Grackle feeding another grackle

Reinvent the Wheel

Our new science unit is Inventions. We're using a book called Reinvent the Wheel, and so far we've reinvented the wheel (naturally), the shadouf (an ancient Egyptian device for watering crops, and a catapult.

First, we invented the potter's wheel, but I didn't take any photos. Next, we had to figure out how to use the wheel to make it easier to transport our cartload of goods to the marketplace. Dragging a travois over rough ground (okay, carpet) is a real drag. Our cart wheels were kind of floppy, so they didn't roll smoothly, but we were able to stablize them a little bit with some Play-Doh (I'm sure that's what the ancient Mesopotamians used as well).

We couldn't find a good forked stick for our shadouf. That's one of the problems of living where there are mostly palm trees. So we used the handle of our handy dandy pitchfork. The lever stick didn't swivel easily to water the crops, but the rocks taped to the stick sure made it easy to lift a heavy bucket of water -- just imagine the little paper cup is several times bigger.

-------Photos coming when Blogger isn't being so SLOW-------------

We built the catapult on a day when Scott stayed home sick from work so he could play with it, too. I don't mean he stayed home so he could play with the catapult. He was home, so we decided to build the catapult that day instead of the next day. Our farthest launch was 9.5 feet with a mini-marshmallow, and 5 feet with a large marshmallow. Science that involves marshmallows is always fun!

Butterfly Gardening

Here are some pictures of the new additions to our butterfly garden. First, there's Mary helping plant milkweed. Audrey loves using the watering can. She even watered the insides of her boots! They were very squishy when she was done, even after dumping the water out. When we went out to water the plants tonight, we found two caterpillars on the milkweed, a big one and a tiny one. We brought the big one in for closer observation. Pretty soon we'll have a monarch butterfly.

Spider eats dragonfly

Yesterday morning when I went out to get the paper, I saw a dragonfly stuck in a spider web. Mary and I watched the spider climbing around on its prey for a while. This morning, there wasn't much left of the dragonfly, and the spider had rebuilt its web.

Making connections in Greek

Today we were listening to this week's new vocabulary words, and the first one was biblion, meaning book. Mary said, "Hey, that sounds like the Spanish word for library!" It's neat to see her make connections like that. And it's amazing how many words that came into English (or Spanish, obviously) from Latin, came into Latin from Greek. Studying Greek instead of Latin makes me feel like we're looking back further into the history of language. I'm still convinced our word dowry is related to the Greek word doron (gift) from last week's vocabulary. I can't find a direct link in any online etymology site I've visited, but it seems they both come from the same Indo European root.

operation habitat

We finished our microscope unit in science, and now we're trying to get our yard certified as a Backyard Wildlife Habitat. This week we surveyed our yard to see what it offers in the way of food, water, shelter, and places to raise young. We've got a lot of good plants already and some dense shrubs. All we need is a birdbath, and we'll be ready to certify! I'd like to get one that's a fountain, so it doesn't become a breeding ground for mosquitos. Some wildlife we don't want to encourage! Mary wrote a haiku about our backyard:

Firespike is dense
Hummingbirds like its nectar
Butterflies do too.

Need more art

We haven't been doing much art, except for little craft projects that Audrey can do with us (does Play-Doh count as art education?) I liked the books I bought, but pulling all the resources together has been too time-consuming, and we haven't been making time to actually do any of the projects I've planned. So I went ahead and ordered the second Artistic Pursuits K-3 book. We enjoyed their lessons two years ago, and Mary looked forward to art every week. Now art can be a grab-and-go subject.