I wanted to share this with you to go along with the online study that I posted for the Chronicles of Narnia just below this entry just in case you are working on a lapbook for it right now :) There is a wonderful tutorial for how to make a pop-up of Aslan complete with very detailed photo instructions for each step! The final result is fantastic and of course you could use it for any project you are working on as well *grin* While you are there take a moment to check out the main page for the pop-ups because there are more of them there to make! I know that we will be making a few. I love the birthday one. Wouldn't that make an awesome card?
It's been just about 3 weeks since we last weighed Queen Chick-o-patra. We had decided to leave her in her natron mixture a little longer to see if it would result in a better weigh in but she actually only lost 1 ounce in 3 weeks! On the bright side I think she smelled better this time. LOL.
Our master embalmer K recorded her official weight as 650 grams or 1 pound 7 ounces.
And then we did one more final inspection of her body before we repacked her in the natron mixture for another couple of weeks :) You can see above that some areas have dried and the skin and underlying flesh has thinned out and is letting light through it and her legs have dried quite noticeably. The bones are more prominent and the skin is turning colors a bit. Check back in a couple of weeks for another weigh in *grin*
This week's Unplugged Project over at Unplug Your Kids' blog is all about books so what would be more fun than making a hollow book for hiding your most treasured items!
You'll need one thick book, hardcover ones are the most suitable but we didn't have one on hand so we used an old phone book that was about 2 inches thick. You can find lots of hardcover books at thrift stores for under a dollar usually or rummage sales are another good place to look :) You will also need white glue, a film canister, a paintbrush, a popsicle stick, a ruler, saran wrap and an exacto knife.
To start with fill your film canister about 1/3 full with white glue and then pour in enough water to create a runny glue that can easily be spread with your paintbrush.
We then used our popsicle stick to stir the glue and water mixture together. You could use anything though to stir just make sure that if you are keeping it you rinse it off really well right away before the glue dries on it!
To make your book look more authentic if someone opens it up you will want a couple of loose pages under the cover to hide the hollow spot. We took the first 4 pages and then wrapped them with the saran wrap to keep them from accidentally getting glued down. Repeat this with the back couple of pages to.
Now you're ready to paint your glue on. Brush on an even amount of glue all around the 3 exposed sides to saturate the pages thoroughly and then close up the book and set something really heavy on top of it to keep it tightly closed while the glue dries and sets the pages firmly together. It took about an hour to dry well enough to move onto the next phase.
As soon as your book feels and looks dry and the center pages have fused together tightly you can start to get ready to cut out the center. Measure a 1/2 inch grid all around the outside of the top page. These are the lines you will use to guide where you cut.
Now comes the dangerous part! I let my son who is 9 do this while I supervised the whole time, but this is up to you as to how old your child should be to use an extremely sharp exacto knife. To start the first cuts into the book he used the ruler as a guide to keep the knife straight on the lines, and went over each of the 4 lines.
After the first cuts all around the perimeter he was ready to peel out the first pages and start again :)
This part of the project takes the longest and of course the more careful you are keeping all of your cuts the same the smoother the finished inside will be, but hey, we're not going for perfection, just fun! *grin*
Phew! All done and as you can see above we have a nice deep pocket :)
Time to get the glue out again and give it a good coat all around the inside walls now to create a really sturdy pocket.
After you've finished gluing it again, weigh it down with something super heavy to keep the pages firmly together while it dries and sets hard. K thought that the Lego bucket would add just the right amount of pressure *grin*
Once it's all dry you can load it up with whatever you want :) So far K's is home to his spy light and some change *grin* but you never know what else might make its way into it!
Queen Chick-o-patra has put on the breaks and is resisting her weight loss regiment we have been strictly adhering to *grin* This week she weighed in at 685 grams or 1 pound 8 ounces, giving her a total weight loss of 2 ounces this week. Eeek, this project may go on forever! LOL.
Her body is starting to feel rubbery and she was notably stinkier today to. I think we will need to rub some sweet smelling oils on her sooner than expected :) The natron that we had Queen Chick-o-patra in was only slightly clumpy today when we dumped it out so I we won't be changing it next week. I think we will leave if for 2 weeks this time and hopefully we will get a better weigh in to :)
See you in a couple of weeks! If you want to see photos and directions of how we got this project started click here to see part one.
It's been a week since we started our chicken mummy project and today when we went to check how it was doing found that the salt had completely hardened in the bag like a rock! Definitely time to change the salt. I got a large plastic garbage bag and lined the sink with it and K got to work chipping Queen Chick-o-patra out of it.
I was quite shocked by how it had changed so much already!
K thought that it stank a little but I actually didn't think it was all that bad. I had filled up the sink next to us with bleach water for quick clean up so I think that mostly we were smelling it :) The salt inside the cavity had gone rock hard so he had to use a spoon to dig it out bit by bit.
Once he finally had it all cleaned off we placed Queen Chick-0-patra on the scale for her official weigh in *grin* She weighed 740 grams or 1 pound 10 ounces. She dropped a whopping 7.5 ounces, nearly half a pound!! This might not take as long as I thought. We repacked her with the natron and sealed her up in a plastic bag again and placed her back on top of the fridge until next week :)
If you want to see what we did to get this project started you can see Part 1 here.
