of their time with their faces touching the sides of the containers and their tails facing the center of the bowl.

Our Frog Eggs Are Hatching Into Tadpoles!

2009-05-02T09:21:00.011-04:00

Two days ago, we brought home some frog eggs from our homeschool group co-op. When we looked into the container of pond water and frog eggs today, we could see some very tiny tadpoles swimming around! The larger ones are about four millimeters long.

Here's one, but this is greatly enlarged:

When I took a photo of the tadpoles and enlarged it on my computer, I could see many more tiny creatures swimming around in the water. These "bugs" just look like little black flecks to the naked eye, but resemble very tiny tadpoles when the image is enlarged. I wish I could tell you exactly what they are, but I'm not sure. They may be the very tiniest of mosquito larva. Mosquito larva tend to swim on the surface of the water, diving down into the water to escape danger, and then kind of wiggling back up in a jerky type manner. The mosquito larva I have seen before have long skinny bodies and were larger than these "bugs." Yet there are 4 different stages of mosquito larva. If you'd like to know more about mosquito larva, here is a good site about mosquitos.

You can see some of these very tiny creatures in this image below, which by the way is blown up exactly the same amount as the image above. (They are actually the same photo, just cropped in different places.)

I'll keep you updated with more photos as the tadpoles continue to grow and change into frogs! (Here's my next blog on our tadpoles! Our Tadpoles Are Really Growing!)

P.S. Watching the frog life cycle is part of the Real Science 4 Kids curriculum we are using this year.

Meerkats!

2009-05-01T13:20:00.007-04:00

My son and I had lots of fun researching meerkats a few weeks ago! After learning about them from a variety of books and website articles, we went to our local zoo and he took tons of pictures of the meerkats there. He wrote a report, and I made a website about the adorable little cat-like animals called meerkats!

Meerkats lead very social lives, working together and often putting the needs of the group over their own. For example, did you know that meerkats take turns babysitting their mob's youth in order to allow the new mother time to go out and hunt for food? If she doesn't eat, she won't be able to nurse her babies. Yet another meerkat is giving up a lot when he or she agrees to babysit, as they can lose up to 2% of their weight in a day of babysitting! The babysitter doesn't get much chance to eat that day! That's some dedication and commitment to the good of the whole mob, don't you think?! Wow! How many humans agree to fast for a full day, in order to help out the others in their community?

If you'd like to read more about these adorable animals in the mongoose family, or see some more of the photos we took, you can do so by visiting Meerkats!

Congaree National Park

2009-04-29T00:27:00.008-04:00

Congaree National Park

Our homeschool nature club took a field trip here today and had an awesome time! We canoed or kayaked down the river, got out and ate lunch, then canoed/kayaked back up again. It was beautiful. So peaceful and serene! The trees there are gorgeous! The snake we saw swimming in the water wasn't bad looking himself, although I have to admit we might have found him a little bit more attractive if he hadn't been swimming rapidly straight toward our canoe!

Congaree National Park is located in South Carolina. It is home to many Bald Cypress Trees and Water Tupelo trees. Spanish Moss hangs from many of the branches. Snakes hang from some of the branches too!

Visitors to the site can look for wildlife while taking a walk along a boardwalk or while canoeing or kayaking up and down the river. There's also a very nice visitor's center with several nature exhibits inside.

Here are a few pictures of Congaree National Park, as well as some information about the park, for those who are interested.

Guided Canoe Tours

Bald Cypress Tree

A Bunch Of Beautiful Photos of Congaree National Park

Congaree National Park - Home Page

Easy Vegetarian Sweet And Savory Crepes

2009-04-27T07:59:00.015-04:00

Cinnamon Apple Crepes

I enjoy making crepes and coming up with new recipes. Although people often have the idea that crepes are difficult to make, they're actually very easy. Making crepes can be as easy as mixing up the batter, pouring it onto the pan while turning the pan to spread the batter, flipping the crepe over, adding fresh fruit or some other topping, rolling it up or folding it in half, and enjoying it! I guess the most difficult part is flipping the crepe over, but don't worry because if it tears, there are some easy remedies you can use to fix it.

Here are a few of my favorite crepes, (all of which are vegetarian, and some of which are also vegan if you use a vegan batter) along with links to their recipes.

Quesadilla Crepes

Quesadilla crepes are my favorite lunch or dinner crepe! They are sooo easy and quick to make! Although the taste is similar to a regular quesadilla, they are much lighter because of using a fresh, delicate crepe rather than a store-bought tortilla.

Chocolate Banana Dessert Crepes

Chocolate Banana crepes, whether you make them rolled or folded or even double decker style (see the website for directions!), are another one of my favorites! I use dark chocolate chips to make these, and they are soooo very good!

Chocolate Crepes

To make chocolate crepes, I add cocoa powder to the crepe batter. They can be filled with many different things, such as fresh strawberries, bananas, ice cream, yogurt, nuts, etc. (I've included several suggestions for fillings along with the chocolate crepe recipe.)

