Fairy Shrimp

Hi. It's been awhile. 

Earlier this month, Daniel found these really cool creatures that I have never seen before.  I spent so much time trying to figure out what they were and I have a real science degree and I even spent many many hours identifying aquatic macroinvertebrates. Mark didn't even know what they were and he knows this property better than anyone.

My science teacher friend identified them as Brine or Fairy Shrimp.  Otherwise known as Sea Monkeys!  I had no idea they could live in pond puddles, but that is their special niche.  They live in ephemeral bodies of water and have a very short life cycle.  They lay their eggs in the mud, which survive until the next rainy season.

Field trip to the pond puddle

 This puddle was so much bigger when it was full! By the time Daniel discovered the fairy shrimp, most of the water had dried up.

 There are two fairy shrimp in the picture above.  You can see their orange egg sacks.  The coolest thing (besides their life history) is that they swim upside down!

Daniel collected a bucket of specimens and he is planning on letting the bucket dry up so he can see if the eggs survive and hatch after he adds water again.  Fun project!  They are sitting in my school room right now.

But guess what? They are already hatching:

Brand new baby fairy shrimp with no legs yet!

 And guess what else? Fairy shrimp aren't the only thing in his bucket....

... this is a mosquito, halfway through metamorphosis.  I saw some empty exoskeletons floating around in the bucket this morning and Fiona exclaimed, "I was wondering where that mosquito came from!

Daniel now has a lid on his project until all the mosquitos are done hatching!

Homeschool Science

When Mom and Dad are scientists and Mom has an inner Ms. Frizzle...

....and Dad finds a deal owl...

..Have you ever seen an owl's ear???  Their ear canals are bigger than a kid's!  Amazing!

Science, check.

Cell-O

I've been battling a virus which seems to have lasted forever.  I took the morning off from homeschooling because my glands are painfully swollen, but I need to keep some semblance of order to keep things from completely falling apart. We've been learning about cells in science and we had our final project: building a candy cell.

Cytoplasm (Jello actually)

These two were so easy compared to their little sisters

This morning I also realized that Jason has reached a whole new level of toddler-crazy.  Like I can't turn my back on him for a minute crazy.  I found him balanced on the arms of two deck chairs outside.  I had only turned my back on him because while vacuuming the sand out of the door track, I saw that all my missing pencils were stuffed down the heater vent.

Securely tied down after climbing out of my backpack and over my head.

But I can't turn my back on Lula or Heidi either!  Lula is like a creative raccoon.  She is always pilfering through places and things and collecting doodads that she weaves into the most beautiful playtime adventures.  You should have seen her last night while she played emergency room with a penguin.  A bottle top was a face mask.  A fake flower was her stethoscope.  The missing kitchen towels were blankets.

Caught eating organelles!

I'm outnumbered. Osgiliath is overrun.  Oh, well! We might as well have fun and eat all the candy!

Nice ribosomes, Daniel!

Heidi's masterpiece

Endoplasmic Reticulum and Ribosomes (AKA Fruit by the Foot and Nerds)

I love the days when I can use my college education.  I don't think my kids care that I can spell all the organelles without looking and I remember what they all do (mostly).  What I do want them to care about though, is learning things that seem useless can be fun.  I learned all about Casting Out Nines this morning.  Totally useless.  In fact, most math is completely useless for the average person.  The only math that average people need is the math they use to run their homes (which includes taxes and banking and business math).  I'm right on the edge of a math rebellion- but that is a post for another day ;)

Bye-bye Butterfly

Daniel isn't one for forming attachments to things, so a butterfly kit was a perfect birthday present for him.  Over the last few weeks, he watched his caterpillars eat and grow, form crysallids, and then emerge as painted lady butterflies. He is a natural born scientist, so when I let him know we needed to let them go so they wouldn't starve, he asked how long they could live without food.  I don't know the answer to that question, so he wanted to experiment and find out.  Sorry, starving animals to death is not something we do in this family.

He wasn't trying to be mean, he just wanted to know.  He planned on burying it with a full funeral when he was done, just like Fiona did when she found a dead frog.

Action shot!

Once upon a time, I planned elaborate unit studies around these kits.  I have a book with projects and everything.  The first time we had caterpillars, I got the flu.  The second time we had more fun, only because my kids were older and I got greedy with the school's money.  Now, I'm over organized learning.  I'll write about that some other time, I promise.

And just like that, all the butterflies flew away! Enjoy your freedom!

Microcosmos

Sorry for being such a TV geek.  There.  I apologized in advance.  Most people I know have large flat screen TVs in their house.  We were dreaming of hanging a large flat screen, but we couldn't agree on where it should go and how to protect it from competitive children racing to see who could turn the TV off first... I already posted that we watched Jurassic Park and SpongeBob, but where this TV really gets us is with our nerdy, sciencey documentaries.