This is something that has been in the works for quite some time but we just never got down to doing it :) So on Friday I took the final step and bought the 'chicken' *grin*
Our cast of characters consists of:
1 cornish hen aka Queen Chick-o-patra
2 boxes of salt
1 box of baking soda
1 jar of rubbing alcohol
paper towels
rubber gloves
2 clear plastic bags or large ziploc zipper bags
kitchen scale
Poor, poor, Queen Chick-o-patra has died and the embalmer is setting to work getting her ready for the mummification process. First he is carefully inspecting to make sure that her brain and other organs have been removed and placed in their 'canopic' jars. Ours didn't actually have any organs but if you did you could preserve them separately and place them in specially decorated canopic jars just like the Egyptians would have :)
The next step was to pour a generous amount of rubbing alcohol inside and all over the outside of Queen Chick-o-patra. I was told that this would help keep some of the bacteria and smell down.
You want to make sure that you dry your chicken thoroughly inside and outside. It takes quite a bit of paper towel but is important to the drying process.
This proved to be a little to much for my squeamish embalmer to handle *grin* and he had to take a brief rest in the middle of our project!
While K rested and got back some of the color in his face I finished up the drying of our chicken and cleaned up the sink and got Queen Chick-o-patra onto the scale for her first official weigh in. She's a whopping 950 grams or 2lb. 1 and 1/2 ounces. We're going to chart her weight loss each time we change the salt and then graph it in the end.
We quickly set to work mixing up our Natron by combining 1 1/2 boxes of salt and 1/2 our box of baking soda together.
I didn't have large ziploc bags (I forgot to buy them) so I used two sturdy bread bags I had, one inside the other and then we poured in a couple cups of our natron to fully cover the base of the bag before we set Queen Chick-o-patra inside.
Our embalmer then proceeded to fill Queen Chick-o-patra's cavity to the top with Natron...
and then placed her inside the bag on top of the natron we had already placed inside the bag. He then continued to pour in the natron all around her until she was completely covered and not one part of her body was visible through the plastic.
We tied up the bag tightly, placed it inside of a bowl just in case there are any leaks and placed her on top of the fridge. There she will sit until next week when we check out if the salt is starting to clump and get damp :)
UPDATE: Want to see how our chicken mummy is progressing?? View parts TWO , THREE and FOUR here.
Back in October I had given you a sneak peak into K's needlework project while joking that needlework was definitely not just for girls *grin* Well I thought it was time to give you another update :) It has gone from the beginning makings of a barge to a full fledged pirate ship! I still can't get over the detail that he is putting into it. Okay, I'm boasting a little but this is definitely a proud mama moment. LOL. He has added the bowsprit to the front of the bow complete with the spritsail, followed by the foremast and the mainmast and their sails. Did you notice the crow's nest? I'll share a final photo when he's completely done :)
I found this really great wordless (no writing involved) lapbook on the Gift of Salvation over at Jaminacema's blog and I just had to make it with the kids :)
It is really simple to make with 5 different colored booklets that explain our salvation from black for sin, to yellow for heaven and green for growing in God's word and all of the written info and scripture quotes are on Jamin's blog which she has so generously shared with us!
I just printed it all out and let K go to work cutting everything out for me :) I did a quick search on the internet for pictures of Jesus for the images and for sunday school coloring pages and found the one with the daffodils underneath the cross that says 'Jesus loves me' and the other one which says 'Jesus died on the cross for our sins' which you canfind here. L had fun coloring them up for me and then gluing them into the lapbook.
This was a really fun way to teach them about salvation and so simple for little ones to join in on the fun and learning as well.
I wanted to share this link to a Periodic Table of Elements that includes a picture depicting each of the elements in addition to all of the usual information. It just might make it easier for some children to memorize the elements since they can relate them to an everyday object :)
This morning K had an experiment all picked out that he wanted to try.... an underwater volcano : ) This is a really quick and easy experiment that takes only 5 things which you can find in any kitchen! You will need:
one pair of scissors
red food coloring
a 2 foot length of yarn
one large jar (does not have to be as big as mine)
one small jar (a salt shaker is what we used) that will fit inside the big jar comfortably
Take your length of yarn and start by tying one end in a knot around the neck of your small jar, then tie the other end in a knot around the neck as well creating a string handle for lowering your jar. If you find the string is to long you can trim it shorter before you start tying it so that it will be more manageable for you jar size :)
Now fill your large jar with COLD water about 3/4 full. Take your small jar and fill it with the HOTTEST water that comes out of your tap and then drop in 3 or 4 drops of red food coloring.
Okay now you're ready to start! Hold your small jar by the string and slowly lower it into your large jar of cold water all the way until it is resting on the bottom.....
and enjoy the eruption!
Did you know that water is never still even if it appears to be. The molecules that make up H2O are always on the move : ) Cold water molecules are slow and sink to the bottom while the hot water molecules are all revved up moving very quickly and they rise to the top of the cold water molecules which creates that red eruption of food coloring floating directly upwards in the jar.
