Kayaking on the lake....

Yesterday we went kayaking on lake we live close to. A sat in the front with me and spent much of the time paddling for me. She did a great job and had a blast! We saw a lot of wildfowl out there including Sandpipers and Loons. It's one of the best places in the country for seeing Sandpipers.

Our first butterfly!

Today our first butterfly made it's appearance from it's chrysalis! We were very surprised at the bloody mess it left behind!!! First of all the chrysalis goes black and then not long after, the butterfly makes its appearance! Isn't it beautiful?

We have 5 more chrysalises that will hopefully turn into butterflies....and we also have four moths to watch too! Now to get some orange Gatorade to feed them with!

funfair fun

A at the fair....

Kite flying

We made the most of flying the kite this week during some VERY windy weather!

Growing

Watering the flower garden. A watering her plants - she won the little cherry trees two years ago on Earth Day. The catnip she chose at the garden centre last week. The Lupine is her Sisters and she is watering it for her.

Grade 2 workbook

Yesterday I bought a Grade 2 workbook for A. as she has finished all the grade 1 books we had bought for her and was bored with them all. Last night she did 18 pages! She loved it. Which now confuses us even more over what year to register her for next year. This year she was actually registered for kindergarten. We were officially going to register her for grade one next year. Now we are considering registering her for grade two.

What to do?

She is enjoying writing stories now - they are only a few lines long but it's a start. She is still loving to read and is now reading chapter books. She is reading a Dear Dumb Diary book right now. I have no idea what grade level that kind of book is but she picked it off the shelf herself and is reading it to herself at bedtime.

Her spelling is a little TOO good though and makes me laugh! Last week the gas company was here with their 'ditch witch' to trench a new gas line for us. and A. saw the ditch witch and said "you know, if they changed the first letter to a 'B' it would be a rude word' and I laughed out loud and said "You know, I had thought the same thing myself"!!!! This girl is six and she can think about changing spellings from witch to *itch!!!!!!! hahahahaha!!

This week S is sick and it is raining heavily outside so we are doing lots of reading, crafts, talking....and sitting out on the porch watching the chrysalises waiting for them to change (any day now!!!!)

Today A is drawing maps from places close by to our house!

I think tonight I will go through the grade 1 curriculum and check off the things we've done this year so we can see what we have and haven't done this year.....I think A has come on in leaps and bounds since September! Her reading, writing, spelling, drawing, math, science...all her basics.......

I ask her about the Fall and she says she definitely wants to do drama again with her friends. She is also hoping to do ice skating if the class runs. And I think I will put her in to Jennifers group at the library. I think that will be enough for her though. And definitely enough for me.

Abigails Story....

One day I came home from school and found an octopus in my bathtub. I ran to Mom and she said call Dad. Then he said call the Police. Then I had to call the Police and the Police said we will be there as fast as we can.

The End.

With the bees.....

We have had our bees installed for just over a week now and A spends a lot of time down with the hives. She is really enjoying watching them and learning all about them. She was involved when we installed them and was right up looking in the hive. You can read more about our beekeeping experiences on our bee blog at:
bee-tales.blogspot.com/

Moths

We found two moth caterpillars outside in our yard and we added those to our tank with our chrysalises.....well, this morning one of them is starting to change into a chrysalis! If you look closely you can see that it is shedding its outer furry skin and you can see through the furriness! It's body is now much slimmer inside this.

Into the tank!

Today we moved the chrysalises into a bigger tank ready for them to change into butterflies. This is their last home until we release them. Four are still attached to their paper tops so we pinned the papers to the branches. Two didn't attach so we have rested them on the bottom. They need humidity in the tank so they have some grass and moisture in there - some rocks and branches - and when the butterflies come out we will feed them orange gatorade!!!

I will take some better pictures tomorrow but these will have to do until then!

The next stage....

The caterpillars started to turn into their chrysalises at the weekend. It happened very fast. One moment they were caterpillars and then we went back a couple of hours later and they were half changed and then we'd go back a little later and they were changed completely! Within a day or so all were changed! Amazing! They are quite stunning in the light with goldy copper shiny patches in them that sparkle in the light. They occasionally wobble but apart from that don't move and they are quite hard.

All they left behind was their exoskeleton....kind of looks like their heads fell off - YUCK!!!

The caterpillars - day 6

Today is our sixth day for having the butterfly larvae. The information says that it takes 5 - 14 days for the larvae to crawl to the top of the vials and attach themselves and hang ready to start forming a chrysalis, but when we got up this morning, we found that several caterpillars had already started to hang from their lids, so we decided today we should add the little squares of paper for them to stick to.

The paper makes it easier for you to move them to their next home ready for them to come out as butterflies :)

A helped me clean the vials out (all that webbing and poop - YUCK!!) add more food and add the paper squares before replacing the lids. We carefully took the caterpillars out and took their pictures with a penny to show how big they are now - wow they grow so fast! They weren't much bigger than a grain of rice on Monday! Less than a week later and look how long they are!!!

We use a soft artists paint brush to carefully brush them clean of webbing and poop!

So now we just wait for them to turn into chrysalis's and then we move them into our old aquarium ready for them to turn into the beautiful Painted Lady butterflies they were meant to be :)

On Friday I bought a copy of Eric Carles 'The Very Hungry Caterpillar for S. A has been enjoying reading it to S each day :)

Some of the cookies!!

Hhhmmmm I think we'll call the top one Charlie as its shaped like our pot bellied pig Charlie!

The middle one I think we will call 'Don't play with chain saws'!!!!! A lesson for us all :)

Baking cookies!

Our plans changed this afternoon as the gas board had to come over and do some work here in preparation for our renovations that start next week. So we threw together some sugar cookie dough and A and S made some cookies! Here they are cutting the dough and tasting the cookies afterwards :)

The painted ladies larvae - day 3

These pictures were taken yesterday - day 3 for us having them. We put them into their own little pots (well, two to a pot) with 1cm of food and we cleaned the pots of poop and webbing. I took the pictures to show you what the webbing and poop (black dots) look like though.

We can't believe how much they have grown already!!!! Several millimetres already!!!

Enjoying being outdoors again!

After last weeks winter storm that brought 31cms of snow and canceled all our classes and plans, we were glad to be outdoors again! A is very glad to be back out on hr quad bike and has been enjoying all the puddles left by the melting snow!!!!

Egghead updates!!!!

Here are our eggheads now that they are grown and ready to be 'trimmed'!!!!!

Remember all you need is cress seeds, cotton wool, water and an empty egg shell!

Laptop time...

A is doing really well on the computer right now. She is still enjoying webkinz but is enjoying a game called pony love right now.

I love the picture above where her brother is helping her with a game :)

Our butterflies arrived!

Today we went to collect our butterfly larvae - we are going to study life cycles this Spring - not just butterflies but the bees in our very own beehive (you can see those on our bee blog via our profile if you like). We ordered a butterfly lifecycle kit and today was the day we went to collect them!!

The larvae are the teeny tiniest caterpillars we have ever seen!!!! They came with food for us to feed them. We will photograph their journey from caterpillar to chrysalis to butterfly and post it here for you to enjoy :)

Our butterflies are Painted Ladies :)