"Parsley worms " AKA Eastern Swallow Tail caterpillars

We had a parsley plant outside on our back porch for a while

and I noticed some tiny little "worms" on it.

a closer look and I saw they were caterpillars!

So I let them be...

A short while later I noticed they were huge!

and my parsley... not so much. 

Which was fine ( we weren't eating much anyhow)

We decided to use this as an impromptu science lesson!

We brought most of the caterpillars inside

( they were so cute and fat and adorable)

Along with what sticks of parsley were left

I threw in some celery since 

as more for them to eat

We noticed one of the caterpillars already attaching itself

under our porch railing

And decided to let it be

(Here it is a chrysalis )

Now we wait...

the natives are excited to see if we can get the ones indoors to cocoon !

And we are monitoring the one outside 

Sooner or later they will emerge 

And look something like this!

(we caught this one for a short bit just to look at)

ps. If you happen upon these fat little caterpillars

be very careful. If startled or distressed they have tiny little orange 'osmeterium'

that pop up and emit a very STRONG sweetish odor.

Hard to wash off your hands ;) 

Agnes .. our praying Mantis

So photogenic! 

Having this Mantis in our home has been fun. 

My natives... who normally would not like to hold any sort of bug,

 have become more at ease. 

And, with the exception of one,

 they can hold her no problem and let her crawl on them.

Its funny to see my younger ones, 

and how they enjoy watching all the "gross" bug stuff .

Agnes has shed her skin about four times thus far.

(I believe they do a total of 6)

They also enjoy watching her catch whatever insects we put in as 'food'.

As a tiny nymph she could only eat flightless fruit flies.

But she has moved up to moths, crickets,

and other random bugs we find for her.

Here you can see she has grown quite a bit!

She started out the size of a small mosquito.

Here is Agnes in our mint plant.

yes, we let her roam a bit, from time to time.

Get her some fresh air and all ;)

We figure we will probably be letting her go at the end of the month. 

According to Insectlore.com her life span will be @ 3-6 moths.

And we should release her once her wings come in. 

Dice game

Family game time...

this week we play dice.

The natives love it

and we do to.

( I am told its the same rules as Farkle?)

Needless to say Mom and Dad got slaughtered.

But lots of fun and laughs along the way.

Oh yes.. and there is some MATH involved!

so win win ;) 

The rules in case you didn't click the link above ;

6 dice

You cannot count any of your points until you reach at least 500 points in a single round.( We did 200 so it was easier to 'get on the board' so to speak. ) When you reach 500 points for the first time, you may choose to immediately end your turn to prevent losing the points.
5’s = 50 point
1’s = 100 points
1,1,1 = 300 points
2,2,2 = 200 points
3,3,3 = 300 points
4,4,4 = 400 points
5,5,5 = 500 points
6,6,6 = 600 points
Four of a Kind = 1,000 points
Five of a Kind = 2,000 points
Six of a Kind = 3,000 points
A Straight of 1-6 = 1,500 points
Three Pairs = 1,500 points
Four of a Kind + a Pair = 1,500
Two sets of Three of a Kind = 2,500

first one to whatever amount you decide.. wins! 

Cleaning day

Yay Friday!... this morning is our "cleaning morning". 

The oldest is down for count with a fever and head cold... I've managed to clean up stairs baths and grabbed all towels on the way down to work on the kitchen. I open the wash to switch over the load from last night...

And wait..it's STILL dry!?

 Did I not hit the start button? 

Didn't this happen yesterday? 

Ok.. Maybe I'm losing it. 

grabs soap to put in washer.. hmmm the soap is still in there..so I DID in fact attempt this last night..

 puts soap away, shuts front of washer and pushes start... nothing. 

pushes start again NOTHING! ?

 pushes start and a sequence of other buttons in order to get any reaction N O T H I N G!

I'm seriously hoping this giant machine is unplugged...because everything else works. And I've got two loads in line waiting and this things just sitting here like a stubborn metal box holding my hopes of clean and fresh clothes hostage. 