Of course we had to try out our eruptions in multiple colors *grin*
And I ended up with multiple colored fingers. LOL.
I know quite a few of you were waiting for the results of our spore printing experiment and I thought I'd let you know that I have put our results on my nature blog, Nature Notes From Above. They turned out really great!
We are currently using the book Towers and Tunnels by Etta Kaner and it is full of fun experiments to test your knowledge of building towers and tunnels and it also encourages us to notebook while we experiment. Last night K started on one of the projects which required us to construct I beams. He did most of the cutting and folding before he went to bed and this morning he set to gluing them all together : )
The first thing it asked us to test was the strength of two I beams, one consisting of the two pieces of construction paper glued together and the other with an additional piece (the blue strip of paper) glued on both sides of the beam over top of the seam between the two pieces of construction paper. We placed one of our light books on top of them and as you can see the I beam on the left without the additional strip of blue paper started to buckle first at the bottom. The unique shape of an I beam spreads a majority of the material away from the center line thus strengthening the overall structure. The additional paper glued to the sides makes it even stronger : )
Now comes the fun part of building your own skyscraper! For this one K built himself a nice foundation and then we decided to test it's strength. So we piled on (skinny) book after book until it finally collapsed *grin* We weighed the books when we were done and those 4 paper I beams were able to hold 1lb 7oz.'s worth of weight before the base started to sway and fell over. I think that it would have been able to hold much more since the beams didn't actually buckle under the weight. We must have been lopsided somehow : )
We decided to test our luck with another structure and this time we just set up 4 I beams at a time then a book and so on repeating until we had 3 stories. This worked much better and we were able to distribute the same 1lb 7oz on top of the base but then we ran out of I beams :( Oh well maybe K will feel up to making more tomorrow and we can try and beat our 3 story record *grin*
Since it is the season of the apple and there are so many varieties available I thought it would be fun to taste test a bunch of them to see which ones we liked the best and at the same time we would use our senses and some mathematic skills : )
We decided on these 8. I know an apple pear isn't exactly an apple but we really wanted to try one and hey it does have apple in it's name *grin* I think the lady at the grocery store thought I was some sort of weirdo when I came to the till with all the apples in individual paper bags with each bag labeled on the outside. She kept looking at me like I must be crazy to make her open each bag and look inside and why couldn't I have just used plastic! I wonder if she has ever tried to right on plastic LOL.
I got a neat little apple graph here that we used to record our data on. We decided that we would evaluate each apple on 5 categories:
Color (red, yellow, green)
Smell (fruity, perfumey)
Texture (soft, hard, spongy, smooshy)
Taste (sweet, tart, perfumey)
Rate of 1 (yucky) to 5 (love it)
Once we had our graphs all set up we let our master peeler Opa get to work.
Opa got right into the smelling of the apples. He thought the peelings smelled better than just smelling the apple pieces : ) So we all, sniffed, scrutinized, chewed, slurped, swished and swallowed our samples until they were all gone. You can just imagine how difficult that must have been *grin*
Here's all that was left our yummy apples :)
Here is the results of K's taste testing. The Ambrosia and Red Delicious were K's favorites. It was interesting to hear what he thought of each apple and if you noticed he thought the apple pear was stinky. LOL.
At the end we averaged the individual 1-5 apple scores that we had given to see which ones came out as the winners. It was interesting to see how the individual rates skewed the final outcome. I thought that the McIntosh would get a much higher score since 3 of us really liked it giving it a 4-5 rating while K gave it a rating of 1 which knocked the average waaay down. We're going to take our answers now and graph the individual and average rates to see how it looks in color *grin*
The Ambrosia was our taste test winner, if you decide to do it to let me know which one ended up being your families favorite : )
Did you know that radish seeds sprout extremely slow when they are being watched constantly?!
Well they do : ) but I've learned a few tricks to help them out!
If the instructions tell you to place your radish seeds on damp paper towel for sprouting this really means place your seeds on wet paper towel with a bit of a puddle for the seeds to lay in. For some reason damp paper doesn't do a very good job : )
Another tip is not to plant your radish seeds to deeply. I know that seems like a simple thing to do and planting them pencil point deep like my book says doesn't sound that deep but you'd be amazed at the difference in sprouting time between pencil point deep and just laying them on top of the dirt and sprinkling enough soil to cover them ; )
Trust me, the experiment still works *grin*
I think the K is becoming an expert at cutting out stacks of circular paper towel. LOL.
Today he had to prepare 3 more jars for a new experiment on how different toxins affect plant growth.
We prepared three growing mediums consisting of regular tap water, vinegar, and a saline solution.
Placed our radish seeds inside and sealed them up. Now we wait to see what happens : ) We will return in about 9 days and discuss how radishes react to soils that are acidic or salty.
Remember the radish seeds that came out of the foil covered jar?
