We Have Larvae

For the next several weeks we will be studying flying insects using Apologia's Flying Creatures of the Fifth Day as a reference. We will be working our way through this study with another homeschooling family. You can meet Rose here.

Rose and I bought  grow your own butterfly kits from Insect Lore at Hobby Lobby a couple weeks ago. It took about a week for our larvae to arrive but they showed up in our mailbox last night. I was nervous about opening the box this morning. First, it was cold yesterday and I don't know how long they were in the mailbox. Second, it said open immediately but I wanted to wait for the girls to be awake so they could see it right away. Third, I was afraid of what was in there. I'm not a big fan of the creepy and the crawly.

I was pleasantly surprised, nothing too creepy. They were packaged upside down and I didn't see any movement at first but now all 5 baby caterpillars are crawling around. I'm excited to chart their growth progress over the next couple weeks!

In other news I finally bit the bullet and transplanted the rainbow plants. I hope I didn't kill them. They seem rather fragile.

Kennedy made this little flower pot at Bible study a couple weeks ago.

I have quite the collect of books waiting to be picked up from the library for our butterfly studies. I'll get a book list up soon.



Planting a Rainbow

We have pretty much finished up our March studies on Ireland, St Patrick's Day and rainbows. It's been a fun month with lots of fun activities.

One of my favorites was planting a rainbow with the girls. We went to Home Depot and Lowes and loaded up on a rainbow of flowers.

Adam built us a little flower box to put around the mailbox. I've wanted a flowery mailbox since we bought our house but when we moved here the mailbox was on the other side of the street. We just got permission this year to move it to our side. I'm ecstatic!  (It's the little things, y'all!)

I would tell you the names of all the flowers but I'm no botanical expert and my dearest Aubrey child confiscated all the picks from the containers which named the flowers and gave instructions on how to care for them.


"It was trash, Momma."

I do know that most of them are pansies and there are also a couple marigolds thrown into the mix (orange was a tough flower to find).

After we had planted our rainbow we needed to water it. The sun shining behind the shower made a lovely rainbow in the road.



Making an Irish Harp

We are loving our study of Ireland, St Patrick's Day and rainbows. There is so much fun stuff to do and everyday I'm more convinced that we need to live in Ireland. The fact that there are no snakes on the whole island is reason enough. Please, no need to tell me why we don't want to live in Ireland. I know it rains there somewhere around 200 days a year. But. There are no snakes.

We watched American Cultures for Children, Irish-American Heritage yesterday. And again today. It is such a neat video. We've been reading Count Your Way Through Ireland by James Haskins.and learning to count to 10 in Gaelic. The video also teaches it so we now have someone pronouncing the words for us! We'll have it down by the end of the month! The video covers a little bit of everything and even included a tutorial for making a harp.

Start with a box. On the video they used a pasta box (a large one like for jumbo shells, not spaghetti), we used ice cream cone boxes. Cereal boxes were also suggested. You can paint your box and then decorate it. We covered ours in wrapping paper and then the girls stamped it with paint and foam stamps. After your box is ready you will cut a rectangle on both sides like so

Then you will tape a pencil to one side of the box on the side of the window. Next you will stretch rubber bands around the box and over the windows according to width. Finish by taping the rubber bands down on both sides of both windows.

Play a Celtic tune!

One more thing. Aubrey wanted left over pancakes for dinner tonight (the colors became slightly distorted after going through the microwave). I happened to pick up some clouds at the store earlier today. How fun is this?



Taste the Rainbow

Science Sunday {Rainbow Plants} & Catching Up

We have had so much fun with our Saint Patrick's Day studies! We are continuing to learn about the beautiful colors of the rainbow. Towards the end of the month we will read (and watch) Planting a Rainbow. We jumped a bit ahead and planted a rainbow today so that we will hopefully see some rainbow sprouts by the end of the month.

I picked up this Rainbow Plant kit at Hobby Lobby yesterday. It is made by Dune Craft.

First we dropped the soil pellet into the little pot. The pot stays inside the plastic wrapper which doubles as a terarium.

 The directions say that the pellet will rapidly expand after water is added but it wasn't very rapid. There was some sort of wrapping around the pellet that I ended up pulling off to help in the expansion process. Maybe we were supposed to do that before pouring the water on but the directions did not indicate so.

Next we poured the teeny tiny seeds onto the soil trying to spread them out some and then gently pressed them into the soil.

The terarium has found a home in our kitchen window. We'll check for progress everday and should see rainbow sprouts in 10 days.



We The girls have had a great time playing with the hide-n-seek jar we made last week.

Their favorite treasure is the fool's gold and the gold coin.

Can you spot the fool's gold above and gold coin below?

They also finished coloring their maps of Ireland.

I just noticed that E & W are backwards. What kind of teacher am I? =)

I found this map on http://www.enchantedlearning.com/ . There are some things there that require a membership to access but plenty that is free, including the map.

For more Science Sunday adventures visit:

Roy G Biv

Today was the usual busy Wednesday. We had Bible study this morning. Today we studied about the name Jehovah Raah - The Lord My Shepherd. How awesome is it to know that the Lord goes BEFORE us and doesn't follow behind us?? The Shepherd also knows each sheep in his flock's name. Someone mentioned that reminded them of the song "He Knows My Name." I, however, had the Veggie Tales song "Good Shepherd"  stuck in my head. All I could think of was 'baa, baa, baa - I'm a little sheep. baa, baa, baa - I'm a little sheep. Good Shepherd, Good Shepherd I'll follow you." And now it's stuck in yours!!

Because of our busy day (did I mention we hung out with friends at Chuck E Cheese for a while?) we had a short lesson on rainbows today. Well, technically yesterday since it's already after midnight? How does that happen??

We read The Leprechaun Who Lost His Rainbow by Sean Callahan. The leprechaun's name is Roy G Biv. The girls are very familiar with the colors of the rainbow but it was a fun review and a nice introduction to the acronym.

After our lesson we started on this project. I LOVE it!

We used a spaghetti sauce jar for our Hide-n-Seek jar. When coloring your popcorn make sure you use a liquid food coloring. I'm sure that is common knowledge but my blue/red mixture was not making a pretty purple so I used my purple gel coloring. It was choosing not to dry and was all clumpy. I threw away that batch (plus the previous!) and used candy coloring. It worked much better!

I printed out a label for the top with what little treasures were hiding inside. I cut the lab to fit the lid and mod podged it on. I like labeling to complicate things.

 The girls picked out an assortment of small toys. I have a feeling they'll like playing with this well past Saint Patrick's Day so their toys weren't just one color.

After the kernels were dry I layered them in the jar according to the spectrum. I stuck the toys in a couple at a time after each layer. The girls were in bed before the project was finished so I'm leaving it in all of its layered beauty until they can get their hands on it.

March Reading List

Saint Patrick's Day

Lucky O'Leprechaun
by Dillon, Jana.
 
The leprechaun who lost his rainbow
by Callahan, Sean,
 
Patrick : patron saint of Ireland
by DePaola, Tomie
 
St. Patrick's Day
by Rockwell, Anne F.
 
O'Sullivan stew : a tale cooked up in Ireland
by Talbott, Hudson.
 
St. Patrick's Day
by Gibbons, Gail.
 
Shamrocks, harps, and shillelaghs : the story of the St. Patrick's Day symbols
by Barth, Edna
 
St. Patrick's Day
by Landau, Elaine
 
St. Patrick's Day in the morning
by Bunting, Eve


That's what leprechauns do
by Bunting, Eve

Ireland

Count your way through Ireland
by Haskins, James

Ireland 
by Blashfield, Jean F

This is Ireland.
by Sasek, M. (Miroslav)

Tim O'Toole and the wee folk : an Irish tale
by McDermott, Gerald

Harp o'gold
by Bateman, Teresa

Fin M'Coul : the giant of Knockmany Hill
by DePaola, Tomie

Fair, Brown & Trembling : an Irish Cinderella story
by Daly, Jude

DVD

World geography. Disc 2, Europe


Rainbows

Planting a rainbow
by Ehlert, Lois
 
Experiments with weather and climate
by Bassett, John
 
Experiments with light and color
by Jackson, Tom
 
Duckie's rainbow
by Barry, Frances

DVDs


Bill Nye the Science Guy - Light & Color

Scholastic's Planting a Rainbow