Broccoli Cheese Crepes

For more recipes, visit: Easy And Delicious Sweet And Savory Crepes

If you've never made crepes before, or it's been a while, perhaps you'd like to check out my crepe making and storing tips!

Hope you enjoy the crepe recipes!!

Middle School Hands-On Science

2009-04-26T07:03:00.007-04:00

While surfing the net today, I ran across a blog entitled Queen Bee's Homeschool. The author of the blog, Angela, has listed some hands-on science curriculums for middle schoolers and they all sound interesting to me! I'm going to check them out further!

The programs she mentions include:
Science MaTe
Teaching Physics with Toys
Hands On Physcial Science Activities
Principles of Alchemy
Thames and Kosmos Power House

I should mention that she has not actually used these yet. She's not reviewing them. She's just debating on what she wants to use next year. Check out her blog for more information!

If anyone reading this has actually tried one or more of these programs, I'd love to hear what you have to say about them!

Hands-On Homeschool Science Curriculums: A Review

2009-04-25T13:30:00.003-04:00

Although there are many hands-on homeschooling science curriculums out there, I wanted to mention a few that I have particularly enjoyed using over the years.

Stratton House Homeschool Science Kits
This is a series of kits on various topics, including microscopes, astronomy, magnetism, insects, light, and birds. Each kit comes with a unit on one of these (although you can purchase groups of units as well). Inside the kit are about 15 different lessons that all pertain to that one topic. Each lesson includes some factual information (but not so much as to bore the child) and one or more hands-on activities. Students can also record their discoveries, draw pictures of what they saw or did, etc, within the pages too, if they'd like. Best of all, each kit comes with almost everything you need!!! (In fact, they do come with everything you need, with only a very few excepts, such as a piece of bread, or some pond water.) Science was by far our favorite subject the year we did the Stratton House Homeschool Science Kits! I have since recommended this program to several other homeschooling families.

Real Science 4 Kids
This is the program that our entire homeschool group, from first graders up to middle schoolers, is using this year. Don't think that just because a couple of first graders are using it though that's it's too watered down, as there are more than one level of textbook available. The program is broken up into three main topics, chemistry, physics, and biology. Each one has it's own thin textbook with full color photos on each page and is accompanied by a student workbook. The workbooks are really way more than just a "workbook" though, as each lesson in the workbook is an experiment or hands-on activity (with the exception of only one or two chapters) that goes along with the chapter in the text book. The children in our homeschool co-op (and many of the parents as well!) have really enjoyed doing the hands-on activities! Examples of these include raising painted lady butterflies, making models of molecules with marshmallows, various plant experiments, making an electromagnet, experiments with marbles, etc. In all honesty, we did notice a mistake in the biology text. It said caterpillars turn into cocoons before becoming butterflies (they actually become chrysalises instead of cocoons. The larva of moths become cocoons.), and some of the chemistry text was a bit difficult for some of the kids (and parents?) to follow, but overall we've enjoyed this program. The science experiments we did together will make memories for years to come!

Tops Learning Systems
Tops Learning Systems makes some hands-on science books we've enjoyed in other years. Each book is related to one topic, such as: Pendulums, Floating and Sinking, Light, Green Thumbs: Corn and Beans, animal survival, etc. The books come on various grade ranges, such as grades 3 to 10, grades 7 to 12, grades K - 12, etc. We've only done a few of these, but have thoroughly enjoyed the ones we've done. Just like the other two programs I've mentioned in this post, Tops Learning Systems activities are very hands-on. I'm considering recommending that we do more of these books with our homeschool co-op middle schoolers next year!

Painted Lady Butterflies

2009-04-24T09:20:00.006-04:00

A few weeks ago, my son brought home two Painted Lady Caterpillars from his homeschool co-op. Someone in our co-op had purchased the caterpillars for the kids so that we could all watch the miracle of metamorphosis unfold before our eyes. It truly was an amazing experience!

Our Painted Lady Caterpillars each came in a little cup with all the food they would need for their time as caterpillars. After a few days, they both crawled to the top of their cups and attached themselves in a J shape, hanging upside down from their tails, from the lid of the cup. Caterpillars are the larva stage of a butterfly or moth. The next stage differs though. A moth becomes a cocoon and a butterfly becomes a chrysalis. Our Painted Lady caterpillars were well on their way to becoming chrysalises!

A few hours after hanging upside down, they molted one last time, and the new skin underneath hardened into a chrysalis shell. They stayed like that for 9 days. On that ninth day, right before our eyes, the shell of the chrysalis opened and out came a Painted Lady Butterfly. It wasn't a lengthy process at all! In fact, it happened within just a minute or two!

My son and I learned a great deal about Painted Lady Butterflies while raising and releasing our two. For example, did you know butterflies are solar powered, and need a little direct sunlight warming their wings in order to fly?

I've created a web page that tells all about our experiences with the butterflies, and also goes more into depth regarding the life cycle of the Painted Lady Butterfly. It also includes several photos that we took of our Painted Lady Butterflies!
Painted Lady Butterflies