Posts tagged ‘science’

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May 9, 2013

Raising Butterflies

Scroll down for a slideshow of our butterfly’s life cycle!

Note: This column was published in the Barrow Journal on May 8, 2013.

Last year we raised toads from tadpoles, and this year we’re raising butterflies. This is surprisingly easy to do, and I’d encourage any family to give it a try.  It’s a wonderful experience for children and adults.

My sons received the Backyard Safari Butterfly Habitat as a Christmas present, but you can find other companies who sell butterfly habitats and the larvae online. The cages are around $15. The Backyard Safari Habitat came with a coupon so that we could order the larvae when we were ready for them. You need to wait for warm weather, if you plan to release the butterflies. (The larvae were approximately $10 with the coupon, but they are under $20 without it.)

We received six Painted Lady larvae (or caterpillars) in a small container with everything they needed to survive during this second stage of their life cycle. There were explicit instructions to not open the container. All we needed to do was set the container by a window (but not in direct sunlight). Note: I have read different opinions about leaving them in the container, so I suggest you do some of your own research.

Painted Lady Butterflies live almost everywhere, which is why they are often used in schools and homes for this purpose. In most places it’s okay to release them back into the environment. Another option is to find butterfly larvae in your local area and raise them, but each species has different needs, so you have to make sure you have the right food source.

We watched our caterpillars for less than two weeks as they stirred up the food, spun silk, and proved to be extremely bad housekeepers. When we got them, they were less than a centimeter in length, and in two days, they doubled their size. Right before they formed themselves into a chrysalis (or pupa), they were about an inch long and quite plump.

After the butterflies emerged, my son turned this into a project by making a model of the Painted Lady Butterfly! He studied it like a real artist!

According to the instructions I received, the caterpillars were supposed to climb to the top of the vial and attach themselves to the gauze that was placed under the lid of the container. There they would hang down and form into chrysalides, and then we weren’t allowed to disturb the container for two days. After that time, we could carefully remove the lid, and then pin the gauze with the chrysalides near the bottom and on the wall of the cage.

This is what really happened: The caterpillars made a huge mess in the container, and we couldn’t see through it very well. All of the caterpillars crawled to the top, but most of them didn’t stay there. In the end, there were only two caterpillars that formed chrysalides and hung from the top. We could barely make out one chrysalis on the bottom, and since there wasn’t any movement, I assumed the others down there were changing too.

Per the instructions, we waited two full days after the last caterpillar we could see formed his chrysalis. Finally we got out the butterfly cage, and found a small branch that fit nicely into it. Then I removed the lid to the container, and we discovered that the caterpillars had eaten most of the gauze! The two chrysalides were hanging from silk and the plastic lid. Luckily I managed to fit it over the twigs in the cage so that they hung down safely.

I had to scoop out the four other chrysalides from the bottom of the container with a spoon, and I laid them gently on the bottom of our cage. We had read that this can happen, and they should be okay, but unfortunately, two of these never formed into butterflies. We weren’t surprised.

After only five days, two of our butterflies emerged!  Two more butterflies emerged in the next few days.  They are beautiful, small orange and black butterflies, and we’re feeding them watermelon and oranges.

The whole process has enamored my six-year-old, and he wants to keep going, so we’re going to attempt to raise a second generation. Yep, call me crazy. If it turns into a good story, and I’m pretty sure it will, I’ll be sure to share it with you. Note: Yes, indeed, it’s turning into a story, and I will share it with you!

Below is a slideshow I created to show you our experience, and you can see the life cycle here too!

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Notes you may be interested in:

  • The butterfly’s life cycle is in four stages: egg, larvae (or caterpillar), chrysalis, adult butterfly.  (I highly recommend the simple app Life Cycles by nthfusion.com to help with learning about nature’s cycles!)
  • The plural for chrysalis can be either chrysalides or chrysalises. (You can go here to hear the pronunciations.)
  • The word eclose is a verb which means to emerge from the pupa as an adult or from an egg as a larvae.
  • The red liquid that drips out off the butterfly after it emerges is meconium or the waste that was secreted while it was in chrysalis.
  • After the butterfly emerges from the chrysalis, it can live for about two weeks. During that time, they seek a mate, and the female seeks a host plant to lay her eggs.

