Lichens

On Saturday, we went to Nature Fest at the Jesse H. Jones State Park. I was so excited to see a display about lichens, since we'd found several last week and had become interested in them.

One of the things I'd read online about lichens was that they can be used to make dye. The park had a craft table with various things made into dyes - onions, black walnuts, some kind of flower, and lichens!!! How cool is that? I asked how they made it, but the girls at the station were just helping with the craft and hadn't helped make the dyes.

I'd also read online that there were 3 main kinds of lichen. The display actually had samples of all three! FRUTICOSE are wiry and bush like.

FOLIOSE are abover the bark and leaf like.

And CRUSTOSE are part of the bark - crusty.

This is the sample Alexandra had found - it is very much like the foliose samples on their displays.

I think this must be foliose, too - it is not hairy or crustlike and looks more like leaves.

And, I think this must be foliose, too, for the same reasons.

They also had a few posters teaching about lichens. Part of the poster above says: LICHENS are symbiotic relationships between members of up to 3 kingdoms: fungi, algae, and blue-green algae. The dominant partner is fungus.

Fungi are incapable of making their own food. And algae produce food and energy through photosynthesis. The fungus surrounds the algae, protecting it from drying out, and lives off the food it provides.

Lichens do not flower, instead the produce spores.

Lichens are the most dominant and often overlooked vegetation.

This poster has the more interesting facts:

LICHENS are eaten by squirrels and deer.

LICHENS are used by flying squirrels as nest material first and then eaten during winter. (Eat your house - cool!)

LICHENS are used by hummingbirds, wood pewees and blue-gray gnatcatchers for nest material.

LICHENS are inhabited by lichen moth larvae and waterbears.

LICHENS are utilized by American indians as dye stuff for leather and textiles.

LICHENS are anazlyzed by biochemists to isolate disease-fighting compounds.

LICHENS are useful as air pollution indicators.

LICHENS make good soup (some).

Feeling Better & Signing Up

Alexandra is feeling much better today. So, her virus lasted less than 48 hours - and only 1 night! We'll try to do some crafts and fun "schooly" things today, but we'll return to "real" school tomorrow.
UPDATE: I spoke too soon. Her temperature has been rising all morning, though she's still feeling pretty good right now.

I did go ahead and sign up for Project FeederWatch today. They told me it'll take 2-3 weeks to get my kit, but I can start taking data right away. So, I'll read over it better today so we can get started.

I also signed up today for Tomatosphere . My friend over at martin zoo did this last year and really enjoyed it. Here's one of her posts, but if you search her sight for "tomatosphere", you'll find several more.

I also enjoyed the photos of this hummingbird's nest that I got from a yahoo group. Can you believe how small they are!!!
I have lots of planning to do today - we need to get back into our history studies, our book club starts next week and I'm in charge - we're doing Charlotte's Web, and our co-op starts next week and I'm teaching about genetics. I also need to post about our Mozart studies. We had a lot of fun, though it was really just reading - no projects. I think I mentioned it yesterday, but today was our big field trip to see The Magic Flute, and we of course won't be there.

Neat Idea

One of my friends shared this neat idea with us. The photo above is of our wildflower guide, but we've also made a bird guide.

For the wildflowers, we just printed photos from the internet and glued them to index cards. Then, we wrote the name of the wildflower on the front and back of each card and added information on the back such as petal color and plant height. (For the bird's guide, we wrote about their nests, songs, and what kinds of foods they like to eat.) Then, we punched holes through each card and put them on a ring! Just the process of making the cards helped us learn alot. (Thanks, J!)

Wildflowers North of Houston

On the way home from Colorado, we stopped quite a few times to take photos of wildflowers. Then, when we got home, we tried to identify them. We're still working on a few unidentified photos, but I think we've got the rest. We're really enjoying this!

Bull Thistle (large flower with lots of thorns!)

Coreopsis

Indian Blanket

Philadelphia Fleabane (isn't this beautiful???)
Crimson Clover

Purple Irises

I don't know the name of this iris, but it grows in our yard and I think it's beautiful. It's a lot different than the irises we had growing up in KS and OK.

I remember my first garden... I was probably about 8 or 9 and my mom divided the 3 sides to a large bay window into 3 gardens - one for her, one for my sister, and one for me. Then, she let us take care of our own garden. I don't remember what either one of the other gardens held, but I grew purple irises. I loved them.

When we moved to TX, I brought some irises from my husband's great aunt's garden (she is quite the gardener!). Well, in 3 years, I had 1 bloom. So, I finally dug them up. I haven't seen that kind of iris blooming around here anyway. I miss my "old" irises, but I think the kind we have now are pretty, too. And, it does have a purple center, my favorite color, and a reminder of my purple irises.

