Top Ten Tuesday: "Teaching a child not to step on a caterpillar..."

"Teaching a child not to step on a caterpillar 

is as valuable to the child as it is to the caterpillar."

-Bradley Millar

A few weeks ago I was mowing the lawn (something I love to do, by the way) and I noticed there were hundreds of fuzzy caterpillars all over my sunflower plants.  Worrying that they may be poisonous (as they were fuzzy), I ran inside and looked up "what caterpillars eat sunflowers" on Google and discovered that not only were they not poisonous, but that they are fairly easy to raise in jars through to butterflies.

Ten Easy Steps to Raise
Gorgone Checkerspot (Chlosyne gorgone) Butterflies:

1. Plant some sunflowers and wait for them to bloom.

2. Set up a jar with cut sunflower leaves and a stick or two, using cotton cheesecloth (or netting) for the top.

3. Look for the tiny, bright green caterpillar eggs that butterflies have laid on the underside of the sunflower leaves.

AND THEN

4. Go searching for evidence of caterpillars that have hatched.  Gorgone Checkerspot caterpillars will congregate to eat when they are really young, but venture out on their own as they get bigger.  They also kind-of skeletonize the sunflower leaves, which will be an indicator as well.

5. Gather a few caterpillars munching on the leaves and drop them carefully into the jar.

6.  Watch them eating.  Also, you may have to clean out their excrement (called frass) after a few days if you get them while they are very young, as well as provide them with new, fresh sunflower leaves.  Carefully remove the leaves they are on and wipe out the tiny frass with a damp paper towel.  Remove any mostly-eaten leaves, and then place new leaves into the jar.  Carefully place the leaves with the caterpillars on them back into the jar as well. **See #7.

  

7. When they are ready to perform metamorphosis, they will find a nice spot to curl up and hibernate   **Be careful if you are moving them around to clean inside the jar after they have started to curl up.  I had one adhere to the top of the cheesecloth a day before the others even started to slow down eating, but was able to lift it off carefully, place it over the mouth of a cup, and then replace it without disturbing the pupa.

8. It will only take a few hours before the outside of the pupa forms around them.

9.  Wait and watch the transformation.  This took at least a week.  Then, one afternoon, we noticed one of the pupa was transparent.

Upon further examination of our jar, we had one Gorgone Checkerspot butterfly ready to be released!  (It the below picture, you can see it drying its wings and waiting on us, but you can also see one of the other pupae as well, yet to emerge.)

10.  Release the butterfies back toward the sunflowers to do it all again.  I had to reach into the jar and let it ride up on my hand because it could not climb the glass and was not utilizing the stick, but that was okay.  After it flew away, it came back to say hi again and SC thought that was amazing.

Sorry that some of the pictures are blurry.  My nice extra-zoom camera only wanted to take pictures of the glass of the jar, so I was stuck using my phone, which only barely focused through the glass.

Sunflowers also attract other butterflies similar to the Gorgone Checkerspot; in fact, at first we thought we had Bordered Patch butterflies!  You could also plant parsley, dill or fennel to attract some Black Swallowtail butterflies, which produce long, fat, beautiful caterpillars, and of course planting milkweed will attract the Monarch butterfly and its offspring.  

Also, there are a number of companies that sell live baby caterpillars and will ship them to you, complete with a food substitute, small jar for them to pupate in, and a large cage to observe the butterflies once they emerge.  However, I don't think this is nearly as fun or educational as creating a home for them based on what they eat in the wild.

Finally, here are some early reader books that go along with learning about the life cycle of a caterpillar/butterfly:




        

Have you ever tried raising butterflies at home?  Leave a comment with how it went, and then check out some more Top Ten Tuesday posts here



**This post contains affiliate links.  Please read my disclosure statement.

Thankful Thursday: "Imagination is a force..."

"Imagination is a force that can actually manifest a reality."

James Cameron

This week I am thankful that SC and I got to go visit the Perot Museum of Nature and Science on a very special day - when James Cameron's DEEPSEA Challenger submarine was there.  If you were unaware (honestly, I was until a day or so ago), James Cameron recently set the record for a solo dive to the deepest accessible place on Earth, in the Mariana Trench.  You can read more about it here.