If you like this, you might enjoy the slideshow I made of our tadpoles to toads last year.

Have you raised butterflies? Please share your experience!

Posted in 1st Grade, Kindergarten, My Newspaper Columns, Nature, Project-based Homeschooling | 7 Comments »

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February 26, 2013

Inspire Kids: Young student builds rocket and launches Hello Kitty 93,625 feet

A big thanks to my Twitter buddy, @NomdeB, for sending me a link to this video. We were all fascinated by it, and my six-year-old wanted to watch it twice.

Enjoy!

(If you subscribe to my blog by e-mail, you may have to view this post on the Internet to see the video.)

pink columbines This is a new series I’ve started under the tag “Inspire Kids.”  If my six-year-old likes it, then maybe your children will too!

Posted in 1st Grade, Homeschooling, Inspire Kids | Leave a Comment »

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December 10, 2012

The North Atlanta Gem, Mineral, Fossil, & Jewelry Show

This weekend my family and I went to check out The North Atlanta Gem, Mineral, Fossil & Jewelry Show.  I’m so grateful to “Pamela” who took the time to write about it on a local homeschool list last week. When I saw her message, I thought this was something my boys would love, and luckily, the price was right!  It is only $4.00 admission for adults, and children under 16 are free.  We are also lucky that the trade center is only about an hour drive away.

If you’re sad that you missed this show, you’ll be happy to know it’s an annual event.

I think we’ll be going back!  Here are some (not-so-good) snapshots I got at the event. Needless to say, it’s hard to take photographs when you’re trying to rescue fragile items from the clutches of a three-year-old.

A leg bone of a triceratops. The man who found it allowed our boys to touch it!

Those strange things in the middle are dinosaur eggs!

We love shark teeth since we acquired our own collection while visiting Amelia Island this summer.

That’s just too cool.

The three-year-old HAS to touch, touch, touch. He’s just wired that way.

The six-year-old wants one of these.

So much treasure!

Admiring a woolly mammoth’s tusk.

The highlight of the day: the six-year-old picked out an almost fossilized tibia bone of a bison that’s between 11-15,000 years old to call his own!

Have you been on any field trips lately?  Please tell me about it.

Posted in Field trips, Homeschooling, Resources for Georgia Homeschoolers | Leave a Comment »

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November 8, 2012

Homeschooling Kindergarten: Teaching About the Weather

Like the solar system, the weather was one other subject I decided to introduce to my son to last year.  All others (besides reading and math) were child-initiated.  For this, I mostly relied on books from the library and our own book collection (see below for list of books).  For our initial lesson, I stuck to an easy topic: the water cycle.

  • I don’t do this often, but I printed out some coloring pages for the boys about the water cycle at Kid Zone Science (scroll to bottom of page for links to worksheets).  If I use worksheets and coloring pages sparingly, the boys seem to like it.  (In general, they have not liked coloring books or drawing with crayons very much, but it does happen occasionally.)
  • After explaining the water cycle to my then five-year-old, we boiled some water on the stove and watched the steam rise: water vapor!  Then I took a glass of ice water and held it over the steam until it started to condense: rain!
  • We also made a weather chart, and we kept track of the weather for one week.  My son wanted to make another chart and keep going.

{Unfortunately, that never happened, and as we were studying clouds, I began to take pictures of cloud formations and had the idea to make a chart about that. Again, this didn’t happen.  Maybe it will someday, or maybe it won’t. That’s okay. Now I’ll leave it up to my son to continue his study of the weather.}