Well here they are 3 days after being out in the sunlight! Their chlorophyll molecules are working to turn the cotyledons green and you can see the hypocotyl on the one has turned a nice red color. Now that they have greened up they are starting the process of photosynthesis which takes place in the cotyledons and the hypocotyl and start to make food energy : )
When I think about science, experiments always come to mind. For us right now science usually consists of animal classifications, plants and how they grow and electricity. But science isn't just about nature, it's also about how things are made and how they behave and actually consists of 3 main components..... chemistry, physics and biology.
Well today we focused on the chemistry portion learning about sodium chloride and sucrose by making cookies. *grin*
A compound is made up of two or more elements bonded together. For example a water molecule is composed of 2 hydrogen atom and one oxygen atom forming the compound H2O. Well making cookies is the same thing. You are combining chemicals and making something new.
Butter is one of the most natural foods used in your cookies because all you need to make it is milk from a cow, sheep or goat. Butter is a fat, and other fats are oil, margarine, lard and shortening and they are made up of the chemicals carbon, hydrogen and oxygen. When you cook or bake with fat it makes your cookies, cakes or breads soft and tender, taste better and they make you feel full. Fats also assist vitamins A, D, E, & K move through your body. So a little fat in your diet can be good for you : )
Sugar comes from two main sources, sugar cane or sugar beets. The process of making sugar from sugarcane started around 500 BC in Asia. Western Europe discovered sugar during its Crusades when they brought it home after one of their campaigns to the Holy Land. The sugar canes were chopped, ground or pounded to extract the juices that were then dried in the sun leaving a solid crystal behind similar to gravel. Sugar comes in various forms such as raw sugar, brown sugar, white sugar and icing sugar. Raw sugar is large brown crystals and contains molasses which comes from the sugarcane or sugar beets. White sugar has been refined to remove the molasses, powdered sugar is white sugar ground into a fine powder and brown sugar is white sugar with the molasses added back into it again.
Sugar is a source of energy and it sweetens our baking but it doesn't just do that. When you cream the sugar and butter together the sugar rubs against the butter making air pockets which make your cookies bigger!! Sugar (especially brown sugar) also helps your cookies stay soft by retaining moisture and turns them a golden brown when you cook them.
Eggs, another whole food are the 'glue' of your cookie. The soft liquidy inside of a raw egg binds your ingredients together and as it cooks and solidifies it keeps them that way so you don't end up with cookie
crumbles : )
Flour is made from wheat which is produced by a type of grass and when you mix flour with a liquid it makes a really strong, and elastic dough. Each kernel of wheat is made up of 3 main parts, the germ, endosperm and bran. Whole wheat flour is made by grinding the entire kernel and is great for making bread because it has more vitamins, minerals and fibers. White flour is just made from the endosperm and makes a really light and fluffy dough and is great for cookies and cakes. Flour can also be made from oats, rice, kamut, rye and other grains but wheat is the most commonly used flour.
Baking soda is a leavener which means it lifts up. When it is mixed with another ingredient it explodes letting out carbon dioxide gas which bubbles and expands inside the cookie dough making your cookie rise and take on a fluffy texture as it bakes. The next time you eat a cookie, a piece of cake or a slice of bread have a look for little holes. These were made by the carbon dioxide gas bubbles : )
Chocolate is made from the bitter seeds (beans) of the Cacao tree. The beans are harvested from the pods, left to ferment in piles for about a week before they are dried and roasted. The beans are then cracked open so that the 'nib' inside can be removed which is then ground into paste and cocoa butter and cocoa powder are separated out of it. The chocolate is still very bitter and lots of sugar is added to sweeten it. Chocolate tastes really great and it just might be good for you to as it contains more than 300 different chemicals, some of which make your body release a chemical that makes you feel nice and happy *grin*
Yep, I'm feeling happy. Just ate one to many cookies but they sure tasted good!
Get out your favorite recipe and have some fun : )
Blessings,
BChsMamaof3
Today K transformed his seed starting house into a greenhouse.
He started by cutting the lid off of the milk carton and then putting in a new piece of paper towel with 5 circles traced onto it. Each circle represents an experiment we are currently working on or will in the future that will be added to our greenhouse.
I picked up a fresh packet of radish seeds yesterday so that our future plantings will be more successful and K placed 4 seeds in the upper corner of the greenhouse. Not on a circle though. Not sure yet what those 4 seeds will be doing out in the unknown but I'm sure we'll find out
soon : )
Today was the day that we compared our Night and Day jars. Each jar had been sealed shut with seeds on moistened paper towel but one was completely covered in foil.
K was very surprised to open up the foil covered jar and find the radish seedlings all the way up to the lid!! You can see above the difference between the light starved seedlings and the ones that had access to light. We have added them into our greenhouse on two of the circular spots.
To complete our greenhouse we put a piece of plastic wrap on top of the milk carton and taped it along one side completely and on the other side we made a tape latch so that we could close it up and still access the seedlings inside.
Can't wait to see what we do next : )
Blessings,
BChsMamaof3
K is finished with his grid drawings of the radishes that were sprouting in the greenhouse environment. Above is the last one he did showing the tap root they grow and all of the root hairs. He was amazed at how fuzzy some of them got and then others didn't have many root hairs at all.