Last night we watched Microcosmos, a documentary about insects and other little creepy crawlies. Even if you don't have a giant TV, I highly recommend this movie.  It is French, so instead of winning Academy Awards it had to win Cesars.  It was nominated for eight Cesars and won five.  There is no boring, sleep-inducing commentary, only beautiful music and amazing cinematography.

These little guys are SO HUGE on our new TV. I'm going to call this movie MACROcosmos from now on!

If you are shy about watching insects or gastropods mate in front of your children (we are not), then be ready to shield small eyes.

If you are queasy around spiders...well, you've been warned!  That spider is bigger than our dog!

Can you believe I took pictures of movies on our TV for my blog? How pathetic is that?  But this bugs were SO COOL!

Still Batty

His name is Batty, his logic is erratic, potato in a jacket, toys in the attic... (Anyone else remember Fern Gully?)

Hanging the Bat House

Yesterday we saw a bat crawling up one of the tarps we use to keep the heat out of the house (hey, I'm in the third trimester.  I hate the sun).  It was neat, but we really don't want a bat falling down on someone, forcing them to get rabies shots (it happened to my friend in Whatcom county and the shots made her whole family sick-there is nothing they can do for pregnant women who come in contact with rabid bats).

See the bat on the window ledge?

Mark installed the bat house that we had on the north side of the house right next to the tarp.  Apparently, the bats prefer the south side.  More flying insects perhaps?  Warmer in the evenings?  Anyway, today the bat crawled down between the tarp and the window, giving us a rare opportunity to observe a bat face to face.

You just can't get this close without glass separating you!

Shane was able to point out the unique characteristics of the bat: curved claws for crawling, a webbed tail that not only aids in flying, but also catches insects so they can scoop them into their mouths!  Can you say homeschool biology?

We were also able to see that the bat uses its tail to climb!  The breeze was causing the tarp to sway gently, so the bat seemed a little disoriented...even more so when seven human faces were inches away from his!

A little fly flew past the bats face and he turned and crawled after it...and also out of the hot sun (I don't blame it).  I'm hoping the bat moves into the bat house and not into our attic!

Oooooo, Bats!

I mentioned Shane is interested in bats, right?  A few weeks ago it was squid.  He checked out every book in the entire Pierce County Library system on squid.  He knew all the different species, how fast they could swim, where they lived, etc, etc, etc.  Now its bats.

This is what I hear: Aren't wrinkle faced bats cute? I hope they don't get eaten by wooly-faced bats, also known as the false vampire bat.  Did you know a bat can fly 60mph? That's faster than an orca whale.  And three times faster than a squid! Did you know they can use their echolocation to sense something as small as a hair? I wonder how vampire bats in zoos eat.  Do they have special livestock for them? Did you know that a bat can give birth to a baby 1/4 of her body weight? And did you  know the vampire bat can drink half its body weight in blood?  If a nursing mother bat is taking care of her baby, it uses so much energy the mother bat can't fly and get her own food so other bats bring her food.  Isn't that neat?  I wonder how they do that?

It gets a little tiring, but I'm thrilled Shane enjoys learning about animals.  He has an amazing memory and can spout out facts about different animals all day long.  Yesterday he amazed me when he compared three different species in three different phyla and was able to compare their predator avoidance skills (in this case, large numbers of animals scattering to confuse the predator).

Today when Shane asked if he could set up a bat watching party, I said yes.  They roost in our eaves and eat mosquitos every night.  We even had one roosting behind our famous map of Cuba (when it used to hang in the carport).  After my Little House on the Prairie episode was over, I went out to check on them.  Two bats were actively feeding right off the porch!  I had fun trying to get pictures of them in the dark.  They came VERY close to us!  But I'm not worried about rabies.

Bad Nature Study!

"Mom, I saw these squiggly things in the water, so I put them in a jar to see what they are."
"Yuck, those are mosquito larvae. Dump them out!"
A few days later...

Ooooh! A pet mosquito! Just in time for Shane to turn his interest toward bats!

Watch at Your Own Risk

Introducing Brownie, the kids' pet spider.

Listen closely, if you dare.  You can actually hear it bite the ant.  (Brownie likes tent caterpillars too)

Spring Break School

The good thing about being in two school districts is having two spring breaks at two different times.  Our parent partnership program took its break two weeks ago.  We kept on learning, but at a slower pace.  The local school district is on break now, so our public schooled friends are available for play this week!  Ian has been very busy with his friends, so we are learning at a slower pace again.