  • Again, at the time, my son began to get interested in the weather, specifically about hurricanes and tornadoes.  He checked out several books on these topics at the library and wanted me to read them to him.  I also let him watch some footage about hurricanes on YouTube, and now he definitely doesn’t want to be in one!  (You’ll have to decide what is age-appropriate viewing for your child. My son seems to look at natural phenomena with a scientific mind, and they don’t scare him as much as it would have scared me as a child.)
  • We also watched a cool YouTube video about weather balloons (“High Altitude Weather Balloon Launch”), and my son wanted to make a pretend one.
  • After his pre-K graduation last spring, my mother-in-law wanted to get him a gift for a congratulatory present.  He asked for a weather station!  It was on our back deck rail for quite a while until our new dog chewed it to bits. :(   My son liked checking the temperature and rain level everyday, so I may get him a better thermometer and rain gauge at some point.
  • We also had a bonus when we visited the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago this past summer.  My son picked “Tornado Alley” to watch in their Omnimax theatre.
  • And, of course, we’ve had our lessons reinforced in classes at the Sandy Creek Nature Center in Athens, Georgia.

As you can see, all of my lessons are pretty easy.  I don’t rely on a curriculum.  I pick topics I think I should cover (that he would like) from a typical course of study for his age range.  I use library books, YouTube, worksheets if they seem to help, and then I let serendipity take its course. 

Having a brief lesson at home has helped my son understand and process these topics when we’ve found other ways to learn about them: in his classes, at the museum, on T.V. or new books that might otherwise not have gained his attention.

Teaching this way has not been a stress on me, and so far, I haven’t lost my child’s interest in learning, which is most important to me!

Here’s a list of books my son has enjoyed listening to me read:

  • Hurricanes, Simon, Seymour
  • Hurricanes! Gibbons, Gail
  • Tornadoes, Simon, Seymour
  • Scholastic’s The magic school bus wet all over : a book about the water cycle, Relf, Patricia
  • Weather words and what they mean,  Gibbons, Gail
  • I Can Read About: Weather, Supraner, Robyn
  • How does the sun make weather? Williams, Judith (Judith A.)
  • Thunderstorms, Sipiera, Paul P.
  • Lightning, Herriges, Ann
  • Down comes the rain, Branley, Franklyn Mansfield
  • The Magic School Bus: At the Waterworks, Cole, Joanna
  •  Clouds, Rockwell, Anne
  •  All the colors of the rainbow,  Fowler, Allan

What have you used to teach your children about the weather?

Posted in A Bit o' Me Philosophy, Homeschooling, Kindergarten | 2 Comments »

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November 6, 2012

Sandy Creek Nature Center’s Discovery Boxes Are Available to Home Educators

It wasn’t long after I taught my (then four ~ five-year-old) about the solar system that I learned about the discovery boxes at the Sandy Creek Nature Center.

You can check out a discovery box for two weeks for the cost of $5.00.  Though they are created for classroom use and may have more in them than one family can use, they are still worth looking at if you are working on a particular subject.  They are for approximately pre-K through 5th grade.

They have discovery boxes for a wide array of subjects such as astronomy, weather, rocks and gems, mammals, animal tracks, creatures of the night, birds, trees, marine life and more… If you stop by the nature center, ask the receptionist to see the list of discovery boxes. There’s an inventory list for each box.

I tried the astronomy box when we were learning about the solar system.  There were two children’s books that were perfect for my son, and a bag of planet magnets that he had fun arranging on our refrigerator. We also had fun trying to get the little planetarium star theater to work, but we don’t have the right kind of room for it, and it didn’t look right in our bathroom! (The darkest room in our house.)

There was a lot of stuff that just wasn’t age appropriate for him and materials for a large classroom that I didn’t need.  Unfortunately, some of the materials were old, and things like computer programs were not compatible with my computer.  The books were outdated and stated that Pluto is a planet, but that didn’t bother me.

I don’t want to discourage you from checking into these boxes, however.  If you’re working on a particular unit, or your child has an interest in a certain subject, you should look into it.  Every box is going to offer different stuff.

Posted in Homeschooling | 1 Comment »

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November 4, 2012

Homeschooling Kindergarten: Teaching the Solar System

There are a couple of subjects that I’ve been meaning to write about for over a year: how I taught my son about the solar system and the weather (which I’ll post soon).

