TreasuresInTerraCotta

We've been learning patriotic songs this year.  Here's Andrew practicing his marching and horn playing to Yankee Doodle.    Did you know that the reference to a macaroni was actually about a fancy hat from England, not pasta?  Honestly, that was new information to me! Not the "Oh, now that you mention it, I remember hearing that before!" but the "I've NEVER heard that!" A little school work in dappled October shade!   We planted beets and carrots in our Earth Boxes.  We also planted corn because we learned about Pilgrims, Squanto, Plymouth, the Mayflower and the miraculous feat those Puritans Separatists accomplished by simply surviving.   We shook our own butter.  We made (super easy) homemade bread. Because Jesus is the Bread of Life. One day we headed to Mt. Lemmon to have a picnic and draw in our journals and have school and study rocks.  Because anyone who hears the words of Jesus and puts them into prac...

Snapping homegrown beans, fresh from the garden, with my grandma and my sister. Well, Hello Mr. Toad... I wish every week was as great as this week has been!  Make it so!

As the saying goes, "Use the right tool for the right job!" I always thought this was a cleaver man-saying in order to get more tools or gadgets. I never would have expected that one of the Right Tools for Homeschooling would indeed come from the garage.  Do you know what this is? It's a 165 foot tape measure!  Why do we have it? I don't know. Do we use it a lot? No, not really.  But we have used it see size and distance comparisons between the earth, moon and sun.  We stretched it out along our street to see how long the biggest dinosaur might have been (100 feet).  We measured the distance that kangaroos can hop (30 feet).  And this week we learned that the largest animal on earth, the blue whale, measuring 108 feet, would not fit in our backyard.  At least not it if was lying straight.    So what have I leaned?  The right tool for measuring long distances is a LONG tape measure.  Maybe it's just...

We are now the proud care takers of two chrysalides. We found these two this morning. This afternoon we moved them to fancy new digs in a Butterfly Habitat. It should take 7-10 days for a butterfly or moth to emerge. I found pictures of our caterpillars on line, but I could not find a description of what they would turn into other than "Lepidoptera," which could be either a butterfly or a moth. I did some research on Wikipedia last night (in my defense, we are not to the "Bb for Butterfly" lessons yet...you will remember these were eating my father-in-law's parsley so we are doing our Butterfly unit prematurely.) -Butterflies and other creatures who go through complete metamorphosis go through 4 stages. Embryo - Larva - Pupa - Imago -Our caterpillars (larva) have changed to a chrysalis (pupa) -My primary question: How does the chrysalis form. I was under the impression that the caterpillar had to spin the chrysalis around itself (but that would be a coc...

My Father-in-Law found three of these beauties eating his parsley. Tuesday night this one decided to find a comfortable spot on the ceiling of his plastic tub. Wednesday morning Caterpillar #1 was already changing shape. Caterpillar #2 was very fat and lethargic. Caterpillar #3 went home to the great garden in the sky. Wednesday afternoon both caterpillars were hanging out on the lid. Caterpillar #1 was firmly attached by the hind end and had some silk near the head acting like a sling. And what kind of crazy miracle happened overnight! Caterpillar #1 had a chrysalis by Thursday morning. How in the world did that form? I guess I've forgotten (or maybe never learned) my butterfly life cycles. It seems rather magical to me. (Calvin is interested, but I'm the one checking those crazy caterpillars every couple hours and taking photos!) I can not figure out how the caterpillar made the chrysalis. Time for some research, I suppose. I'll keep you posted.

We are in Week #2 of our Homeschool adventure! Here's what I learned today. The Sun is 400 times wider than the Moon, but the Moon can block out the Sun (a solar eclipse). The Sun is 400 times farther away from Earth than the Moon. This distance makes the Sun and the Moon appear the same size in the sky...even though they are 93 million miles apart. not to scale illustration from SolarGeometry.com The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. (Ps 19:1)