Mercury

Yesterday, we read the chapter about Mercury in Exploring Creation with Astronomy. My friend had just told me that on Wednesday she had been at our Natural Science museum on Wednesday and they had special telescopes and solarspotters set up to view Mercury's transit of the sun. I wish we would have seen it, but didn't know the musuem would be doing that! Anyway, we did get to hear our friends tell us about it, and then we read about it in our book.

For our activity, we demonstrated how craters are made on Mercury using flour and small rocks. Alexandra got covered in flour, but had a lot of fun. We also tried writing in the flour and making imprints in it.

Sound, the Ear, and the Armonica

With the Ben Franklin exhibit in town, we got together with some friends this week to talk about his invention of the armonica. My friend was in charge of teaching, and she did a neat job of talking about sound, the ear, and the armonica.

First she talked about sound waves and demonstrated them. Then, she discussed a model of an ear and showed a book with photos of the parts of an ear. After that, the children got to go through a kid-size model of the ear - complete with ear canal, ear drum, "small" bones, and the auditory nerve. They loved this!!! The 3 girls asked to do it over and over again.

After this, we went on to listen to music played on crystal glasses brought to us by the internet. Then, she got out her crystal glasses and the girls learned to play them! It was a lot of fun, and I know the girls learned a lot. Thank you, Ms. S!!!

(My camera no longer takes good pictures indoors, so I really didn't get but a few, poor photos!)

Good book: The Magic School Bus Explores the Senses - great diagrams, fun story, and informational "reports"

Snowflakes

We read a wonderful book this week called Snowflake Bentley by Martin. The book is about how Wilson A. Bentley became fascinated with snowflakes while he was a young boy and learned how to photograph them. It is a neat story with lots of "facts" sprinkled throughout the book. We've also enjoyed the book Snow Crystals by Bentley which includes lots of photos of snowflakes.

Great video: Snowflake Bentley by Weston Woods. This is a reading of the book by Martin. The reading is very good and it not only includes the animated pictures from the book, but also real video footage of "Bentley" - both an actor, and at the end, some real footage! There are also pictures of some of his snowflakes. It is just a wonderful video!

While reading about snowflakes, we also really enjoyed 2 websites where you can create your own snowflakes online - both are addictive to both young & old!

• http://snowflakes.lookandfeel.com/ - this one is very much like cutting a paper snowflake, but you use your mouse instead
• http://www.popularfront.com/snowdays/ - this one is less realistic, but every creation is beautiful! see what happens when you do a little "too much" cutting

More pictures of PeeWee

This is a picture of PeeWee on Alexandra's 6-year-old hand, to give you an idea of his size.

Our New Pet - PeeWee the Snail

Last night we got home after 9 pm and it had been raining. As I walked around the back of our SUV, I noticed a large snail on the driveway. I've only seen snails in our yard once in the more than 10 years we've lived here! And, I was just very surprised because it was so large!


We are now reading about how to take care of our snail. We read they liked vegetables so we grated some carrots and PeeWee is eating them! We've also got dirt, water, grass, and leaves in its environment and I plan to do some more research. If anyone has any tips, I'd love to hear them!

Deer & Alligators

What an amazing day!!! We went to our astronomy class which is located on a lot of acres of woods, ponds, and lakes. As we parked, Alexandra noticed some deer across the parking lot from us - 8 of them! Both bucks & does! I stopped the car and rolled down our windows and we were able to sit and watch them and take some pictures.

Next, as we got out of the car, some of the other children said they'd seen a small alligator in some water near the drain pipe. Well, although I knew there were alligators in the area, I saw what they were pointing at and really thought they were mistaken. But, a few minutes later it had moved and we could see it laying with its head in the drain! It was about 1.5 feet, which I'm told means it's about 1.5 years old. Very neat - our first alligator out in the wild!

Alexandra enjoyed her class and we spent some time with a bug neat catching bugs. One lady caught an absolutely beautiful spider and I caught... a fuzzy caterpillar.

After class, we went with 2 other ladies and their children down some of the hiking trails. First, we went out on a dock on the lake. We were looking for alligators, but we didn't see any. I did see this sign which tells you how to be alligator wise.