Though I do child-led learning, I see nothing wrong in introducing some subjects to him.  When I consulted a list of what kids typically learn in Kindergarten, I saw the solar system was one of them.  I think it’s a fun subject for little kids. (My son was 4 ~ 5 years old when we did this.)

My philosophy is to introduce the topic to them and then let it go where it may.  They may not take it any farther.  They may want more information.  Or maybe they won’t seem interested, but a few months later, they’ll see something that makes them remember what you taught them, and they’ll have more questions about it.

I was also prompted to teach my son about the solar system because my step-mother told me she got him A Moon In My Room for a birthday gift.  I didn’t think he would completely understand what it was unless I gave him some reference for it. I think he was about four-years-old when we did this.

Prior to my lesson, the only introduction he had to outer space were the few episodes on Mickey Mouse Clubhouse in which Mickey and his friends take a trip into space.  I think that helped him.

For my initial lesson, all I did was print some graphics off the Internet and laminate them, and I also used a box of space cards I had picked up for $1 at Target.  (Found a bunch of those in their dollar section once, and they have proved useful!)

It’s been a long time, so I’m afraid I cannot remember the exact words I used to tell my son about the solar system.  We refer to our globe frequently, and since he had seen Micky fly into the outer space, it wasn’t hard for him to grasp.

I laid the cards on the ground with the sun in the middle, and then I put the planet cards around it in order.  Then we walked around the sun card just like the planets orbit the sun, and we may have read a bit about the planets and space on the backs of the cards.

Little did I know, this would spark an interest in the solar system for my son.  He asked questions, wanted to check out many library books, and (much later) came up with his own project!  See below.

Following my short and sweet lesson, my son’s knowledge about the solar system has been increasing in a long and meandering way. (See Learning is like a Chain Link Fence.). We’ve done the following:

  • Checked books out from the library.  There was a time all my son wanted to do what look at books about the planets.
  • Looked up question(s) on the Internet. I think once my son wanted to know what was inside Jupiter.
  • Checked out the discovery box at the Sandy Creek Nature Center.
  • We happened to get bonus lessons about the solar system in my son’s knee-high naturalist class, and we got to go into their star dome. (And now we can’t wait to visit their new planetarium!  We have visited it, and it’s awesome!)
  • We’ve taken nighttime walks and gazed at the stars. We also bought a telescope for him at his request for Christmas, but *ahem* we don’t really know how to use it yet.
  • Now the subject doesn’t come up much, but occasionally I’ll send him an e-mail about space exploration, if I think he’ll like it. (The Curiosity Rover on Mars is providing some interesting photographs!)
  • I’ve saved the best for last.  Last year out of the blue, my son thought it would be a good idea to make the planets out of paper and hang them along a doorway of our activity room.  They are still hanging there.  This summer when my mother-in-law came to visit, my son could point to each paper planet and name them from memory.

Learning about something as vast as the solar system is most certainly a subject one could spend a lifetime on.  I don’t know if my son will continue to explore astronomy, but he has certainly made that first link in his chain of learning.

Here are a list of books we’ve enjoyed reading:

  • The Planets in Our Solar System, Branley, Franklyn M.
  • Solar System, A Golden Book
  • The Moon Book, Gibbons, Gail
  • The Sun, Spangenburg, Ray
  •  What Makes Day and Night, Branley, Franklyn M.
  • Mercury, Adamson, Thomas K.
  • Mars, Chrismer, Melanie.
  • The Big Dipper, Branley, Franklyn M. & Coxe, Molly
  • Zoo in the Sky: A Book of Animal Constellations, Mitton, Jacqueline

Please stay tuned. In my following posts I’ll talk about the discovery boxes the Sandy Creek Nature Center, how we’ve learned about the weather, some places we’ve been, how to make a terrarium and more…!

What have you used to teach the solar system to your children?

