The caterpillars have arrived!

After much anticipation, our caterpillars arrived today.

We have one of my friend's; Melissa, to thank for the idea and the provision of these tiny creatures.

We have seven small caterpillars of the painted Lady butterfly, living in a jar in our kitchen now for the next few weeks!

Henry saw a butterfly emerge from its chrysalis when we were in New Zealand, and ever since he has been intrigued by caterpillars and the process by which they become butterflies. Hopefully we will have some success with these creepy crawlies and he will experience first hand, how caterpillars transform themselves.

We are going to create a caterpillar calendar, by which to keep an eye on these small black lines (which are about 2cm long today), to ensure we check regularly their progress.

I'll update the blogs as changes occur.

Today, Henry created his first journal page - drawing and describing the caterpillars.

The Outdoor Hour - Squirrels

Today we took a nature walk around our neighbourhood to check out our local squirrels for the Outdoor Hour Challenge #45 - Squirrels

Now, it may be that we had our dog with us, or it maybe that they had all got a little scared and were having a sleep in after the storm last night......whatever the reason we did not see one squirrel!

However, we did spot what we think are two different squirrel nests.

We discussed everything about squirrels as we walked around....where we were likely to see them, where they lived, what they ate, what colour they were, how many feet, what their tail

was used for. So despite not seeing one on our walk, Henry was in squirrel mode for the walk!

On return home, i threw out a load of bread onto the back lawn, and within 10 minutes we had two squirrels in the back garden, which Henry watched, as they chased each other across the lawn, along the fence and up and down the trees.

Henry did a drawing of a squirrel, in oil pastels and water colours after we looked carefully at a photo i took recently in our garden. We also made a journal entry about squirrels.

We then read two squirrel books:

Nuts to You - By Lois Ehlert - a simple book with unusual illustrations about a squirrel who comes to someones house to get food.

A Squirrel's Tale - By Richard Fowler - An interactive book, where you move a small squirrel through flaps in the book on his hunt for his nuts. This has been a favorite of Henry's for some time and he knows the words off by heart!

The latest on our sunflowers.....

This is an update to my earlier post on growing sunflowers, which we started as part of the Outdoor Hour - Challenge #16 - Growing sunflowers

Much to my amazement, Henry's sunflowers are all going pretty strong. I guess they do have 6-8 foot to grow in a couple of months, but since our first entry on 29th April, when the seeds were planted, the plants have grown to a stunning 19cm to date!

Henry and I are measuring them every couple of days and recording on a bar chart their growth. We have chosen his school sunflowers to follow closely, so these are the stars of his blog.......must give them names!

We are also creating a journal entry, every time something new happens to the plants.

So here are our journal entries, and a few photos to go with them.

Henry's school sunflowers on 6th May - seven days after planting the seeds.

Some still had their seeds holding the leaves shut, whilst other seeds had popped off to show 2 leaves.

Some of the other 50 sunflowers we have planted!

Today, Henry's followed sunflower had produced two new small leaves. So wemade a journal page for this.

We potted on his school sunflowers at the weekend out of the cramped starter pot. Examining the roots as we went.

A simple science experiment with lemons

I got this simple science experiment from The snails trail a great pre school blog that I follow.

What you need:

2 Lemons, baking soda and liquid soap

Apparently, there is some suggestion that if you roll a lemon and squash it a little, before squeezing, the extraction of juice is easier, and you get more...we set out to find if this was true.

Experiment 1.

Using the instruction sheet prepared my momma snail (see link above), Henry got about trying to figure out what we needed to do this

experiment.

As a bit of fun, I dressed him in one of Kevin's old white work shirts and he wore a pair of Kevin's reading glasses as goggles!

I cut the first lemon in half, then Henry got

squeezing "pretty hard...mummy you do it" was Henry's answer. So i squeezed

all I could and got about 1fluid oz of juice.

Henry then rolled and squashed the second lemon, after which i cut it in half. Henry once again got squeezing....so i asked "is this any easier"...he replied "no its harder!" so much for the hypothesis of this experiment! It was pretty hard for him to squeeze the lemons, so once again i finished the squeezing and Henry recorded his observations....

There was a tiny amount more squeezed from the rolled lemon. But it was just as hard to squeeze both.

Experiment 2.

The second experiment was a little more exciting, as we promised Henry an explosion of sorts!

This time we were going to see whether we could create lemon suds!

To start with i had Henry make a prediction about what was going to happen and record that idea. He thought there would be bubbly lemon juice.

