Blog Archives

Frogs and Toads

8/29/2012

Part of our night time reading is to go through the books in this series Investigate by Whitecap books.

a lot of our homeschooling around this house this summer has revolved around insects, spiders, frogs and toads. :) This book we've been reading for the past two weeks or so. and it's quite fascinating. It amazes us how creative God was ...even with something is simple as a frog or toad. :)

Tonight we read about four fascinating frogs/toads.

1. the Australian turtle frog. This frog is a front end digger and lays her eggs under the ground where they hatch into frogs NOT tadpoles. Odd looking thing isn't it? The pic below is taken from the above link.

2. Lake Titicaca frog. The image below is from this site. this interesting rather quite ODD looking frog has no lungs and breathes through its' skin! It spends its' life in the water. unfortunately it is facing extinction.

3. Casque-headed frog. This frog has a natural tendency to seal off an opening with their heads. They move VERY quickly and can hurt themselves if startled. the picture below comes from here. These frogs are also in decline due to loss of habitat.

4. Duck-billed tree frog. This interesting little frog has a rubbery ridge around its' upper lip that helps to seal off it's hiding spot. It was HARD to find information about this little beastie. The image below comes from here.

Mercury Poisoning

8/29/2012

the things one can do with homeschooling your child. I have a fondness for spontaneous moments to learn.

you can take simple game play (my son's current favourite game is Dragon City on facebook).

One of the dragon's is called a Mercury Dragon. This got us talking about Mercury the chemical and what is mercury poisoning.

Symptoms
Symptoms of mercury poisoning can be numerous and may occur either rapidly or over long periods of time. In general, symptoms occur and progress more rapidly the higher the dose of mercury encountered. Exposure to the various forms of mercury can result in some similar and some different symptoms. Symptoms can be grouped into three categories based on the form of mercury toxicity; 1) elemental and vaporized mercury, 2) organic mercury, and 3) inorganic mercury.

Venezuelan poodle moth

8/29/2012

the above picture is taken from this news article.
more on this moth here.

From the article
Shuker would love to nail down the flying poodle's precise species name: "Is it indeed a member of Arctiidae, or are its taxonomic affinities elsewhere? Could it even be a species still undescribed by science? Thousands of new insects are discovered every year in the South American rain forests, so it would be by no means unusual if Art's Venezuelan poodle moth proved to be one, too," he wrote on the ShukerNature blog.

and from this article I get this:
The fantastical insect was spotted by Dr. Arthur Anker, a zoologist from Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, who snapped the photo on a trip to Venezuela that winter. Though he has since inquired with other zoologists hoping to identify the creature, no one has yet been able to even name its genus.

and from here:
Scientist, it seems are just as puzzled by this mysterious insect which has yet to be identified. Many suspect that it belongs to the lepidopteran family Arctiidae and is closely related to the Muslin Moth. The Muslin Moth resembles the Venezuelan 'Poodle Moth', but differs in that the Muslin moth is less furry and is not known to inhabit the area, says Dr Karl Shuker.

for more on bugs go check out the bugs on this flicker site. VERY COOL.

Planning for next year

8/5/2012

So my over-arching themes for next year are going to be two fold.

1. the study of the human body.    This will be a multi-week study.   We will start with the brain (I think) and work our way through, though I might do a basic over view first of the different areas of the body first (aka skin, bones, muscles etc).   I bought a few books to help me with this, as well as we have a good book of the human body here at home.

2. the study of Canada.    We will do some of the native stuff, then work at immigration, and then he'll need to interview his grandparents on how they came over from Holland.   I've been thinking on how I want to do this when Homeschool Freebie of the Day sent me a link to a music education site called Keeping Score.    This of course got me thinking on the importance of learning some of the music of the time periods as well.

Throughout these studies we will learn reading and math and such like.   But rather than try to have monthly themes, I figured it would work better to have an over-arching theme which would be more doable in the long run. :)

Added some New Links today

8/1/2012

Learn the News. This is a website that simplifies New Stories and helps children to then think about them. I'm looking forward to browsing the site. They'll send me a story once a week with questions in it as well.

I learned about this site through Links to All things Free.

Student home

8/1/2012

We sent out student from France home on Monday.

It was a good experience having him here for the past three weeks. He learned some idioms, different short expressions, and had lots of experience practicing his English.

The lad had fun asking him questions and learning different things about France.