Our Pressed Flowers

Here are some photos of the flowers we "pressed"... in the microwave! I'm still surprised that we can do it that way. It's so quick! We just put them in the microwave in our homemade press at 50% heat for about 2 minutes. Let them cool off for several minutes and you can put them in the microwave again if needed.

These 2 daisies aren't completely dry, but I decidedto just leave them in the press for the next week or so. I burnt my first 2 "batches" of these, and don't want to ruin these beautiful flowers.

acorn-like seeds

We found these acorn-like seeds near Dallas recently. Maybe they are a type of acorn? (That's what the local children told me.) And, yes, I forgot to look at the tree. (We were in a hurry and I just grabbed them.) I should have photographed them next to a coin or something. They're pretty big. The largest is almost as big as a golf ball. Can anyone help me identify them? Thanks!

1st Day of 1st Grade at Home!

Today was Alexandra's 1st day of 1st grade at our homeschool! What a fun day! My plan was to start school at 9:00 - we actually started at 9:30, but we'd already read our literature for the day (about 20 minutes - 2 chapters of The Secret Garden).

We did school until 2 pm with only a 30 minute break for lunch. So, 4 hours! That's much more than we were doing last year. And, Alexandra asked for more!

We did: Bible study, poetry recitation, math (finished RightStart Level B with the last lesson and the test!!!), Latin, Phonics, and then Story of the World. I guess that's it. And, we still didn't do all I wanted to do. :-)

It was really neat that in both Latin and Phonics, we discussed the Latin and English alphabets, vowels and consonants, and how many letters are in our alphabet.

Tonight for our American studies, we read Viking Ships at Sunrise (Magic Tree House). In it, there were Latin words! It's really neat how our new knowledge keeps showing up!

A few days ago, we bought some carnivorous plants - Venus Flytraps and some pitcher plants. Well, we got to feed one of the flytraps today. We ate our lunch outside and put some food near the plant. When a fly landed nearby, we put a big, see-through drawer upside down over the plant and fly. It took a few hours, but the flytrap finally caught the fly. We removed the "cover" and we could actually see the fly inside of the leaves when we held it near the window! And, you could HEAR the fly trying to get out! Kind of sad, I guess, but we thought it was neat - and thus is life and death!

Besides school, we even got 2 loads of laundry done, ran a few errands, and cooked breakfast and dinner! Wow! But, I didn't get any housework done. I really have trouble fitting both schoolwork and housework into a single day. I'll have to figure it out, though.

I'm excited that we've had such a great start to our year!

Botany time

We are now back to studying Exploring Creation with Botany. We have both really like this curriculum, but I'd been having trouble finding the time to do it. Well, 3 days ago I decided to read it after lunch which is one of the times I usually read to Alexandra. It was a lot of fun! And, we've done that for 3 days now - reading Botany after a meal. We fininished up the chapter on flowers & pollinating, which is where we'd gotten "stuck." Now we're reading about seed dispersal and it's a lot of fun!

We are not notebooking, but we have been keeping a wonderful Botany journal that even has real leaves and flower parts taped into it. And, we plan on getting either a humming bird feeder or planting a butterfly garden, or both! I'm not sure what we'll do as a project for the seed dispersal chapter, but we'll probably go on a hike at our local park and look at different types of seeds and discuss how they could be dispersed.

We're having so much fun & I'm glad that I found a time for Botany - after our meals!

Pollinating Flowers

After taking last week off because of art camp, we are back "in session" today. We only did school for about 1.5 hours today, which is pretty normal for us but I'd like to see us do more. We covered Bible, Math (RightStart), handwriting (Bible verse) and Botany. I had also planned to spend time reading aloud to each other and working on our newest unit, Volcanoes!

In Botany, we were studying pollination. The project was to go and take the pollen from the anther of one flower and put it on the stigma of another flower. We used our hibiscus flowers which have just started to bloom. We were amazed at how much pollen we could get from the anthers! And, the stigmas were sticky and held the pollen just as they should. Alexandra was having lots of fun and went back and forth between the only 2 flowers we could get to today.


This 2nd picture shows the pollen we placed on the stigma. We'll be keeping our eyes on both flowers to see what, if anything, happens!

Herbs

Our herbs are really growing well in our light hut. We are growing Lemon Balm, Spearmint and Basil. We just planted the basil last week and it is really growing fast! Last week we started doing our Botany studies again. It's pretty neat that this week we are studying pollination since we were also reading about pollination while doing our butterfly study.

Seed Experiment

This first picture is of Alexandra. She was playing the part of Hello Kitty today. She often pretends she is someone other than herself while we do school.

Today we finished up a botany experiment about what seeds need to grow. (We use Exploring Creation with Botany.) We had placed some seeds in the refrigerator, where they got neither warmth nor light. We placed some in a bright window where they got both warmth and light. And, we placed some in a drawer where they got warmth, but no light. The first two groups turned out as I expected, but I was surprised by the 3rd group - the one in the drawer. However, Alexandra's hypothesis was correct!


