Mosquito Larvae & Adults

Our school year is in full swing now. (I'll post our "first day" pics sometime.) We started out our nature studies this year with mosquitos. For some of our nature study we're following the Outdoor Hour Blog. There's some really great resources on that site.

We captured some larvae (and a pupa, though we didn't know it at the time) and an adult at my parents' house. We stuck the adult in the fridge to let her go to sleep so we could look at her.

Here are some really cool things we learned about mosquitos.
--The larvae have two tubes at the end of their tails -- a breathing tube and a swimming organ.
--Their head is hairy and those little hairs create a small current so to sort of "wave" the food in.
--Only females bite.
--Only females buzz/ sing.
--The males have very big and hairy antennae so as to hear the females' songs.
--The females tap blood to help nurture the eggs.
--The females lay their eggs in a big formation called an egg raft.

And here are some pics & video we took with our Zorb microscope.






And our adult:




And, since these guys are pests, my plan was for us to poor the water out, thereby leaving the larva to die; however, Emelye insisted that we not kill "baby mosquitos." So, we're waiting for them all to mature to adults . . .

Our Moths Have Emerged!

So in my last post, I mentioned something about finding some white caterpillars around the b'fly garden & identifying them as Virginia Tiger Moth caterpillars. Well, the first one emerged a few days ago & I wanted to share some pics.

Emelye put him outside to "be with his family" once he emerged.


Smile!

Our Butterfly Garden -- updated

Well, the lovely little bordered patch caterpillars have thoroughly destroyed Mr. Sunflower. His head even lies in repose.



Most of the caterpillars have moved on to greener pastures, but there are a few hanging around still.


We also have found some of these guys around:


They are Virginia Tiger Moth caterpillars. They eat just about anything we've found. I found them on the sunflower, the coreopsis, and some weeds. We "adopted" one. (Emelye named him/ her Fuzzy.) A few days ago, s/he spun his cocoon:


We'll see how long he needs before he emerges (and if I've correctly identified him as a caterpillar!)

Our Butterfly Garden

This year we took an active effort in planting an actual garden to attract butterflies. We planted some host plants (for caterpillars) & nectar plants (for the adults). The plan was to have a fun zone for all members of the butterfly family-- something for everyone! Well, the flood drowned much of our seedling plants. And some just didn't grow.

Still, we have a sunflower going strong, a verbena, lots of zinnias, some cosmos, butterfly bushes, and something from my mom's garden (can't remember the name). Oh, and I even got a few milkweed plants from my parents' land. (They always mow them down because the cows shouldn't eat them.)

And then . . . today . . . I spotted the first "batch" of caterpillars under one of our sunflower leaves.



And then, I discovered 3 more "groups" of caterpillars on different sunflower leaves.



Front of leaf:


So the big question then -- what are they?

Answer: Bordered Patch Butterfly Caterpillars

After doing a little reading I discovered that they will probably mark the end to our sunflower. I asked Emelye if she would rather us kill the caterpillars or let them kill the sunflower. (She worked hard to have both after all.) She decided having caterpillars/ butterflies was a bigger pay off to her than having a big sunflower.

Now we wait to see how long Mr. Sunflower will last. Well, maybe. I also read about how Mockingbirds just love to munch on these little caterpillars. Since our yard birds are Robins, Mockingbirds, & Sparrows, the game is on! Who will win -- caterpillars or sunflowers/ birds?!?!!? I watch too much reality tv . . .

Our second family nature walk

This week's feature animal was the cotton-tailed rabbit. This means we go out on our nature walk, investigating interesting items, but we have a larger purpose of digitally capturing rabbits. We drove to David Crockett State Park in Lawrenceburg which is about 2 hours away from us. We did this for one big reason -- naps in the van! We left directly after lunch, forged through the pouring rain, & arrived in L'burg around 3pm.



On our first attempt at a walk, we got pounded by rain! So much fun racing back to the van. HP & Addie won, though, I have to say they won as Addie was on wheels (stroller). Otherwise, I (plus E & Josh) would've won. ;)



We drove around a bit until the rain let up some. Then we walked by the river & found lots of cool stuff. Josh's fave: discarded little boy underwear. Ew! Here are a few of our other finds:


Some kid of mushroom. Do you know what it is? I'm not a big mushroom connoisseur.