With daddy's help we got started on this one.

We placed 1 teaspoon of baking soda in a glass, added a teaspoon of washing up liquid, then poured in the juice from one of the lemons.

Quickly stirring, Henry's excitement grew quite quickly as the bubbles and froth headed towards the top of the glass and then over flowed!

Daddy, ever the scientist wanted to see what happened with a tablespoon of each of the ingredients and a whole lot of lemon juice...the result, a table covered in white frothy bubbles and a giggling Henry....boys will be boys!

The data sheets from the experiment

So...thanks go out to Henry's Aunty Janet for this activity. Replicated several times on the last few weekends, Henry loves to make this cake for breakfast. This morning was the first time I caught it on camera, as I normally hear the hysterics from the comfort of my bed, as this seems to be a good daddy activity.

This cake is so simple. The utensils you will need are measuring spoons, a large coffee mug and a microwave.

Ingredients

4tbs Self

raising flour

4tbs caster sugar

2tbs cocoa powder

1 egg

3tbs milk

3tbs sunflower oil

3 tbs chocolate chips (optional)

A small dash of vanilla extract

Method:

1. Add dry ingredients to the mug and mix well.

2. Add egg and mix thoroughly. Check out the pictureof Henry breaking the egg! A skill he still needs to perfect! Do it into a separate bowl while learning though and it dosn't hurt to

practice!

3. Add the milk and the oil - mix well.

4. Add the chocolate chips and vanilla extract and mix again.

5. Put your mug in the microwave and cook for 3 minutes (in a 1000 watt microwave)

6. The cake will rise above the top of the mug...its supposed to!

7. Allow to cool a little, tip on a plate and serve with cream/ice cream etc.

This serves 2, however Henry seems to like this cake and managed the whole thing this morning without any help!

Colourful Chameleons

With the help of the Mailbox magazine this month, Henry and I spent just under an hour doing several activities based on the book "A color of his own" by Leo Lionni. This story tells of a chameleon who desperately wants to have a colour like all the other animals. in his search for one colour, he finds something even better - a friend who changes colour just like him.

Prior to reading the book, I explained about chameleons changing their colour to match the object they were close to and asked for him to tell me what colour the chameleon would be on the grass; green, in the sky; blue and on a strawberry; red. We discussed whether Henry changed colour "don't be silly mummy" was his reply. So I asked him what colour he was...now this stumped him! So I asked what colour he thought I was..."pink". We then had a quick discussion about the other colours of people skin.

After reading the book, which he thought was great (especially the purple chameleon pictures)...which rather inspired his art work.... we did our first activity.

I provided Henry with a chameleon drawn on paper (downloaded from Mailbox website), which he cut out. We then discussed what colour he wanted to make his chameleon...purple of course. So I then asked for suggestions on what he may sit on to be that colour. Berries and flowers were good answers, but he decided on a purple berry, which he drew and coloured. then he placed the coloured chameleon on top and wrote a description at the top of the page.

Our second activity was a fun bit of art. Again I provided another chameleon which he cut out. He then covered a page in purple paint using his fingers...he loves messy stuff! He even realised he could draw shapes and write his name during this painting exercise using his nails. Insisting every last inch of the paper was covered in purple paint, he then added the chameleon on top and proceeded to change the chameleon the colour of the paper with more finger paint......a lot of fun.

Our last activity, which we did outside was colour matching chameleons to their leaves. Once again I used templates from Mailbox to do this. With only three colours this was a fast exercise, but one which reinforced the whole colour matching exercise.

A nature reserve field trip

With one of our moms groups we headed out to enjoy the warm and dry weather today. Around our area there are some fantastic nature reserves with educational centres attached.

With a group of around seven kids we ventured out around the reserve on a nature walk. Henry spent most of the walk around running, and playing with sticks with a new friend he met.

When we spotted something worthy of notice, we called the kids over to have a look with a quick discussion.

Today we found some animal tracks which we asked for ideas on what they could be. Lots of very sensible answers. I checked them out, and based on this identification leaflet I think we found raccoon and deer tracks.

There are are also a lot of seed pods still about, and we found some milk weed seed pods, which the kids enjoyed dispersing through the reserve! With much exploration of the undergrowth, various other seeds got stuck to clothes, which gave us the ideal opportunity to discuss how sticky seeds moved and dispersed.

The reserve had large areas of grassland, some woodland and water areas. all of which we explored during the couple of hours we were out. With company for Henry and myself, this was a fun but educational walk experiencing nature.