Since the beans above were in the refrigerator and got neither warmth nor light, they did not grow at all.

The seeds above were in the window and got plenty of light and warmth, and grew nicely. they are nice and green.


This 3rd group, the ones from the drawer, suprised me. They were very large! In fact, when I opened the drawer, the bag was poking up & I thought there was a bug inside! Yikes! These are also very white, not a healthy green. It took me a minute, but I realized they were so long because they were looking for light. What a great way to reinforce these concepts - even to me!

Flower Dissection

Yesterday, for Botany, we dissected a lily we had bought at the grocery store. Alexandra was fascinated by how much pollen was on the anthers & it was her idea to smear some of it in our notebooks. It was also her idea to look at it with a magnifying glass. It was really neat!


We glued & taped the various parts in our respective Botany journals. The lily was a great flower to use as it had large parts. It was neat to cut open the ovary and see the ovules that will become seeds!


We also looked at the irises in our yard. A few of them looked like seed pods instead of buds, so we decided to dissect them. Wow! There were a lot of seeds in them, each about 1/2 the size of a kernal of corn. Plants are such amazing, beautiful creations!

Monocots vs. Dicots

In Botany today we were studying the differences between monocots & dicots. We talked about their seeds and then discussed that when you see a flowering plant, the easiest ways to tell them apart are as follows:

• monocot leaves have veins that run parallel to each other while dicots have veins that branch
• monocot flowers have petals that come in multiples of 3, while dicots come in multiples of 4 or 5

After discussing this, we went into our backyard to find monocots & dicots & to sketch them in our Botany Journal. The first photo is of Alexandra sketching her flowers & leaves. The 2nd photo is of a monocot - I believe it is a type of Iris. The 3rd photo is of a dicot- I believe it is a type of jasmine. It grows over our fence from our neighbor's yard and smells wonderful and attracts a lot of bees. (Someone please correct me if I'm wrong on these names!)


It was another beautiful day outside and we are having so much fun learning about nature!

Seeds

For Botany, we are using Exploring Creation with Botany by Jeannie Fulbright. We started the 2nd chapter about seeds last night. We soaked some seeds to peel off the seed coat, open them up, and look at the baby embryo and other parts. I had some beans from a bag of bean soup that we've used for a couple years for crafts, so we used these. It was a lot of fun sitting outside with our magnifying glass and looking at these little baby plants. And, this is how we found our first roly poly which I also posted about.

Transplanting peas & beans

We've had some pretty nice days and our peas & beans had sprouted and were ready to be transplanted. We took them outside & planted them in our "see-through grower." We also planted a few little seeds I'd gotten her for Valentine's Day that we hadn't gotten around to planting yet - Forget-Me-Knots and Burning Love.

Venus Flytrap

Last week we bought a Venus Flytrap at Lowe's. Alexandra has been interested in carnivorous plants since the first time we saw them at Lowe's about half a year ago. On this trip, I decided to let her buy one.

This coming Friday, we are supposed to go on our 2nd Nature Day with our homeschool group, although there is currently rain forcasted for that day. On this trip, we are going to be looking at carnivorous plants! We are first planning on finding some pitcher plants, and then seeing if we have time to go look for some others.

The photo above is of our new plant named "Venus." (It's a boy according to Alexandra) Today, I actually caught our first fly (it was very small and lethargic) and used tweezers to feed the fly to Venus! The leaf closest to us is the leaf that is "eating!" We are also excited to see 2 new baby leaves.

Two good books we've read about carnivorous plants are:

• Hungry Plants by Batten - fairly long book that discusses the different types of carnivorous plants - it is good, though (it took us 3 evenings to read)
• Fly Traps! Plants That Bite Back by Jenkins - shorter, funny book about a boy who likes carnivorous plants, but it is very educational, too

Planting Seeds

One of the things my sister & her family gave Alexandra for Christmas was a planter where you can see the roots of the plants. Yesterday, we started the seeds - some peas & some beans - to be transplanted after they sprout. I hope we find more time to study Botany as Alex loves it and we've only been getting to it about once a week. Maybe these little seeds will be inspiration for me!

Planting Flowers

We have decided to plant a vegetable garden this year to go along with our study of Botany. Alex especially wants to plant tomatoes (which neither of us like, but maybe we will if we grow our own!). While it's a little early to plant the veggies, we did get a start today by planting some flowers. Alex used her pink Barbie gardening tools she got for Valetine's Day. We potted some airplane plants that had been dug up from our yard and also planted a geranium and some begonias. While planting, we had fun discovering a snail in one of the pots!

Pollination

I adapted this from something I read on a Core Knowledge website about insects. We filled a conatainer with Cheetos, drew a bee on Alex's finger and then had her finger "visit" the flower looking for nectar. When she picked up her bee finger, "pollen" was on her finger! A great way to demonstate pollination!