Today I received an interesting email from a friend on vacation.

Apparently before leaving for vacation she found some frog eggs in her pool.  At the insistance of her children she kept them, really thinking that the chlorine would kill any chances of them developing, and low and behold they hatched the next morning!  So, three days later, the family packed up their car with tadpoles in tow and headed out  on their road trip for a 10-day vacation.
Who else but a homeschooling mom would do this? 

"I couldn't have them go through methamorphosis without us!" my friend exclaimed, as explanation for her actions.  But my friend certainly did not need to explain her actions to me.  Who else but a homeschooling mom would be JEALOUS of her new science lab of 45 tadpoles, captured in their very own pool?

Sadly, there was a lesson in this for me as well. I am bad about checking voicemail messages and my dear friend also thought of me and my children and had called me to offer us some of her tadpoles before they left. I did not retrieve the message and so we missed out on watching the tadpoles grow.  She assures me that when they return if they are not yet FROGS she will share them with us. My fingers are crossed!

Who else but a homeschool mom....

Today we had 5 other children over for a co-op on germs.  For those that are counting that made 8 students. I felt so official!

I read two books:

"Germs are not for sharing"
" Germs make me sick"

Then I used a spray bottle to illustrate how germs can be transferred.  I sprayed the children's hand with a fine mist out of the spray bottle as a sneeze (ahhh chooo!) and then had them touch the table. They could see that the water transferred to the table and took some time to evaporate. This also illustrates that germs can live on a surface for hours or even days after contact and continue to be transferred. The children then touched the spot on the table with their other hand and touched another spot  on the table.

I also purchased a glo-germ kit which had a video and we did a few of the suggested "experiments" with the glo germ solution and a black light (the kids LOVED this) and then afterwards we discussed handwashing. Then I tested them on their washing by checking their hands under the black light to see if they still had any glo germ residue on their hands. 

 Finally I presented each family with a bottle of SQUID SOAP and the kids washed their hands again after the final experiment.  We wanted to see if they learned the part about using a hand towel to turn off the faucet after washing their hands.  The squid soap also puts out a little color on their hand that they have to scrub to get off.  By doing this they will wash a bit longer and harder.  If you have young ones I recommend this product. Its fun and is also available at CVS stores.

We are studying lifecycles and our current planned projects include:
- beans
- carrots
- Radishes
- Green onions
- Fruit flies
-Frogs
- Praying Mantis

Each praying mantis egg case is said to hold approx 200 nymphs.  It is recommended when they hatch that you release all but 2 or 3 of them as these carnivorous creatures have voracious appetites! 

So after they hatched the children and I dutifully began looking for aphids with bug vacuum in hand.  After HOURS of searching in vain....ahem, okay it was only 5 minutes, but it FELT like hours of searching in vain!

So, after failing to locate aphids I resorted to attempting to purchase their food.  While out running errands in preparation of (soon-to-be) 3 yr old DD's birthday party tomorrow, I happened upon Petsmart.

Me: "Hi, do you sell bugs?"

Bored teenage Petsmart employee: " What kind of bugs?"

Me: "Aphids?"

Bored teenage Petsmart employee: "What?"

Me: "Small ones?"

Bored Teenage Petsmart employee: (eye rolling) "We have crickets"

Me: "Great, what size?"

Bored Teenage Petsmart employee: "We have larger ones and smaller ones"

Me; "okay, can I see them?"

Bored Teenage Petsmart employee; (sigh) "Okay"

(we walk to the back room)

Me: "My kids just hatched praying mantids and we have to feed them soon before they die."

(no response from BTSE)

BTPE: "Here they are.  How many do you want?"

Me: "How do they come?"

BTPE: "you can get a dozen"

Me: Okay, better make it 3 dozen.

Then, after finally getting home, releasing half of the nymphs save 10 and dumping our bag of 3 dozen crickets into the jar, I realize that the nyphs are MUCH smaller than the smallest crickets which isn't good.  Ideally they should be no larger than HALF the size of the mantids. (Groan).

Since a lot of the crickets have died and I'm fresh out of options at this point,  I'm hoping the mantid carnivores will go for dead cricket. 
In the meantime, I found this place that sells the wingless fruit flies AND I found this on the internet for our project on fruit flies.  

