I found a couple of neat ideas in a library book I was reading today, and thought I would "file" them here so I don't forget about them.

The first idea was to create a cloud diary using cotton balls stretched out to show how the clouds look each day. I thought this would be a great idea to use in a notebook or lapbook on weather to show the different types of clouds.

The second idea was to place an abandoned bird's nest in a shallow pan with 1/4 inch of water.  After a few days, any seeds that were left in the nest will grow, and you will be able to see what the mother bird fed to her babies.  I'm guessing this would only work with certain types of birds' nests, but it sounds fun anyway.

Today I came across a neat experiment as I was browsing through an old Highlights magazine in a second hand store. My oldest daughter decided  to try it out as soon as we got home.

Take one tablespoon of cooking oil and add two drops red food coloring and two drops blue food coloring. Stir until there are drops of color spread throughout the oil. Pour this into a clear glass which has been filled with water and watch what happens. Why does it do this?

It was really neat to watch the color separate itself from the oil and descend into the water. And in the end  the water turned . . . PURPLE!

My oldest son made chocolate last week. He used a kit I purchased from the Love To Learn catalog.  This was supposed to be a project to wrap up the Chocolate Lapbook he is doing this year, but since we are in the process of moving I thought it would be better if he just did it now. (Less to take with us.) He really enjoyed himself and his siblings enjoyed the finished product.

These chocolate beans were included in the kit just so you could taste them. The chocolate was actually made with cocoa butter and cocoa powder. The beans were crunchy like nuts, with just the faintest taste of chocolate.

Here he is putting the finished chocolate into the wrappers to cool. Since the chocolate is cooked in the microwave, even a young child could complete this project.

This is the first year we have had more than one science curriculum going at the same time.  In the past, I've done science with all the children together, but this year I decided my oldest son was ready to move beyond the elementary Apologia. He is doing General Science this year. I had planned to have the rest of them do Botony, until son #2 spotted the new Zoology 3 book in a catalog. Being the animal nut that he is, he promised to read through both the botony and astronomy books during the summer if I would let him do the Land Animals book. So, both of the older boys are doing science on their own this year.

With three science curriculums being used, it seems like somebody is always doing an experiment. And, being the well trained observers and life learners they are, all my children gather to watch.  I've also noticed that, even though my older childern are doing their own work, they still have half an ear on the little kids lessons. This morning, the younger children and I were studying spore producing plants. I explained that the black spots on the back of ferns are actually spores. My oldest son exclaimed, "I didn't know that!" (Maybe he should have read botony over the summer too.)

I sent three of the children down to the creek to pick a fern to draw and was suprised when they came in with four different types, all picked within a few feet of each other. The road on which we live is lined by ferns and I have counted between five and six different kinds as we walked down to my in laws house, but I didn't realize they would find so many in just that one spot. The diversity in God's creation is absolutely amazing!

Son #1 recently did a chemical change experiment which was a big hit. He actually got to do it twice because I didn't get to take pictures the first time. There were two different reactions taking place here.

Son #2 did an experiment to show how camoflague works. Sadly, the experiment did not work as expected, but he still enjoyed eating the Skittles. I also had him complete the sample chapter of the Live and Learn lapbook. I decided not to purchase the kit because he really doesn't like hates lapbooking. So, he is doing a nature notebook instead.

I was a little nervous about the schedule this year, but it actually seems to be going pretty well so far. I think the older children are enjoying a little more freedom to work on their own (we are also doing two separate history curriculums this year) and are keeping up with projects a lot better than if I were responsible for setting them up. And I'm enjoying having a little more time to spend with the little ones. 

My boys think it would be great to to spend a week out in the woods living off the land and eating only what they could find and cook themselves. This is due mostly to the fact that they have never tried it, mixed with a steady supply of wilderness survival themed reading materials such as The Dangerous Book For Boys, The American Boys Handy Book, and The Pocket Survival Guide. My oldest son has even decided recently that he will live in Alaska when he grows up. (I find this highly unlikely since he is extremely picky about what he likes to eat and he is extremely cold blooded. But I guess it's OK to dream.)

All this week they have been trapping crayfish so they could make their own supper tonight. I have two rules about crayfish. First, they have to cook them by themselves. Second, they have to eat them by themselves. There's just something wrong about eating something you have boiled alive, inards and all. Yummy!

Crayfish Dinner

 Close up of one unfortunate dinner guest

They also collected wild apples for "desert." I supplied some bread and veggies to round out the meal.  About half way through, my 11 year old son drew our attention to these:

crayfish jaws

Only in a homeschool do you get dinner AND a dissection!

Our science textbook this year was Apologia Elementary's Swimming Creatures of the Fifth Day.  Here are a few things from our study.

For the second lesson (on whales),  we tried out the sample lesson from the Live and Learn lapbook. I really liked the layout of this lapbook. It was, for the most part, easy to follow and the booklets were all easy to cut out and assemble. I have already ordered their General Science lapbook for next year and am considering ordering the Botany one as well. The owners of Live and Learn promise these will be on sale in July, so I'll wait and see how good the deal is. 

When we studied sharks, we completed another lapbook. This one was the Sharks lapbook from Hands of a Child.  We decorated them with additional clipart which we found at LearningPage.com.

I really like the HOAC lapbooks because they come with a study guide, so you can use them by themselves or use them to supplement a textbook. Some people prefer to have their students do their own research, because they will learn more from the experience.  While this is a great idea if you are making a lapbook from scratch, we've not had good experience doing this with premade lapbooks. The children get frustrated trying to figure out what information was intended to go in a booklet, Mama goes crazy trying to help everyone at the same time, and the lapbook gets put away unfinished. If you don't have time to make your own lapbooks, Hands of a Child is definately the best choice. My one complaint about HOAC is that their fondness for shapebooks often makes the cutting a bear. (I do all the cutting for the kids, so I had to cut every book out five times!) However, it does make for a really cool looking lapbook.

We haven't really done any  of the experiments listed in the book because we didn't start science until (way too late) later in the year, but we have done a disection and some observing. Having a creek has really come in handy for this study. When we discussed swim bladders, the kids went down to the creek and caught a small fish which we proceeded to disect. Not only did we get to see the swim bladder, but we also got to see some eggs she was carrying. Unfortunately, I was filmimg this so I don't have any pictures of it. 

Our study of  crustaceans led us back down to the creek for a crayfish.  Notice how one of the front claws is bigger than the other? In the lesson, we learned that they will sometimes lose one of their cheliped (claw feet). This is one defence God has given them to escape from preditors.  This missing claw will then begin to grow back. Our crayfish had obviously lost a claw and it was now growing back. 

The children  boys wanted to see how crayfish eat, so a couple of minnows were added to the bucket.  Here you can see that he has grabbed ahold of  a minnow.

Jeannie Fulbright recommends making an "ocean box" during the study. We never got around to making ours, but the children did make some sea creatures out of clay. They also did a  little notebooking. (Although it wasn't as much as normal.)  Here's one of the drawing asignments my 11 year old completed. (Sorry, the pencil didn't scan very well.)

I hope you all have your own creek to explore. But if you don't, here's a little "I Spy"  fun. I took this picture of our creek yesturday. This is in a pool above a "dam" that the children built.

Can you see the animal hidden in the mud?

Last Sunday my husband invited some friends to go mountain climbing. So, while everyone else in the world was enjoying Easter dinner, we were on a two hour hike. I admit, I wasn't really looking forward to it, but it was a perfect day for climbing- clear and quite warm- and I'm glad I went. I hadn't been up there in several years and it was so beautiful.

This is a view from the parking lot. That doesn't look so bad, does it?

Here are a couple of nature finds along the way:

We have a lot of pileated woodpeckers in the area, so I'm assuming that's what made these holes. I'm not sure what else would have made a hole that big. 

My son found this feather, but we weren't sure what kind of bird it was from. As I was taking this picture, I noticed that the dark edge was actually matted with blood. Poor bird!

And here we are at the top. (The brown place on the right side of the photo is the top of the trail.) And if you look at the picture below, you can see the county where we live. (Please excuse the graffiti. There's always someone who likes to spoil the view for others.)

This is the top of the mountain. The four people in front are our friends who hiked with us. Their son, who is almost two actually walked almost the whole way up. 

OK, I have to post this in case you all are wondering if we are going to continue trying to smother this thing forever. The black widow did finally die (Nov. 21), so I took her out into the driveway and took some better pictures before smashing her (just in case she had viable eggs living inside her.)

Recent animal adventures include:

• a 10 point buck my husband killed while hunting on a friends property.  It's his first "big" buck and he was quite proud. The children helped butcher it and went with him to take the head to the taxidermists. Don't you love "field trips"?
  

•  a ruffled grouse my 101/2 year old caught in his box trap.  he put it in a feed sack because it was scuffing its head trying to get out of the trap. I knew it couldn't stay in a feed sack until my husband got home, so (after checking to be sure grouse were in season) I asked him if he thought he could butcher it. He and his (11 1/2 year old) brother have helped friends with chicken butchering several times. He said he could, so I put the two of them to work on it. It turns out grouse are different from chickens (imagine that!) and they couldn't figure out how to detach the guts from the backbone. I ended up helping them to cut the other pieces of meat off the backbone & we just threw it away with the guts attached. A little more anatomy than I bargined for, but it was worth it to see how suprised my country boy husband was when he learned what we had done. And seeing a bird esophagus was really cool too.

• a racoon caught in the same trap. My husband helped the boys butcher that. They plan to eat it - I am not cooking it or tasting it. I have my limits. And they are going back to the same taxidermist to have him make it into a coonskin cap.

So, not exactly how Charlotte Mason would do nature study. A little more death than I would prefer. But educational all the same.

