At this exact moment, I am enjoying watching the bluebird on my fence; bluebirds just make me happy. So does that chickadee on the evergreen tree in the backyard, the goldfinches that were hanging out on a maple just outside my window, and the cardinal perched on my patio chair. We love birds! We also love butterflies; Kathryn's affinity for butterflies is evident in her choice of headwear (notice the little antennae on the hat!) as she read about the life cycle of butterflies in her Usborne nature book.
We are enjoying second grade! We're getting back into the swing of things pretty well; I didn't get up quite as early as I'd planned this morning, but we've still had a couple of productive days. Kathryn loves Horizon math and says it's her favorite subject so far, except for our readings. We used Saxon last year, and it is a great program, but I'm liking the smaller, more manageable, and less scripted teacher guide, as well as the better paper quality of Kathryn's workbook, and she loves the added color and little pictures on her pages, too. It just makes math happier. And now that I've had more time to dig in a bit more to the specifics, I am glad I went with grade 3. It'll be a challenge, but not beyond her capability. After we've completed a few weeks of school, I'll update on how other specific subjects are going.
We kept our weekly nature studies going throughout the summer,
and we'll keep doing a weekly study throughout the year. This week we did Outdoor Hour challenge # 22: Butterflies! I like the journal page I printed out (Barb has a link to it from the challenge), and Kathryn drew a lovely tiger swallowtail butterfly. Actually, she drew two, so that you could see all the parts we were suppose to label. But then she didn't want to "mess up" her picture with lines or words all over it, so we didn't actually label it. We did, however, verbally go through all the butterfly anatomy and point to the applicable part in her picture, after studying the butterfly section in one of our nature books. Earlier this year, my mom found a dead tiger swallowtail in a parking lot, and she saved it for Kathryn because it was in perfect condition. We kept it in a plastic baggie and it's still in great shape; it has been wonderful to study with a magnifying glass!
Although we "officially" studied butterflies this week, we have been watching them all summer. They are frequent visitors in our flower garden, and we plant flowers specifically to attract them. Chasing butterflies through the yard with a camera is a fairly frequent occurrence, but they just don't hold still for long! Just today we saw several kinds of butterflies, including: a yellow Clouded Sulphur butterfly; several mostly orange and brown butterflies that are either some sort of frittalary or an admiral (once I got inside to research, I couldn't remember exactly what they looked like!); and quite a few Eastern Tiger Swallowtails, including the "dark morph" and the typical yellow version like this male below, which was on our next door neighbor's butterfly bush. We learned today that the females can be dark or yellow, but males are always yellow. By the way, the Eastern Tiger Swallowtail is our official state butterfly!
My cousin Jonnia and her son Cullen "grew" a butterfly earlier this year, and she directed me to this great site where you can order insect kits complete with habitats, or just refills for a habitat you already have. She's offered to let us use her butterfly habitat, so I'll be ordering the live caterpillars soon so we can observe the whole process first-hand. There are other fun kits I'd like to do eventually, too, like the earthworms and the ladybugs. I will NOT ever, under any circumstances, do the live hissing cockroaches -- I literally just shuttered at the mere thought. And if any of you ever do, PLEASE don't share photos!!! (Ok, Jamie, think happy thoughts, think happy bluebird thoughts.) So we're really looking forward to a more personal butterfly study. You can read about Jonnia's butterfly experience and see that great butterfly habitat here.
We are enjoying second grade! We're getting back into the swing of things pretty well; I didn't get up quite as early as I'd planned this morning, but we've still had a couple of productive days. Kathryn loves Horizon math and says it's her favorite subject so far, except for our readings. We used Saxon last year, and it is a great program, but I'm liking the smaller, more manageable, and less scripted teacher guide, as well as the better paper quality of Kathryn's workbook, and she loves the added color and little pictures on her pages, too. It just makes math happier. And now that I've had more time to dig in a bit more to the specifics, I am glad I went with grade 3. It'll be a challenge, but not beyond her capability. After we've completed a few weeks of school, I'll update on how other specific subjects are going.We kept our weekly nature studies going throughout the summer,
and we'll keep doing a weekly study throughout the year. This week we did Outdoor Hour challenge # 22: Butterflies! I like the journal page I printed out (Barb has a link to it from the challenge), and Kathryn drew a lovely tiger swallowtail butterfly. Actually, she drew two, so that you could see all the parts we were suppose to label. But then she didn't want to "mess up" her picture with lines or words all over it, so we didn't actually label it. We did, however, verbally go through all the butterfly anatomy and point to the applicable part in her picture, after studying the butterfly section in one of our nature books. Earlier this year, my mom found a dead tiger swallowtail in a parking lot, and she saved it for Kathryn because it was in perfect condition. We kept it in a plastic baggie and it's still in great shape; it has been wonderful to study with a magnifying glass!Although we "officially" studied butterflies this week, we have been watching them all summer. They are frequent visitors in our flower garden, and we plant flowers specifically to attract them. Chasing butterflies through the yard with a camera is a fairly frequent occurrence, but they just don't hold still for long! Just today we saw several kinds of butterflies, including: a yellow Clouded Sulphur butterfly; several mostly orange and brown butterflies that are either some sort of frittalary or an admiral (once I got inside to research, I couldn't remember exactly what they looked like!); and quite a few Eastern Tiger Swallowtails, including the "dark morph" and the typical yellow version like this male below, which was on our next door neighbor's butterfly bush. We learned today that the females can be dark or yellow, but males are always yellow. By the way, the Eastern Tiger Swallowtail is our official state butterfly!
My cousin Jonnia and her son Cullen "grew" a butterfly earlier this year, and she directed me to this great site where you can order insect kits complete with habitats, or just refills for a habitat you already have. She's offered to let us use her butterfly habitat, so I'll be ordering the live caterpillars soon so we can observe the whole process first-hand. There are other fun kits I'd like to do eventually, too, like the earthworms and the ladybugs. I will NOT ever, under any circumstances, do the live hissing cockroaches -- I literally just shuttered at the mere thought. And if any of you ever do, PLEASE don't share photos!!! (Ok, Jamie, think happy thoughts, think happy bluebird thoughts.) So we're really looking forward to a more personal butterfly study. You can read about Jonnia's butterfly experience and see that great butterfly habitat here.