I order some wingless fruit flies and the children assist in making a fruit fly trap with banana as bait.  Hopefully we will be more prepared when the 2nd egg case hatches. I have a feeling I will be releasing the remainder of our mantids tomorrow due to lack of proper food (and planning on my part).

 How can Todd make the funniest and most true cartoons about ME?  Does his wife find him this funny?
Or does she want to hit him in the head sometimes and scream, "I'm glad YOU think it's funny!"?  Either way, I'm so grateful for his cartoons because, frankly I need a laugh.  Color coded calendars,  pads of "to do lists" and stop watches can cause you to take life a little too seriously.  Four children under 5 and sleep deprivation from a newborn in the house can cause you to rip all of your hair out. I need to laugh.  Especially since my boys told me that I'm "sorta boring" while DADDY of course is lots of fun because he lets them watch (non-educational) TV all day and "spoils" them. 

That's okay, I see their faces when we are "doing homeschool" and I know they all truly have a love of learning, and for that I feel blessed.

We are so lucky that the Kravis Center has an educational program that allows schools and homeschoolers to come see children's presentations during the day for $4 per child and 1 chaperone free!  So far we've been to two presentations and the children have absolutely LOVED it.

Today we saw: "If you give a mouse a cookie and other stories" which was presented as a musical!

From this the children "discovered" some great books that we checked out from the library the SAME DAY.     Master Man was presented in rapping form which was interesting.   Since then we've been having a fun play on words and we have "Master Kid" and "Master Mom".  

After reading the books the children talked about how the musical was slightly different from the play. I really think seeing it presented in both medias really brought the literature to life for them and I have no doubt they were really paying attention! LOL  I really enjoyed discussing the book with my preschoolers.  Who knew?

Last week we saw: The very hungry caterpiller and other Eric Carle Favorites which was presented with puppetry.  I really enjoyed that and I'm so glad we went.   I cannot wait to find out what next year's performances will be. I hope to attend at least 6 next year.

Today we went on our first Nature Walk. It was a lot of fun and I'm very excited to learn about all the native animals and plants in Florida.  I always say one of the very best things about homeschooling is that I get an opportunity to learn alongside the children.  We feel very blessed to be able to homeschool them and all the hardwork and lack of storage in our house is worth it when we can see that they do all indeed have a love a learning.

A beautiful grasshopper

The children were amazed by the colorful fungai

I am looking forward to more Nature Walks this summer.  Especially since I've discovered this great book, "Nature for the very Young: A handbook of indoor & outdoor activities" by Marcia Bowden

Hopefully I can fit in all the fun things that I want to do with the kids this summer. There is so much out there...and its all good and inspiring. There really isn't enough hours in the day!

A fun and tasty field trip!

Learning how to make the chocolate covered marshmallows.  Keep the chocolate at 89 degrees and stir in some fresh chocolate so it doesn't turn white on you. 

This candy making is serious business!

And now we are FOUR.   Our beautiful daughter Reagan Grace is here and she truly illustrates to us God's grace.  Reagan was born around the same time that I had a miscarriage LAST year.   How awstruck and humbled I am to receive this beautiful child as a GIFT from God.

Two new websites I love that I found just in time to fuel my mad nesting urges (baby due in 3 more days) AND yearly Spring Cleaning traditions are:

www.librarything.com
This amazing website allows you catalog your books (up to 100 FREE, then $25 for LIFETIME membership if you choose), cross reference them however you choose, share your library online with others or mark private, view other similar libraries for ideas, participate in online discussions and start clubs (homeschoolers and their home libraries are well represented).

You can check out mine here: www.librarything.com/catalog/KarinKath

If after you've cataloged your books you've discovered some DUPLICATES (cough, ahem) or found that you need to purge some books to make room for others you should definately check out this website: www.paperbackswap.com/

Don't let the name fool you, plenty of hardcover books get traded on this website as well.  Membership is free. You list 10 books and get a credit for 2 books that you can use right away. THEN for EACH book you send out to a member you earn ONE book credit that you can use to request books. In less than 24 hours I've earned and requested EIGHT BOOKS.  I love this!  Great recycling! Great penny pinching! 

If you join up my username is KarinKath---I would love the referral as I'll earn another book credit!

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