Oh, and we have a new kitty which my 2 1/2 year old named Snow White. And the seven dwarfs all love her. So at least something is still alive around here.

Other women are getting flowers, but your husband brings home this:

Yes, it IS a black widow. (I haven't figured out how to take a pictures of  small things without making them blurry.) This spider has been sitting on top of our piano in a pickle jar for two weeks without food, water, or air.

Tonight we found some garden spiders had built a web over the back door, so we fed them to her. Wow! She was fast! We thought they might put up a fight, but she didn't give them a chance. Now they are all loosely wrapped and hanging in a group from her "web."  I really hate to call it a web, because it is so messy. But I suppose that's what she thinks it is.  

When my husband came home, he wasn't very happy we had fed it. Apparently he wanted this thing to die. I figure if she could live for two weeks without air, we might as well feed her. He says he's going to smash her tomorrow, for the sake of safety. Now where's the fun in that?  

I wonder what he'll bring home next?

 The creek is running very low, so it has a lot of leaves "stuck" in it.

The colors are very vivid this year because it's been so dry.

The "watering hole" is almost gone. 

I'm not sure why these critters don't just drink from the creek. My husband says these are racoon tracks (with the thumb) & maybe possum (five toes in front) . There were deer tracks too, but they don't show in this picture. 

When you think of bluebirds, you probably think of  pretty, cheerful bits of fluff.  After all, don't we always hear about the "bluebird of happiness"? But what we do not hear about, is the incredible amount of "white paint" these tiny little birds are capable of producing. Nor do we often hear that they have an annoying habit of throwing themselves against living room windows . . . repetedly . . . as early in the morning as possible.

No, we just don't hear of those things. And so we, blissfully ignorant as we were, hung our nesting box on the wall of an old trailer which sits on the opposite side of our driveway. The driveway where our two black vehicles often sit. Er, make that our two FORMERLY black vehicles. We were full of joy as we saw this bluebird couple take up residence in the box and begin their family. But that was not to last.

You would think that nesting birds with five or so hungry babies to feed would be too busy to make trouble. But not this pair. Thump, thump, thump. There they go again. My husband gives them the evil eye as he watchs them leave the window and perch upon his new truck, his baby.  "Maybe they'll knock themselves silly, "  I sooth.

Then the snake arrived and our bluebird adventure came to a sudden end. The blacksnake went home with a full belly and Ma & Pa Bird packed up and went in search of other windows to try their kamakazi stunts on. We washed the vehicles and enjoyed our new found quiet. And a Carolina wren took up residence near our front porch and began to eat the abundant supply of moths under the porchlight.

Be careful what you ask for, you may get it.

We've been doing a study on the human body. Last week we studied blood. Did you know that an adult has about five quarts of blood in their body? A child has three and a baby has one. This was my five year old's favorite fact. Janice Van Cleave's book Play and Find Out About the Human Body has easy activities to demonstrate this and many other facts. We also have been using the Wild Goose science kit on the human body (available through Timberdoodle) and some tapes in the Designed By God series. These aren't available anymore, but if you can get ahold of them, they're really great. They were put out by Chariot Books (David C. Cook Publishing) and star Bob Devine as "Uncle Bob." I don't know how many there were originally, but we have Uncle Bob Talks With My Digestive Sysyem, Uncle Bob Talks With My Circulatory System, Uncle Bob Talks With My Central Nervous System, and Uncle Bob Talks With My Respiratory System.

Here's a great recipe that shows the composition of blood:

OK, it's not really puke. More like a hair ball. And it's fumigated, so there's no germs, right?

We are studying birds right now and will be disecting an owl pellet today. Here are some resources I found to help us. The kids are looking forward to the edible "owl pellets."

Those farm kids! It takes a lot to make them squemish.

Info on owls: http://www.owlpages.com/

Owl pellet lesson with printable bone chart: http://www.eagle-bluff.org/Owl%20Pellets.pdf

owl pellet disection kit to order: http://www.hometrainingtools.com/articles/owl-pellet-dissection-project.html

examination instructions: http://www.hometrainingtools.com/catalog/file/28/PM-OWLPELL.pdf

virtual owl pellet disection: http://www.kidwings.com/owlpellets/

Edible "owl pellets"

1 cup peanut butter
1/4 cup butter, soft
1 cup powdered sugar
1/2 cup small pretzel sticks
1 cup coconut
1/4 cup peanuts
1/4 cup oat cereal
1/2 cup chocolate chips

Mix peanut butter, butter and powdered sugar in bowl. Add the rest and stir. Roll into 12 owl pellet shapes. Chill for 30 minutes. Wrap in foil and serve.

Use your imagination to add/delete ingredients!!

Owl Food Key:
Coconut = Bird Feathers
Peanuts = Mouse skulls
Pretzels = Rabbit bones
Oat Cereal = Bird bones
Choc. Chips = Snake and frog bones