.....

Minutes later, after refusing to let ONE machine hold up that much laundry,

I break out a few buckets and announce to my younger two

"Today we will learn how to wash Laundry by hand!"

gasps from the natives

"Can we do it!?" they ask excitedly..

But OF COARSE you can! 

(anyone else had their kids hand wash stuff?)

One washed , one rinsed

And I tossed all my towels and such on the porch. 

They Did pretty well!

... until tree seeds fell into the rinse bucket.

But It was only for the last two towels... 

Lesson learned and laundry done!

And when the Man got home...

He fixed the washer!

Yay! 

I love being able to turn negatives into positives!

Thank you Lord for these teachable moments!

seeds and a jar

This spring we decided to grow some more veggies

In order to study the way the seeds sprouted and rooted

we put some wet paper towel in a jar

and one seed on each side

Jalepeno

corn

eggplant

and garden bean.. 

(the bean was put in because I was told it would be the easiest and fastest to watch)

..

it wasn't.

The Corn was the winner in our little experiment!

The Jalepeno & eggplant 

trailing a bit for both second place

and the sad sad bean

just sat there.. slowly rotting. 

(not sure what happened there.)

Once the corn was declared definite winner

we removed them and planted them in some nice

juicy dirt.

Hopefully we can have us some good sweet corn this summer from our yard! 

:)

the Nymphs have hatched

 This spring we decided to study Praying Mantis'

A while back we ordered and egg sack

from Insect Lore

It arrived in the mail shortly afterward. 

This little light weight

walnut-ish looking thing. 

We propped it up on a branch inside the 

"pop up big tent" that came along with the kit.

All I knew was it need to be "misted" about once a week

so that It didn't dry out.

And anywhere between 4-10 weeks it would hatch!?

So we wait

*mist*

and repeat...

four- five weeks later

I look at the pop up tent

(it had been hung from our dining room chandelier so that we could all keep an eye on it)

and it was filled with little creatures!

Some moving about.

Others just sitting there.

They hung .. the dropped.. and then they moved about.

slowly and all afternoon

they came in waves...

And since they cannot be kept together for very long

(they can eat other .. and who wants that!?)

So we slowly and through out the afternoon

released them into that wild

that is our yard.

In bushes and trees...

somewhere between 100-200 I'd say...

Thankfully they were fairly slow moving

and OH SO SMALL!

My natives were much less creeped out then they thought they'd be.

They were mosquito size..

and quite cute! 

We named them and let them go...

We kept a few to give to friends

and one for ourselves

in the name of science

and learning...

Liquid conversion chart

Once upon a time..

there was a huge Garden 

and in that garden 

lived Four Queens

each Queen had a Prince and a Princess

Each of them 

carried Two Crates

and inside each Crate was Eight Oranges.

Sometimes its the silly little things

that help us remember the bigger ones.

In this case we are talking " Liquid Conversions"

Gallon

Quarts

Pints

Cups

& Ounces

Do you have any shortcuts to help your homeschoolers remember stuff?

Hieroglyphics

Part of our Egypt study was on hieroglyphs

I try to take things out of what we are studying that we can actually DO.

In this case I made copies of the hieroglyphs

and gave each native two copies. 

"One for you to write with and the other, for whomever you write to, to decode it "

My youngest wrote a letter in regular English writing 

and then wrote a secret message at the end in hieroglyphics.

Then put it in an envelope and addressed it to "Dad"

There was even a little fake stamp on it

My middle one did about half and half 

and the eldest wrote her entire letter to Grandma coded in it.

The letters were fun to write

And the return letters in the mail were also fun!

win win!

And an A+ goes out to my Mom, who's letter we just got and decoded. ;)

Valentines pillow boxes

This year we did some DIY Valentines

Each of my natives picked something they wanted to make

My youngest made friendship bracelets

She spent many of her "quiet times" and then some 

picking out just the right colors and stringing them together

Then we stuffed each one inside its own toilet paper tube!