A new addition to our experiments is the above one which will compare 4 different growing environments. The are 3 seeds on each of the sections:
dry on the lid (no moisture)
totally submersed in water (limited oxygen)
open to the air on a damp paper towel (air will cause a chilling effect to seeds)
underneath plastic wrap on a damp paper towel (cozy like a greenhouse)
K had to predict what he thought would happen to the seeds in each of the environments and explain why he thought that would happen. This is really great because he has to really think about each one and how their access to oxygen, light, and moisture will affect them. Should be interesting to see how many sprout : )
I'm a little (okay a lot) disappointed with the seed germination so far : (
We started with 20 seeds in our milk carton greenhouse and only 8 of them germinated and have turned into radish seedlings. I think this weekend I will try to get my hands on some new seeds from a garden center to use.
Our sprouts were definitely in need of transplanting so we moved onto the next step and transplanted them into 2 seed pots K made. K had to trim the tap roots on them by measuring them with a ruler and then cutting off the excess length. Apparently this was just to make the transplanting process easier : ) The first pot received 2 radish sprouts and in the second pot K put in the remaining 6 sprouts. We will now watch them over the next 17 days and then document how the 2 groups developed differently showing crowded and non-crowded growing conditions.
In the meantime K will document the uncrowded group once a week by drawing their growth for that week. Above is this weeks growth. The true leaves are just starting to sprout out above the nodes.
On our white board I drew a large version of this weeks growth documentation so that K could see it all of the time and become more familiar with the new words that we are learning.
I also really wanted to draw a picture of them myself. Hey I don't want to miss out on all of the fun!! *grin*
Do you know why Orca's got the nickname Killer Whale?
Because they actually kill other whales! There are three different types of killer whales and each of them has a different social and eating behaviour.
Transient killer whales are the type of whale that kills other whales. They feed on a variety of marine mammals like dolphins, whales, seals and sea lions. Resident killerwhales feed on fish like salmon and the third type of killer whales called the Offshore killer whales eat fish as well.
Beach rubbing is a social behavior that is common among many pods of orcas but not all. According to many researchers this behavior is exclusive to the northern community of resident orca.
One of the most important areas for studying and researching Killer whales is in the Johnstone Strait on the north east portion of Vancouver Island which is also home to the Robson Bight Ecological Reserve and one of the best known rubbing beaches in the area.
Rubbing beaches have shallow waters with pebble beaches that the whales come and skid along or roll on rubbing their bellies and sides along the pebbles. Researchers are not exactly sure what the significance of beach rubbing is but it is thought to help remove parasites and excess dead skin. Another reason is it just might feel REALLY good *grin*
Well we're on day 3 of radish seed observations and they have really started to sprout. Some are just starting to poke out of the seed coats and we have one that has come right out of the seed coat with its cotyledons already starting to spread.
As each seed reaches a new step in it's growth development K has to document it. Above is our radish that is the furthest along. He puts the radish on a mini grid and then draws the parts of it onto his larger grid. This helps him to keep it all in proportion.
Today we started a new experiment in conjunction with the above. K placed 4 seeds on moistened paper towel in each jar and now we wait and see if the foil covered jar will sprout the seeds as well as the clear jar.
K is really enjoying making predictions as to what will happen next : )
I learned a few things about tadpoles today to help us out with the ones that we are raising.
What should you keep your tadpoles in? Glass or plastic containers are the best. Plastic buckets are fine just make sure that they didn't previously have any chemicals in them that would be harmful to the tadpoles. Metal is completely out of the question even if it is coated with enamel or porcelain don't use it.
What water should you keep your tadpoles in? If you collect your tadpoles from a clean stream without pollutants than the best would be to collect the water from where you got your tadpoles from, but if this isn't a good choice then you can use rainwater that you have collected. If neither of the previous options are available then you can use tapwater but it needs to be treated before you use it. You can buy water treatment tablets from a pet store that will remove chlorine and other chemicals from the water or you can pour tap water into a plastic or glass container and let it sit for about 5 days for the chlorine to evaporate out of your water.
How do you make sure your water is oxygenated? If you collected your tadpoles from a running stream than it would be a good idea to run a pump in the water to keep the oxygen levels up but it they came from stagnant water then a pump may be stressful and agitating to them so putting aquatic plants in your container would be the best idea and will provide the essential oxygen that they need. A good way to tell if your tadpoles are not getting enough oxygen is if they are spending time hanging vertically to the water's surface.
What should you feed your tadpoles?
Apparently they enjoy lettuce, preferably organic to avoid pesticides. Make sure you boil the lettuce for 10 - 15 minutes then strain it and freeze in ice cube trays. Pull out a frozen lettuce cube as needed for feeding. If you have a small tank that you are raising a few tadpoles in then you probably won't want to put a whole cube in because it will dirty your water to quickly. So freeze your lettuce on a sheet in small pieces so that you can take out a couple pieces at a time.
Tadpoles also need a protein once or twice a week and increased more frequently as they begin to get legs. Bottom fish food tablets are a good type of food to use and the tadpoles will eat them. You want one that has a high protein algae like spirulina.