{Update January 2013: My son has continued to learn about the solar system and space exploration in a variety of ways, and recently he has had an interest in rockets!  First, he asked for a rocket for Christmas, and he got a small set of all the U.S. rockets. Then, we started a rocket project, but I’m not sure where it’s going to go.  We’ve read more books (just go to your library!), and right now we’re watching The Planets, a series about space on Netflix.  There’s also a series on the space missions, which we’re planning to watch. He also enjoyed watching this video of a tour of the international space station.}

Posted in A Bit o' Me Philosophy, Homeschooling, Kindergarten | 5 Comments »

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October 24, 2012

Backyard Adventure (not for the faint of heart)

Note: This column was printed in the Barrow Journal on September 26, 2012.

This past weekend our very own backyard provided us with an up close wildlife encounter.  My boys were playing in the backyard, and the way my son tells it, he was standing near our woodpile when he heard a squirrel screaming and a lot of commotion up in a nearby tree.  Right after that, the squirrel and a black rat snake fell onto the woodpile and rolled off onto the ground.

The snake and squirrel rolled a few feet from the woodpile and my son says our dog ran and picked the bundle up in this mouth but then dropped it again.  I guess that snake let him know he wasn’t welcome to have this lunch.  The black rat snake, which is a constrictor, was coiled tightly around a dead squirrel by the time my husband and I came upon the scene.

And you have to understand something.  A few years ago, I have no idea how I would have reacted to something like this.  I have been indifferent about snakes most of my life.  Neither have I feared them, nor have I given them much thought.  But now I have a six-year-old who loves them so much he wants to study them when he grows up. He already knows so much about them that he could easily identify this snake as it was falling out of the tree.

Now I have an appreciation for these under-appreciated animals that are important elements of our ecosystem.  Watching the rat snake eat a squirrel was a rare opportunity and a dream come true for my six-year-old.  The only time he stepped away from the scene was when he ran to the house to tell us what happened.

My husband and I stayed for most of the show too, and, of course, we videotaped and photographed it.  If you had told me six years ago that I’d lie down five inches away from a snake eating a squirrel, I NEVER would have believed you.

It took two and a half hours for the snake to eat his meal, but that was much faster than we thought it might take.  We tried to respect him by staying quiet and keeping a distance except when I took some photos, and once, despite my protest, my husband and son touched him lightly.  A snake is in a very vulnerable position when he’s got such a big meal in his mouth.

Black rat snakes are probably the most common snake you might see around here.  It’s the second time we’ve seen one in our subdivision.  According to the Savannah River Ecology Lab’s website (SREL), they typically grow between 3-5 feet, but they can get as long as six feet.  The one in our yard was about four feet long.

They are black on top with a faint hint of white between the scales.  Its belly is whitish near the head and becomes kind of checkered near the tail.  They can be found in the mountains and Piedmont areas of central Georgia and South Carolina, and they like a variety of habitats such as “rocky timbered hills, hardwood forests, river floodplains and swamp margins.” They also like abandoned buildings and barns.

They eat mice, rats, squirrels (yep!), birds and bird eggs.  According to the SREL, they love wood duck eggs.  Juveniles feed on small frogs, lizards, and small rodents.  Though I love some of the critters this snake eats, I know that they help keep the rodent population in check, and for this reason, I don’t mind having them around at all.  In fact, I welcome any snake into my garden as long as it’s not venomous, and the black rat snake surely isn’t.

It was interesting to watch the snake maneuver its mouth the squirrel and accomplish the difficult task of getting its front limbs into his mouth.  Snakes are amazing in that their entire skeleton pulls apart in order for them to consume such big meals.  Once he had reached the torso, he finished it much faster.  I couldn’t believe how quickly the squirrel moved into the middle section of the snake.

I can only wonder what that snake thought of us gawking at it.  The SREL says that when frightened, a rat snake will assume a “kinked” position and remain motionless.  They will vibrate their tail and expel a malodorous odor.  We didn’t see that behavior.  After watching us long enough, I guess that snake figured we didn’t want his meal, and his hunger was more powerful than any fear it may have felt.  My son sat by his side until he quietly took his bulging stomach and slid through our fence, hesitating slightly while he looked at us.  It was probably the most bothersome meal he had ever eaten.