I have a tub full of these things

(as we tend to use them every now and again)

We folded the ends to make them into 

pillow boxes

And then cut strips of paper for them to be labelled 

I  was quite proud of this little one

A+ for effort

These turned out so well,

we also may use these as party favors sometime

Or mail them out to friends!

sewing a pennant

This quarter part of our schooling was

learning to sew.

My eldest has had a little experience with some of this 

so her first project was to hand stitch some pennants 

and then attach them to some binding by machine. 

We were both super happy with how they turned out! 

setting personal goals...

 At the beginning of our school year I asked my natives if there was anything

 in particular that they wanted to learn about. 

My sweet Bell spoke up and announced she would like to learn cursive!

So I printed out and copied some practice sheets for all the letters

capitals and lower case.

I told her this was HER goal. 

She could work on it whenever she chose to 

it was up to her how fast or slow she go

This being my most driven child at times

She set right out to practicing.

I caught her in her spare time practicing and

trying to encourage her younger sibling to do the same.

Before the end of first quarter she had written her first cursive letter..

of coarse it was to Dad. haha Lucky guy ;)

Her handwriting (even being left handed) is probably one of the best in the house! 

I was so very proud of her and made a HUGE deal

about setting her own goal and achieving it!

This has been a bit of an encouragement as well to her other siblings

to set goals of their own to meet.

I do love the structure certain curriculums have to offer

But I also love the idea of them getting a chance to CHOOSE!

They have their own strengths and interests

and I feel like as a homeschooling family

we have the opportunity to hone those skills

and encourage self teaching.

Sitting kids in front of a book and giving them problems over and over 

has its teaching ability

however giving them the opportunity to dive in at their own speed 

to something that truly interests them 

is something I find quite nice. 

What do you think?

Do you have a preference of strict curriculum 

or a free range kind of learning.

I think between my Logical and artistic side like a balance of both.

Telling time... analog style

 So the youngest native is working on 

TELLING TIME!

dun dun dun....

I got these four little clocks (they all were the same) 

from the dollar store.

I then cut paper and covered the numbers 

I had enough clocks to make one

"normal"

one I wrote the minutes, one roman numerals, and one military time

What I normally do is I randomly ask my youngest throughout the day

"what time is it?"

She then runs to the digital stove clock to tell me

then I have her go into the office

and set the analog clock to that time.

The minute one is next to the normal one so we can be reminded of how we count minutes.

If you want to make a game out of it

you can always write different times out on a sheet of paper

 have them pick one

and then see how fast they can get to it. 

Learning money values..

So we call this "The Quarter Game"

or Dollar game

whichever you would like to play to 

and depending on the level

of money knowledge

First step

someone gets to be the banker

Next step

One of the natives rolls the die

They banker pays out that many pennies

And then its the next persons turn

When it comes back around to the first person 

they can trade in their pennies 

for a nickle

or nickles for dimes

ect.

First person to a quarter wins!

As our youngest natives progresses 

we will work our way up to playing to a dollar!

Coloring in our organs...

 We have traced their lifesized bodies onto paper

in the name of science

we are slowly filling them in

Today we learned about our digestion system

It is fun to learn together

and see their faces

when they hear what happens to all that yummy food ;)

We get to look at these awesome bodies

God has given us

and the youngest native was happy to share

she already knew

why we poop.

our days are hardly lacking in color...

Getting into our groove

a space

a place we can learn

and sit

together

<3

Family day at the beach

AKA

{Friday's field trip}

The man was home early today..

So after some quick lessons on how to properly clean house

We headed out for a day at the beach!

It was still a school day

so we had the natives search the shoreline for

biotic & abiotic items

(that covered science)

Then we worked on our history

We have been studying Ancient Egypt

the Pharoahs Tombs

and how they built pyramids

So we had them do just that!

First day of the new school year for us

Happy First Day of Homeschool!

As I ease back into the roll of teacher...

I am reminded of how much

I learn from the experience

<3