Why are some of my tadpoles smaller than the others?
This is because there are to many tadpoles for the amount of space you have provided for them. Ideally you will want about 1 liter of water per tadpole.
How long will it take for my tadpole to start to turn into a frog?
The length of time really depends on the frog that the eggs are from. It could be 6 - 9 weeks or as long as 6 months.
What do my tadpoles need now that they are getting legs?
Once your tadpoles are starting to get legs they need something to get out of the water onto because their gills are going to start to close up and their lungs will begin to work. Lilly pads, sticks or even a mountain of rocks will be suitable things for them to climb out onto.
What do I feed my baby frog?
If your baby frogs aren't big enough to start eating crickets and are to big for the frozen lettuce then a good thing to start with is small insects or blood worms which you can find in pet stores. You can drop some into the water or you can put them in a little jar with a little bit of warm water and put them into the tank for the frogs to find.
Frogs also like to hide so some ground cover in the tank like plants or rocks will make them happy : )
Now that I know what to feed my little tads I'm sure that they will be much happier!
BChsMamaof3
Since we have all of our science stuff for grade 3, I thought we would jump right in and start our radish seed experiment. It isn't scheduled for a couple of weeks yet but I'm skipping us ahead since it's planting time anyways : )
K had to make a mini germination house out of a 2L milk carton.
After he had the lid cut into it he placed a paper towel into it with 20 circles drawn onto it and moistened it. On each of the circles he placed one radish seed. We have closed it up and placed it on the window sill for now.
Next he made little seed pots out of aluminum foil and labeled them 2A - 2D and filled each of them with moistened potting soil.
The final step today was to take two of the seed pots and place radish seeds inside them and lightly cover them with dirt.
We're really into the wet, wild and slimy creatures lately *grin* First it was creepy crawly worms and today it was slippery little frog's eggs! We all trekked down to the bottom field where our pond is located in search of the eggs. It is so late in the season I wasn't even sure if we were going to be able to find some but we were lucky : )
We had to hunt around for quite a while before we found them. Everywhere we went all we seemed to find were empty eggs to start with and then we hit the jackpot! A nice cluster of them just within arms reach. K loved getting in there and grabbing them. I tried to talk him into putting the bucket into the water and scooping them up but I was quickly informed that it was MUCH more fun to get them by hand. Well who am I to argue with that : )
Couldn't talk him into rolling up his sleeves either. LOL.
Not that I tried all that hard : )
Here they are. We had more than enough and ended up dumping a bunch of them back into the pond before we left. They sort of remind me of leaches when I see them from far. Ewww.
We filled the bucket up with water from the pond and picked out some of the mud and water plants that were growing along side the bank so that they would have some food to eat when they hatch. Is hatch the correct term to use? By the time we got home we noticed that some of them had already come out of the eggs and were swimming around. We truly were lucky to find these little guys.
Does anyone know exactly what to feed them? I will have to have a look around online and see what I can find : )
K and I rolled over this big log in hopes of finding a couple of fat juicy worms for our experiment. We found a couple of them but we needed many more : )
So we headed to the manure pile. It is a gold mine for warms and other creepy crawlers! As you can see it is quite a mountain so it didn't take us long at all to locate some.
K had found a spoon in his dirt pile and thought that it would make a good shovel but we decided to use the pitch fork instead. We could move more dung quicker *grin*
One unsuspecting worm...
Plucked from his home and now headed to his transport container, one of my mason jars. I haven't quite decided if I will ever use it again. LOL. It's in the dishwasher but it may be designated as a bait jar now : )
Here they all are. I think we have plenty. Off we go to create our worm farm : )
We've got some peat moss, potting soil, alfalfa, sand, grass for food and some wheat berries that we are going to layer into a large 1.5 gallon glass jar.
We started by putting some potting soil in first and then added another layer of sand and so on. I don't think it makes any difference which way you put things in : )
Here's the first 3 layers. Instead of grass clippings you could put in lettuce as a food for the worms to. I think we are going to add some lettuce to the top as soon as they start to munch down the grass.
Last but not least our worms.
Here is the completed jar with all of the layers and the worms.
Now the goal of this experiment is to see how earth worms eat organic matter (our grass or lettuce) and to show how earthworms travel up and down and through out the soil, mixing soil from the different soil layers with plant debris from the soil surface. This mixing helps to make more nutrients available for plant growth, and helps to create a better soil habitat for all soil organisms.
Above you can see some of the earthworms already made it through the soil and wheat berries and are in the grass and sand layers.
The final part of our experiment was to dampen the soil so that the worms would stay moist and we covered the top of the jar with cheesecloth so that they would be able to get oxygen.
We placed the entire jar into a large cardboard box and put the lid flaps down so that they would be in a nice dark spot. Worms are sensitive to light so this should give them a nice cozy environment. Each day we are going to open up the jar and check to see how the soil layers are changing, replenish their food and moisten the soil a little : )
Well yesterday we concluded our experiment with great results : ) There was noticeable changes in each of the egg shells when we compared them to our control egg shell.