This was a really cool experience, and it gave me the opportunity to learn a little more about Cameron, someone whom I really only know as the director of the movie Titanic, and for the few documentary pieces he has done with regard to the actual Titanic ship.  The Perot Museum had also set up a few experiment stations that pertained to submarines and underwater exploration, and every child who attended got an "experiment in a bag" with instructions to use the items (empty film canister, 2 rubberbands, some coins, some plastic keyboard keys) to create something that would both submerge and then resurface.  SC was a little bored at first with the waiting around, but was very interested once the scientists started talking.  I cannot wait until Cameron releases his 3D film chronicling the experience next April, and am glad we will be able to view it at the Perot in their theatre.

What are you thankful for this week?  Leave a comment, and then check out some other Thankful Thursday posts here: 

Week 1: "Do not despise the bottom rungs ..."

"Do not despise the bottom rungs in the ascent to greatness."

-Publilius Syrus

After much ado, we finally started week 1 of our K4/1st grade year this week.  It has been a tough week, as we really haven't been working on anything with any regularity since probably May, so neither SC nor I are quite back to having a schedule.  This week it took us about 3 1/2 hours in the afternoons on Monday/Wednesday/Friday, and one hour in the afternoons on Tuesday/Thursday, to complete our schedule, but SC is a dawdler and it takes her much longer to do some of the activities than it should due to lack of focus.  Hopefully as we progress through the year and she get more used to the schedule, this will get better.

We have turned our dining room into an office/school room, and SC has a small desk from Ikea that is just her size.  

I spent the prior two weeks working hard on completing a schedule.  I styled it after the Sonlight plans, and ended up using MS Excel rather than MS Word due to the fact that I can never get tables to work correctly in MS Word.  Once I figure out how to link to documents, I will add a link for anyone who wants to borrow the template.  If you want to take a look and try it for your own plans, click here.  Here is how it ended up looking:

   

So, here is what we did this week:

HISTORY
Reminder: We are using the History Odyssey: Ancients curriculum.

Monday we completed Pocket 1 history pocket ("What is History?") and read the information included in it.  Part of the pocket was discussing the words "past," "present," and "future."  We had a great time talking about things that have happened in the last year, things that were happing now, and things that were going to happen in the future.  We were also able to discuss all these words as they related to SC's Halloween costume choices, as she has the next five years planned out already.


  

Wednesday we read Story of the World "How do we know what happened?", watched the Bill Nye Archaeology video, used the Webster's New World Children's Dictionary to define "archaeology," and drew a picture about what she learned from the readings.  She chose to draw her picture of an excavation site after we read the awesome book Archaeologists Dig for Clues (Let's-Read-and-Find-Out Science 2).

Friday we read the book The Magic School Bus Shows And Tells: A Book About Archaeology and discussed the history words we had learned this week:

• ancient
• basic needs
• civilization
• history
• archaeology
• artifact
• past
• present
• future

  
*I used a site called ZB Fonts Online to create our own fill-in-the-blank version of the definition for SC to use when she copied her vocabulary word this week.

LANGUAGE ARTS
Reminder: We are using Explode the Code (ETC), A Reason for Spelling (ARFS), and A Reason for Handwriting (ARFH).

Monday SC took the consonant pretest that accompanies Book 1 of ETC.  She didn't miss even one letter, which tells me it was a good idea to skip the end of Book B and all of Book C, which just goes over the rest of the consonants.  Wednesday we reviewed short "a" with final "t" and worked on page 1, while Friday we worked on pages 2-3.

For ARFS and ARFH, both have a six-week review/practice, which we started this week, practice #1-5 for ARFH, and practice #1-8 for ARFS.  Handwriting and spelling are two of the lessons we are doing daily, not just M/W/F, because I believe this is something that should be practiced every day.

Our read aloud this week was to finish up Dinosaurs before Dark by Mary Pope Osborne.

MATH
Reminder: We are using Math-U-See Primer level for our curriculum.

This week we started an introduction to addition, where we discuss the symbols "plus" and "equals," plus work on using the base 10 blocks to create simple, single-digit addition problems.

 

SCIENCE
Reminder: We are using Apologia Exploring Creation with Astronomy with the Junior Notebooking Journal for our curriculum.

This week we started Lesson 1: What is Astronomy, where we briefly discussed the stars, planets, the calendar, the solar system, and astronomers.  She really enjoyed practicing gravity, jumping and dropping things, shouting "falls to the Earth!"  She worked on coloring two pages from the junior notebooking journal, plus we practiced reciting the planets in order, and created a fact sheet from what we had read about.  Next week we will complete Lesson 1 and do the lab project.

 
BIBLE
Reminder: We are using Bible Study for All Ages: Beginner for our curriculum.