"You think this is bad, you should have seen what I did in the bathroom last night!"

Shane is learning about mean, median, mode, and range in math.  He was really struggling with the way the material was presented in his math book, so I created "cookie math" to remedy the situation.  I bought a big box of assorted cookies in single sized packs at Costco yesterday.  Today I had each of my kids, plus Ian's friend, pretend they were a scientist from a different country.  They had to announce their field of expertise and what country they originated from.  We had biologists, a mathematician, a herpetologist, and an anthropologist.  Even Daniel participated! He said he was a "ball" scientist from God's country.  We called him a physicist from Israel.  Shane had to type the name of the country into a spreadsheet in Excel.  Every "scientist" received a bag of cookies, counted the number of cookies, reported their data to Shane for entry, and consumed said cookies.  Shane will be responsible for calculating the numbers later.

"Look, Mom. Six is three twos!"

Spring also means the kids are outside when the sun shines.  I remind myself that workbooks are for rainy days and sunny days are for exploring.  I let Evie take the camera outside so she could take pictures of birds.  The camera is my most important tool, so I have a hard time sharing it.  But Evie has an artistic eye and a love for nature (so much like Ami), so I take a deep breath and let her go.  She always comes back with a memory card full of blurry bug/flower/dog/chicken pictures and movies that make even the most steady person motion sick.  But this little video is a gem (it is her first attempt at a nature documentary):  oh, and ignore the groaning in the background.  It was just Fiona expressing her boredom in the most passive aggressive manner...

Can you tell the kids have been watching a lot of nature shows on the National Geographic website?

My Kids are Full of Hot Air!

Today we measured lung capacity for our science project.  Biology for Every Kid by Janice VanCleave has instructions for building a complicated contraption involving a milk jug, aquarium tubing, and a dishpan.

I found these lung volume kits to be much easier.  Yes, they are more expensive, but when I'm working with a $4500 budget through the school district, I don't need to worry too much about finding cheap supplies around the house.

Inside the box is a long, plastic bag with liter markings.  You take a deep breath...

...and blow!  Wow, Shane, I didn't know your lungs had such a high capacity!  It's amazing your lungs even fit inside your body!!!

They had a lot of fun finding out how much air they could hold in their lungs and how long they could hold their breath for. 

Last week we tested their blood type with these kits, but I was so busy worrying about poking my babies' fingers that I didn't take any pictures.  Their science guide had them building blood with water, cornstarch, flour sugar, and red food coloring.  They were supposed to mix it all up and watch it settle.  This was supposed to prove that blood parts can be separated.  All it proved to me was that flour, sugar, etc could separate, not blood.  Instead we found out something useful: Ian and Shane have A negative blood (just like Mark) and Evie has O positive (just like me). This led to an interesting discussion about blood type being determined by genetics.

Next up...digestive system! OOoooo, what kind of fun things can I think up for THAT?

Mammal Experiment

This is our last week learning about animals in biology.  The boys are each picking an animal to write a report about-and it has to be a specific animal, not just a class of animals.  IJ picked ball python.  Shane hasn't decided yet.  In the meantime, we did two experiments.

The experiment demonstrates the importance of fur or blubber for mammals, who need to regulate their blood temperature.  We had two sets of "blood." One set represented an orca and the other represented a hairy mountain goat.  (The experiment calls for plain water, but I added red food coloring to make the experiment more realistic.)

The orca set asked, "What takes more energy to stay warm in, cold air or cold water?" One bottle went into the freezer and the other into cold water with "icebergs."

The hairy mountain goat set asked, "Which goat stays warmer, the hairy goat or the bald goat?" One bottle sat on the counter and the other nestled into a scarf.  The scarf does not contain any goat hair, so we used our imaginations.

We were amazed at the temperature difference between the orca bottles.  The cold water was ten degrees warmer than the air in the freezer, but the "blood" from the ice bath was a good fifty degrees colder than the "blood" from the freezer!  This was a great way to see why marine mammals need so much more blubber than land mammals in the same temperature.  And why we get so cold swimming down at the pond in the summer.  And why hiking scouts shouldn't get wet.

I've incorporated writing into every subject for the boys, especially Shane.  He is facing his first written portion in the annual standardized tests this spring and I want him to be completely comfortable.  I don't expect him to score very high considering he is younger than 99% of the 4th graders (and a large percentage of 4th grade boys are Ian's age).  But I do want him to practice and do well.  I had him write the data for our goat set and write up the conclusions.

But sometimes picture is worth a thousand words:

Of course my silly boys had the most fun toasting each other and drinking the red water with their lunch.  Sigh.