This is our egg shell that was placed in the coffee. It's hard to believe that in just 24 hours it turned so brown.
The cola egg shell above also had a remarkable change going very brown.
The egg shell placed in the tomato juice was slightly discolored but I was more interested in seeing if the shell became weakened at all since tomatoes are acidic and can aid in weakening the enamel but there was not change in the shells strength.
This is our blueberry stained egg shell. No surprise here, I was pretty sure it was going to come out purple : )
And last but not least our egg shell that we placed in the vinegar jar. The shell was completely eaten away in 24 hours leaving only the membrane behind. I had to hold it with a fork for the photo so you could get a good look at how limp it is : )
It's amazing how quickly the vinegar ate away the shell and a very good thing that our teeth don't soak in acids as concentrated as that! Fruit juices, dried fruits, soft drinks, snack and sugary foods which change into acids in our mouths are also causes of enamel erosion and over time of course can eat away the enamel causing cavities and weakened teeth. So brushing regularly definitely helps to combat it and I also read that eating alkaline foods such as cheese and nuts after snacking can help stop the decay and that it takes 30 minutes after you have stopped eating for the saliva in your mouth to return the pH balance back to normal. Very interesting and good food for thought.
We are learning about dental health right now and to understand how the enamel on our teeth can become stained and deteriorate from foods that we eat if we do not take care of them by brushing them regularly I decided that it would be fun to do a little science experiment : )
I filled 6 canning jars with different liquids. From left to right is: plain water for our control, cola, coffee, tomato juice, blueberries smushed up in a little water, and vinegar. Then I got K to break the eggs open. We just wanted the shells for this experiment and we used white eggs since brown eggs wouldn't show our results very well.
Next K put one egg shell half into each jar.
Now we wait : ) We will leave them in 24 hours and then remove the shells to see which foods stained the shells the most.
Now that Christmas is over and you probably have your tree taken down and the decorations packed away for another year what do you do with your Christmas cards? How about recycling them and turning them into new works of art that you can give out to family and friends next Christmas. That is what we do with ours. This is also a great way to save a little bit of money as well since you won't need to purchase new cards come December. We have just finished going through all of the cards we got this winter and picking out all of the ones that we thought we could give a new look to and put them into our craft bin of future projects.
This is one that K made for his dad and I this year. The ornaments were part of another card that he cut out, as were the ribbons and he glued them onto a piece of cardstock. The gingham strips of paper that he embellished the rest of the card from are strips cut out from a wall paper book. Wall paper books are full of tons of great pictures and shapes that can be cut out for cards or any sort of craft project you are working on. They are SUPER for pre-schoolers who LOVE to cut and paste things. They can cut and paste to their hearts desire with one of those books. And they are FREE! Paint and wall paper stores have tons of these books and they are only good for so many months before they have to be removed from the racks because they are outdated. Store owners have to dispose of them and are more than happy to let you have the pick of the pile of the ones that are being discarded. We have quite a few of them right now, so be careful they pile up quickly. The last time we went looking for new ones there were so many country themed ones we ended up with 5 new ones to add to the stack we already have : ) Have fun! Blessings, BChsMamaof3
Today Kelly from the Quinsam Fish Hatchery that we had just visited a couple of weeks ago for a field trip was able to come out to one of the mom's houses and have the kids participate in the dissection of a Coho. She is extremely knowledgeable on the subject so it was a great learning experience for K : )
Once you have removed the gill covering on the outside of the fish you can easily get to the gills beneath and remove them. This is a photo of one up close. They are really quite stiff and the spikes on the gill are like little rakes. So when the fish takes in a bug or something to eat it isn't flushed back out the gills. These little rakes hang onto the food and keep it so that it can be digested. Once the gill was removed from the fish you can easily put your finger inside the opening and into the fish and pop out his eyeball. After doing this the children got to cut open the eye and remove the lens to have a look at. It is like a tiny little ball, much smaller than the cow's eyeball that I dissected when I was in school : )
Here Kelly is opening up the fish so that everyone can have a look inside. The pink part that you can see right inside the opening in the fishes belly is the milt sack. She continued taking out parts such as the liver, heart, digestive tract, spleen and so on and quizzing the children on what each function they performed within the body.
This is the swim bladder. If you pinch off the end when you remove it from inside the fish you can actually keep the air inside it which makes it look like a balloon. Do you know what the swim bladder would be for? This is a sac that holds air that the fish sucks into it and helps it to float higher in the water. So the more air it sucks into the swim bladder the higher the fish can float and of course the less air in it the closer to the bottom of the river or ocean the fish can swim.
K got a little light headed through part of the dissection and ended up having to sit with his head between his knees. Poor guy. He really doesn't like to see blood and guts or even talk about it because it makes him feel queasy so I was really proud of him when he helped to cut open the underside on one of the coho when the children were aloud to work on their own fish.
Did you know that you are never supposed to handle a fish by his tail? If you catch a fish and he hangs from his tail and thrashes about as he tries to get away it actually causes the vertebrae in his back to separated and cause him to have back problems. Kelly held one of the fish by its tail and pulled downward to simulate what it would be like if the fish were thrashing downwards and we got to hear what the spine separating sounded like. It's like someone cracking all of their knuckles at the same time. Ew, sort of gross sounding if you ask me : )
The kids loved it though. Especially when they got to investigate the fish on their own!
We have been working diligently on our Christmas cards : ) K and L have been having fun cutting out construction paper, pasteing and glueing and of course what would a Christmas card be without all the glitter glue! To help them out I have quite a few templates cut out of cardboard (snowmen, trees, stars, trucks, candy canes etc.) that they can trace around and cut out so that it makes things a little simpler.
This is K's truck that is delivering Christmas trees from his tree lot : )
Frosty the Snowman
This is a new one that we are making this year. K did all of the stitching himself! He was so happy he was learning how to sew : )
I got the pattern out of the Fall 2006 TOS magazine that we just got. It is on page 150. I enlarged it and then added the heart with the button and then hung a jingle bell from the button for a really country look : ) We found a bunch of different coloured felt at the dollar store for .25 cents a piece and then got some embroidery floss for the stitching.
After K has them all stitched up we use regular white glue and coat the back of the mitt with it and then stick it onto our cardstock and leave it to dry. I was worried that it might warp the cardstock but we put the glue on lightly and it worked out perfectly. I think that if you put the glue on to thickly it probably would cause your paper to get damp and then may cause it to warp.
I found a really great website with christian Christmas card verses that you can add inside the card for a nice little added touch as well : )
Friday we are hoping to get a family photo done and then all I have to do is complete my Christmas letter and I'll be ready to mail out my cards. I think this is the most organized and early I have ever been! Hopefully I can get everything else up to speed that is Christmas related : )
We had a lot of fun doing this simple experiment and it doesn't take anything that you don't already have on hand in your kitchen : )
Fill a pie plate 1/4 to 1/2 full with cream or whole milk. Do not use any other type of milk or your experiment won't turn out right. Now squeeze drops of food colouring into the milk. Make sure the drops don't touch one another.
Now take your dish detergent and pour drops of it all around the rim of the pie plate and watch the colours explode!
The cream or whole milk contains tons of tiny droplets of fat and those molecules of fat stick together so that when you drop the food colouring into the milk they actually float on top of the fat. When you drop the soap into the milk it breaks the bonds holding the fat molecules together creating spaces between the fat droplets and the colours then swirl into those spaces causing a kaleidoscope or explosion of colours. It is really neat to watch because the colours seem to bubble up from underneath other colours creating the most interesting patterns.
K finally finished his dinosaur diorama today. The laminated dino's have been sitting on the counter for a while so he coloured his shoebox with trees, mountains, a volcano, and the sky and clouds and then we glued in the guys tonight. It turned out pretty good : )
His T-rex is a little out of proportion to the rest of the dinosaurs but K really liked it since it is 3-D with his legs and hands so he definitely had to be the center of our display. We tried to be creative with how we placed them to give more depth to them so we glued our Pterodactyl
onto the back wall like he is flying in the sky and then right on the front of the box we glued the trees and shrubs with a dinosaur eating one of them so you sort of have to look past them to see what is in behind.
K loves it and can't wait to use it for his show and tell project at our next homeschool get-together.
K and I did a really fun experiment today about how much air your lungs can hold in one breath. Fill a 2 litre pop bottle full of water (we coloured ours blue so that it would show up good for the pictures) put the lid back on it. Fill a bowl with about an inch of water or just enough to be able to cover the top of the bottle when you put it into the water. *Caution* don't put to much water into your bowl or you might have an overflow : ) Take your full bottle with cap still on and put it cap side down into the water. Unscrew the cap while under water so that none of the water inside your bottle will escape. Insert a straw that has one of those bendy necks so that you the end of the straw you are going to blow in will be upwards for your child like it shows in the first picture below. Now take the biggest breath you can hold and blow!!
Keep blowing don't stop! Laughing while blowing doesn't make for very good results either. LOL.
When you are done blowing put the cap onto the bottle while still under water and put the bottle upright. Now you can measure the water left inside the bottle and figure out how many litres of air you blew out from your lungs.
K blew out 1 and 3/4 litres of air when he did it and so I did it to find out which one of us had more lung capacity and he won. I only blew out 1 and a 1/2 litres of air. I did better than I thought though. I have asthma and we predicted that I would only be able to blow half the water out. Woohoo for me! I beat the prediction : )
Well not to much school work has been going on around our home this week. I've been so busy trying to get my canning done I let K have a break from most of the book work. He worked on his dinosaur diorama which is nearly finished now and we got a great idea off of Teena's blog for making a paper mache globe. Last year we did a mobile of the planets and since we have been reading about the lines of longitude and latitude and I thought it would be fun for this years project to make the globe with a really big balloon and then mark on the lat. & long. lines. So today we made up a batch of paste and went outside to get messy! K ended up covered in paper mache goop and boy am I glad I decided to take our project outside, but we ended up with 2 coats and tomorow maybe we will get it finished so that he can start painting next.