This week we picked up with our Bible lessons where we had left off and studied Genesis 47-50, as well as started on Daniel with books 1 & 2.  We actually moved Bible lesson to right before bedtime, and it has been great because AC can help reading and instructing while he is here, and it has been great to do this all together as a family.

ART/CRAFTS

While we were in San Francisco, I picked up a book called Don't Let the Pigeon Finish This Activity Book!, and SC worked on the first two activities, tracing and copying a picture of the pigeon, and creating a bus stop sign.  She really loved the Mo Willems "Pigeon" books, so this was a no brainer to get when I saw it.  She has been asking every single day to do activities from it.

 

FRENCH

I decided to hold off on starting French for right now, to get us used to being back on a school schedule, plus it is already more intensive than last spring with history and science curriculum.  Also, most of our out-of-the house activities are in the morning, which means all of our school is done in the afternoon, and SC is pretty tired.  Hopefully next fall, once she is officially five years old and her activities will make the assumption she is in public school all day, we will be able to rearrange it to spending the morning on school and she will be more fresh for French.


What was your week like?  Leave a comment, then check out what other homeschoolers are up to at



**This post contains affiliate links.  Please read my disclosure statement.

Top Ten Tuesday: "Keep your eyes on the stars ..."

"Be practical as well as generous in your ideals. 

Keep your eyes on the stars, 

but remember to keep your feet on the ground." 

Theodore Roosevelt

Speech at Prize Day Exercises at Groton School, 1904

This week I want to focus on ten museums/exhibits I hope to take SC to this year.  I am very excited we were able to budget in a membership to our local science and history museum, but it also includes reciprocal memberships to over 200 other museums around the country.  This opens up an allowance for quite a bit of exciting experiences as we are able to travel along with AC on his business trips, plus any family trips we may be able to fit in.

1.  Fort Worth Museum of Science and History:  This is the museum that is closest to us, and the one with which we have a membership.  They have a fabulous on-site children's museum, plus a great planetarium, which will fit in well with our study of astronomy this year.

2. Witte Museum/Mummies of the World:  I am very excited we will be able to tag along with AC after our Seattle trip to San Antonio, Texas and see this museum exhibit.  SC and I have just started with ancient history, and though we will not be to mummies and Egypt by the time we go, we have already talked about real mummies thanks to a McDonald's toy advertising for the movie Hotel Transylvania.  We looked at the pictures of the exhibit online and are both ready to get to see it in person.

3. Perot Museum:  This is a new museum that opens up in December and has been rumored to be awesome.  It is also a science museum and has a big astronomy exhibit, along with ten others, and an on-site children's museum.

4. Houston Zoo:  Last year SC and I got to tag along on a trip with AC to Houston, and it also happened to be on SC's fourth birthday.  While AC worked, SC and I went to the Houston Zoo, and I was blown away.  The Fort Worth Zoo near our home is always mentioned as one of the top five zoos in the country, but I actually preferred the layout and accessibility of the animals at the Houston Zoo.  I hope we get a chance to head down South again this year, and maybe take AC along with us this time.

5. Children's Museum of Houston: This is supposed to be one of the best children's museums in the US (according to the internet), and from the look of the website, it has tons of hands-on things for kids to do.  It would be a fun thing to add into a trip to Houston if we get the chance to make one.

6. Exploratorium: According to their own website, this is a museum of science, art and human perceptions.  They have a planetarium, various exhibits about living things, the body, and the world.  However, the most cool thing is the tactile dome, a maze in complete darkness that you have to get through solely by touch.

7. Lawrence Hall of Science:  It is too bad we won't make it back to San Francisco before the end of 2012, because this museum has an awesome-looking "Math Midway" that ends January 6.  Of course, they have a planetarium, plus a bunch of hands-on activities for kids.

8. Natural History Museum at LA County/Page Museum and La Brea Tar Pits:  This is a museum I distinctly remember going to when I was SC's age, and it was such a neat experience.  Though we have travelled to Southern California many times, we have yet to make it to a museum, and this would be a great one to finally get to.

9. Children's Museum of Tacoma:  Since we will be heading to the Seattle/Tacoma/Portland area, we thought it might be fun to visit a kid-friendly museum while we were there.  This one is unique in that it has very specific playscapes to focus kids in one way or another.  For example, one playscape is dedicated to all things water, and kids are provided with aprons to keep them dry.  Another playscape is dedicated to messy projects, and still another to individual creations.  Sounds like it will be right up SC's alley.

10. Dublin Writer's Museum: Yeah, this one is all for me!

What museums would you recommend around the US?  Leave a comment, then see other top ten lists here: