"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 ;) 

Watermelon!!

Who doesn't love watermelon!? 

 Sometimes those big slices can get messy

I cut them in cube shapes and everyone grabs a piece.

yum! 

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. 

woven friendship..

My eldest made herself a loom

out of a strip of cardboard.

said she wanted to make a friendship bracelet.

I think its beautiful :)

Day of the dead ... No.12

Custom orders are a HUGE part of my business...

and recently I received one for a set of nesting dolls. 

I LOVE when the customer lets me be creative.

(its really the best way to take advantage of the artists creativity. By not limiting them!)

They wanted day of the dead dolls,

Inspired by and old set I had sold years ago.

I started with the second doll

she inspired me

so I then moved on to the biggest one

and then the rest...

These new sets are quite large and all hand turned

The biggest being 8" tall and 4" wide

there are seven in all

I have a bunch of blank sets made

and ready to be painted...

mixed media native art

The natives are making art..

well, to be honest.

They are always making art.

But today we made a bigger mess of it then normal!

It's my fathers birthday soon and we decided (since it was a big one)

to do something special!

We started with blank canvas

add in paint, paper, tissue, markers, glue ..etc.

I always love when they each use their own unique styles

and this was one of those times it truly shined!

They are all so creative

and still quite different 

each in their own way!

Of coarse the finished products I dare not post.

For they have not yet been received ;)

The hardest part for them is waiting for things to dry..

we did these over two days

But the final products are quite spectacular!

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!