Not sure what this guy is either -- maybe some kind of fritillary. If you know, please share!






Not a great pic, but I think this guy is an American Goldfinch. He's missing some wing bars, but I don't see them listed as field markings. (I think this may mean she's really female.)


One of many deer to see.




We had to wait to for these geese to cross the road.




We saw this guy on our way out.

After we left (without seeing any rabbits -- no surprise since they are mainly nocturnal), we came home to take a short nature walk down our street. And there we saw our cotton-tailed rabbit!


And Puddle came too!!

Our {super early} new school year

Well, since March (yes, March), Emelye has been insisting on starting 1st grade on July 1. I tried to emphasize that there was no rush and even threw in something about the Y's pool still being open in July. Nothing seemed to dissuade her. So, in an effort to help fuel her love of learning, we began school on July 1 this year.

Here are some pics from our first day. (E wanted to wear a "special dress" since it was a special day.)




Addie working on her "sun & stars" drawing.




Emelye's drawing morphed into a birthday card for Mimi. :)




Tonight we had our first nature walk. We'll be taking this once a week as part of our science this year. Our first quarter covers mammals. And our first mammal -- the gray squirrel.

From my college days I remember how these vicious little rodents would seemingly pelt walnuts at passersby in Walnut Grove. So, that's where I thought we should go to get some good squirrel watchin' done. Well, maybe we went out at the wrong time of day. We did see a few, but they were always far away.

And it didn't help matters that the 3yo boy would try to chase them whenever we pointed out a new sighting.

We still found a few and some other cool 'naturey' things too.


Squirrel nest




Addie's pine cone


And, not to be outdone, Emelye promptly spilled out her pine cone stash too.


Partial walnut with teeth marks (about 11 o'clock)




Emelye had her camera too. (She's quite the photographer.)


We found a few locust shells. Emelye would have no part in picking these off the trees!


My one shot of an actual squirrel.

Dare I Say It's Working?

We are finishing up our first year of (kindergarten) homeschool. It has been an absolute blast and we have definitely found our groove. We had a bit of a bumpy start with our phonics program. I thumbed through & selected Horizons (K) curriculum. No one told me that Horizons is crazy advanced (well, by just about one year, but that's a lot to a 5yo learning to read!) until two months into the drudgery.

So, I held my breath & totally chucked the Horizons program & picked up Bob Jones. We were doing BJU math already & I had many people recommend BJU to me for phonics. We started at the beginning to get a good, fresh start. Emelye loved it! There are phonics characters, a rabbit & his friends who "teach" the child, etc. No, this isn't a multimedia/ DVD curriculum. There are just some characters who are present during certain times in the lesson. (For example, HP drew Hopper the Frog for us on an index card. Emelye has Hopper hop from sight word --lily pad-- to sight word while she reads them.)

Emelye has thoroughly enjoyed this curriculum. Recently, though, my jaw started to drop b/c she actually has started reading things that I don't ask her to. The other day, she got a box off the counter & excitedly brought it to me, pointing & saying, "Mommy -- fat free!" "Yes, that's right, sweetie! That's my big reader." Today, she read my printed t-shirt while we were working on math.

But probably the biggest jaw-dropping moment happened this morning. Auntie Jenn gave us a huge box of early childhood/ elem ed stuff that she no longer needs since she doesn't work with kids in speech therapy anymore. One item included was a set of reading textbooks presumably for kindergarten/1st graders. While I was sleepily brewing my coffee, I hear, "Who made this mess?" It was Emelye reading from one of the textbooks. "That's awesome," I thought, smiled, and went back to my coffee.

She continued to read throughout the day, with no prompt from me, but some encouragement as to her ability to read. She has now read about 3/4 of that 150-page textbook. Now, mind you, there's at max 5 sentences on a page & she stumbles on some words (we haven't gotten to "r" influenced vowels yet), but on the whole she is reading. And reading well if I do say so. And reading because she wants to (which is important to me).

On the days that it seems like we don't get anything done, I do cherish these ah-ha moments of when I see my children actively learning & exploring because they want to. Good day.