Note: If you happen to read my column in the paper and you’ve been waiting with bated breath for these photos (lol), I apologize for taking so long.  It took a long time for me to put together this slideshow because my computer died and also I don’t like looking at them.  It was exciting in the moment…  I don’t get that same feeling reminiscing.  Also, though I have enough film to make a 77-minute video, I’m sparing you of that. Here is an under five-minute version.  I hope there are some other kids out there who will enjoy it as much as my six-year-old did.  It is fascinating. (In an icky way.)

Posted in My Newspaper Columns, Nature | 5 Comments »

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August 14, 2012

The Museum of Science and Industry

Note: This column was printed in the Barrow Journal on August 8, 2012.  You can view it on the newspaper’s website by clicking here.  Attention Homeschoolers: You might find useful information for your home education program on this museum’s website!

Since my family and I made a trip to Chicago to help celebrate my in-laws 50th anniversary, we thought we might as well stay awhile and take advantage this wonderful city.  Yesterday we went to the Museum of Science and Industry.  My husband had been there many years ago, but I’ve never been, and I think it’s now become my favorite place in Chicago.

I felt just as giddy as my children as we toured this museum, which, according to its website, is the largest science center in the Western Hemisphere.  It’s “home to more than 35,000 artifacts and nearly 14 acres of hands-on experiences designed to spark scientific inquiry and creativity.”

Our first tour was of the “Silver Streak: Pioneer Zephyr.” This train was one of America’s first diesel-electric streamlined passenger trains.  In 1934, it was the fastest train in the world, traveling between Denver and Chicago in about 13 hours.  It cut the previous travel time (by steam engine) in half!  It was also the first train to ever have air conditioning or refrigeration.  For the first time, passengers could be served ice cream.

After the Silver Streak, we found the room with several airplanes suspended from the ceiling, a real steam engine, wagons from the old days, and a United Airlines 727 to tour.  But my boys spent most of their time at “The Great Train Story,” a model railroad with 30 trains running on 1,400 feet of track.  The trains wind their way from Chicago to Seattle and pass through the Midwest, Plains States, Rockies and Cascade Mountains.  The size and detail was stunning and according to the museum’s website, this railroad was the largest of its kind when it opened in 1941.

We enjoyed watching “Tornado Alley” at the Omimax Theatre where we followed scientists and photographers into the middle of a tornado.  It was my five-year-old’s choice to see the movie about the tornados, but I was relieved to hear him say afterward that he never wanted to chase tornadoes!

After the movie we went to what became my five-year-old’s highlight of the day: touring the U-505 Submarine, the actual German U-boat that the U.S. Navy captured on June 4, 1944.  He took the tour with this grandfather while the rest of us enjoyed the exhibits and memorial outside the vessel.

The story of the battle is quite remarkable, and you can read all of it on the Museum’s website.  What I found fascinating is how the nine-member boarding party saved the vessel from sinking or exploding.  They re-secured the cover to a sea strainer and yanked the wires to several scuttle charges, or time bombs, which the German crew had set before they abandoned the vessel.

Then there was the seemingly impossible task of towing the vessel to Bermuda.  On August 15, 1945, The Saturday Evening Post printed these words written by Captain Daniel Gallery: “…[Commander Earl Trosino] spent hours down in the bilges, crawling around in the oily water under the engines, tracing pipelines and closing valves to make the boat watertight…. Thanks to Trosino’s uncanny instinct for finding the right valves, and his total disregard of his own safety, we succeeded in saving the U-505.”

And thanks to Captain Gallery, who was a native of Chicago, and this Museum, the U-505 was preserved.  Its journey to the museum is another great story, but I’ll let you read about that on your own.

The Museum had so much more to explore.  We visited the Idea Factory, which was almost like a children’s museum for children 10 and younger, and we visited “YOU! the experience,” which was about the human body.  I was awed and had somewhat mixed emotions at their presentation of a developing fetus, from conception to full term, using real babies that for various reasons had never been born.