Next, we went down a trail that takes you around the water to an observation tower. I spotted our first alligator - another little guy about 1.5 feet long that was quite a ways out in the water sunning on a small log. It was again so amazing to see him! (You might need to click on the photo to make it bigger)

We kept on walking and saw and heard some beautiful ducks. We stopped and listened to them, but we were trying to watch out for snakes and alligators at the same time. Well, all of a sudden I looked back at the path and there, about 30 feet in front of us lying on the path, were two huge alligators! They were each about 6 foot long! And, 30 feet is as close as you are supposed to get to them. I can't believe I got so distracted looking in the water that I failed to look at the path!!! (the photo shows the 2 on the path in front of us)

Anyway, we were safe and the alligators were amazing. There was at least one more that was laying mainly in the water. They were blocking the path pretty well, so we were done with our hike.

Alexandra did NOT enjoy getting so close to these large alligators. I think she'd heard too much about the rules or watched too much Crocodile Hunter. She was ready to run all the way home. We did stay and take some pictures and we just admired these beautiful, powerful animals before turning around and heading home.

On the way back to the cars, we encountered a lot less dangerous animal... a sweet bunny. I took a picture of the girls enjoying this gentler animal. (the rabbit is in the lower, left hand corner)

It was an incredible, nature-filled day that I'll never forget.

Pictures from Galveston

I scanned in these photos from Galveston last week. I might try to scan a better quality.

This first photo is of a large hermit crab Alexandra found. After she found it, we realized there were lots of them crawling around on our mud "path." I've never seen a hermit crab out in the wild before, and this was really neat!

This photo is of Alexandra holding a periwinkle - a type of snail. If you look closely, you'll see lots of them on the tall grass.

This is a photo of Alexandra being carried by David, the man who carried her for so long. You can see our guide (light blue shirt) pulling the net we used to collect whatever we could find.


The above photo is of a blue crab we found in the net. It was neat to open the net each time and see what we'd caught!
This last photo was taken in the much clearer water near the sandy beach. The kids really enjoyed wading in the water and looking for shells.

Washington-on-the Brazos

A couple of weeks ago, we spent the day at Washington-on-the-Brazos, the birthplace of Texas. We had two main parts of our day: first, we spent time inside learning about how children lived in the mid-1800's. Then, we went to a living history cotton farm and got to look at the plantation, slave quarters, cotton field, etc. I got some of our photos back this weekend.

The first photo is of Alexandra carrying two water buckets. She was actually too short to hold them off of the ground, but I think this was a boy's chore anyway.

Second, is a photo of Alexandra brushing the cotton.

After playing inside, we went outside to the living history farm. (I'm having computer problems so I'll finish this later!)

Rainbow in a Cloud

On August 27th, we were swimming in our pool and Alexandra said she saw a rainbow. I looked up, and there was a rainbow ON a cloud - not in the sky! I had just read about these and was amazed to see one. They're called circumhorizontal arcs. I didn't think I'd have time to get my camera, but it ended up lasting for about 20 minutes, so I took a couple of photos unsure of how they'd turn out.

There is a picture of a better one (ours never looked this amazing) at the following site:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/06/060619-rainbow-fire.html

How neat it was to learn about something and then see one in person within a few months! And, doesn't God make beautiful things for us to marvel at?

This same night was also the night we saw a hummingbird and I decided to get a hummingbird feeder. We've had it up about a month and it is emptied regularly, but we've only seen a hummingbird at it twice.

Changing Caterpillars

Yesterday, on our daily "nature walk" which my dd calls "playing discovery",we found a group of 14 caterpillars. They were on one of our plants (sorry, I don't know the name of it) and they had stripped several branches. I'm wondering if that means they are a pest?

We brought in 7 of them to watch. The caterpillars were very small - maybe one inch long. They were yellow with a black head, some black hairs (or spines?), white stripes along their bodies, and some of them had an orange spot behind their head. I looked for several hours online and in books at the library trying to identify the caterpillar, but I was unable to identify them. Also, most of them had their "tail" ends up in the air and I'm very curious as to "why." (My camera is getting very weak and with the caterpillars being so small, I could not get a clear picture.)


Today, I was amazed that two of the caterpillars who each had an orange spot behind its head had molted and were now black with a large red head and small yellow and white stripes! (see photo) They still have black "hairs", too. Very cool!

And, the ones that didn't have "orange spots" now have them! So, I guess they're the younger ones and they'll all turn black with large red heads. I'm confused as it seems like a smaller black "head" "fell off" and they have new, red heads. Can anyone explain this?

I can't wait to see what happens next! The 7 outside are staying on the same branch, so we've been able to watch them, too. I've also taken a few photos with my in-law's camera of both the yellow and the older black caterpillars and I hope to see if they turned out tomorrow.