We only explored a small fraction of the museum.  If you are ever in Chicago, I highly recommend you stop by, but if you can’t travel there, please visit their website.  It is full of wonderful images, stories, a blog, podcast, and online activities.  It would be time well spent for children or adults who are interested in learning about science and industry.  www.msichicago.org

Posted in Field trips, Homeschooling, My Newspaper Columns | 9 Comments »

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July 2, 2012

Tadpole Update #3: We have Froglets!!

It’s been an exciting morning for us in the Pabis household!  We just checked on our tadpoles, and two of them have FRONT AND BACK legs!!  This happened overnight because we looked at them yesterday.  Two days ago I also took photos, and they had back legs then too.  You can see those photos and the ones I took this morning below.  I have put the dates on the photos for your reference.

We are still not completely sure what they are.  They look so much like the fowler toads in our yard, but I think the toad’s cycle would be shorter.  My guess is a Southern Chorus Frog.  I’m going to send this to a couple of experts, and I’ll get back to you on that! (Update: After looking at some more photos in a book and online, we’re thinking they are fowler toads.)

To see the first set of photos, click here, and for the second update, click here.

Exciting!

Posted in Homeschooling, Nature | 1 Comment »

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June 28, 2012

Tadpole Update #2: They have legs!

We were very excited this evening to see tiny legs on our tadpoles!  Below are some photos that I took in the last few days.  I’ve put dates on the images so that you can see the progress.  Though we thought they were about to get legs, tonight was the first time we could definitely see them.  To see my first photos of the tadpoles and learn how we got them and how we’re taking care of them, click here.

Have you ever raised tadpoles or any other kind of critter?

Posted in Homeschooling, Nature | 7 Comments »

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June 23, 2012

Guess who’s raising tadpoles?

Last week (on June 15th) when my five-year-old and I returned from his mini-camp, my husband and two-year-old surprised us with tadpoles!  They collected them at a stream where they found hundreds of tadpoles.  Most of them will get eaten by predators, so we’re going to help three of them along until they mature and then release them in the same spot we found them.  (At least we hope we get that far.)  So far they are doing well!

We’re keeping them in a container box on the porch. We used tap water, but we put a water conditioner in it that we use for our fish aquarium. Later we also added some of the water and algae from the stream that the tadpoles came from. We put some rocks and a filter in the water, and we are feeding them bits of frozen spinach and tapole/frog food we found at the pet store. They have gotten considerably fatter since we got them, and they seem happy!

We keep a screen over the box when we’re not watching them to keep mosquitoes and other pests out of the box.

I’ll keep you updated on the progress.

And let’s have a round of applause for my husband who initiated and did the work for this awesome homeschool science project!

Posted in Homeschooling, Nature | 8 Comments »

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June 19, 2012

“Children generally start out that way…”

Every once in a while I happen upon a wonderful quote that involves children and my belief that they should be free to explore, play and use their imaginations.  If I can, I’ll share these with you.

I don’t usually get a chance to listen to my favorite podcasts, but recently I was driving without my children and listened to this wonderful interview with Oceanographer Sylvia Earle on On Being with Krista Tippett.  (If you haven’t tuned into this program before, you need to.)  I loved what Dr. Earle said early in the interview about her childhood experiences and how it led her to the work she does now.  I find that there’s a theme among scientists when I hear them being interviewed: it always starts in early childhood.  

This is a quote from the transcript:

Ms. Tippett: …So it’s clear to me that you discovered the natural world in general and water in particular and the ocean in your earliest life. I mean, this seems from as far back as you can remember to have been part of you and your imagination.

Dr. Earle: Um, a critter person. Children generally start out that way, given a chance to explore even in their own back yard. So often, the adults around them will say, oh, don’t touch that beetle or, ugh, an earthworm, or caterpillars, yuck. My parents were different….

Be sure to listen to the whole interview or read the transcript by clicking here.

This episode was especially enjoyable to me because my family and I have taken an interest in the ocean, and we are currently watching the Discovery Channel’s series Blue Planet for the second time on Netflix.  Many of Dr. Earl’s sentiments overlapped what we have learned through these wonderful documentaries.

Posted in Homeschooling, Worthy Reads | 2 Comments »

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