My Cool HomeschoolHomeschooling Resources

As I Watch is another picture book I’ve had the privilege of illustrating. Written by Chitra Sounder and published by Guardian Angel Publishing, this simple yet beautiful book describes the life-cycle of a butterfly.

Designed especially for the youngest readers, As I Watch follows the development of the insect from egg, to larva, to caterpillar, to chrysalis, to butterfly and back to egg again. It’s a great starting point for a unit study about butterflies or insects in general. The illustrations are done in oils and realistically depict the tiger swallowtail butterfly.

If you have young children and are interested in doing a unit study on butterflies, here are some other online resources you might find helpful:

EnchantedLearning.com – This site has so much information for young butterfly enthusiasts! While you may need to pay a small membership fee to access all of the worksheets, it’s well-worth it. They’ve even organized all of the information into a hypertext book, covering topics such as butterflies and moths, defense mechanisms, classification, butterfly gardens, and butterfly anatomy. You’ll also find printouts featuring the lifecycle.

ParentingOurKids.com – Among many other resources, this site also offers butterfly lesson plans. Some of these are complete lessons in themselves, while others are links to worksheets and puzzles. All would be good additions to your unit study!

TheHealthyHomeschool.com – Here you’ll find all you need to know about how to plant your own butterfly garden.

Glorious-Butterfly.com -  – While this site isn’t particularly a schooling site, you’ll find some great ideas for butterfly study here as well. The lesson plans focus on the monarch butterfly, its development, and migration.

InsectLore.com -  This site sells the life cycle kits for various insects, including butterflies. For about $20.00 you can get a kit with a coupon for live caterpillars.

Enjoy a butterfly study with your children — and watch the wonder of nature together!

Last night, we had another encounter with our local wildlife. It happened late at night, or rather, early in the morning.

I was up late working on a project, when around 1:00 a.m., I heard our chickens clucking outside. We have only a few chickens right now, mostly roosters, and we let them wander around the yard free-ranging. For quite some time now, they’ve been roosting at night in the trees, lately choosing to roost in a cedar tree in our front yard. I thought it was a good choice, as they are tucked within the branches and hidden from predators.

Or so I thought. Last night, when I heard the clucking, I knew something was wrong. Chickens are sound sleepers, and they are quite disoriented when awakened in the night. So when they wouldn’t stop making so much noise, I found my shoes, grabbed a flashlight, and headed outside.

I saw something moving near the tree, and thought that perhaps a coyote was there. (We’ve had a lot of trouble with coyotes in our town lately). “Ha!” I hollered out, hoping to scare it away. Suddenly, a huge bird flew up from the ground. I watched as it took off in the opposite direction, flying out over my neighbor’s house.

I continued toward the tree, where I found one of our small hens lying on the ground. The large bird, which must have been an owl, had planned on making this little hen its dinner. In the light of the flashlight, I could tell the chicken’s face was a little bloodied, and it seemed to be having trouble breathing.

I couldn’t leave it there, so I picked it up and started towards the house, thinking I’d find a box somewhere to put it in. As I went, it seemed to come to its senses and began clucking and hollering. I put it in our empty chick pen and headed off to bed.

How’s the bird? She seems to be doing fine, though she’s still in the pen recuperating. And the owl? It will have to find another food source. Chicken just isn’t on the menu this week!

A few weeks ago, for my son Luke’s sixth birthday, we had as many family members that could drop by for a party. It was a pretty day, so we ate outside at the picnic table, and with so many cousins, we created quite a mess. As my husband went to take out the trash, however, we were all met with a interesting surprise. There, stuck in the bottom of a plastic garbage can, were two small opossums.

They must have been there a while, as we hadn’t used that particular can for quite some time. We decided they had climbed in looking for something to eat, but because the sides were so slick, they were unable to climb out again. They were curled up in the bottom of the can, one on top of the other.

We decided to wait until dusk to let them out, as opossums are nocturnal and they’d have a better chance at escaping safely from any would-be predators such as the neighborhood dogs. We covered most of the opening of the can with the lid, to help them “hide” for the rest of the day, and then we went on with the party.

At dusk, before everyone left, our opossum lesson continued. We carried the can out back behind our house to the woods, tipped it over, and dumped them out. One of the opossums took off right away, while the other managed more slowly to find his way through the trees. They were both glad to be free, and we were glad for the opportunity to see them go.

We’re much more careful, now, about leaving the lids on the cans, though we’ve still had some opossum sightings around our trash bin. And just when we had gotten the cats and the chickens to leave it alone…

Here’s a fun craft to go along with a nature lesson. You can even work at it with your very small ones to help them learn their shapes.

Supplies:

• Brown paper lunch bags
• Newspaper
• Rubber bands
• Construction paper- yellow and brown
• Googly eyes
• Shoe box

1. To begin, cut three small triangles from the yellow construction paper, two large triangles from the brown construction paper. While you can cut out these shapes for young children, older children can cut them out by themselves.

2. Give your child a paper bag and some newspaper. Have your child tear the newspaper into strips and place some in the bottom of the paper bag. Twist the bag near the bottom to form the head of the bird. Wrap a rubber band around it to keep it in place.

3. Have your child tear another sheet of newspaper into long strips. Stuff these strips into the paper bag as well, filling it halfway.

4. Twist the bag again, wrapping another rubber band around it to keep it in place. Spread out the un-stuffed top of the bag to form the tail.

5. Find the three small yellow triangles. Glue one small triangle on the head with one angle pointing downward, creating a beak. Glue the two remaining yellow triangles to the bottom of the bird, forming feet. Affix each foot so that the straight side of the triangle can be seen when facing the front of the bird.

**TIP: While glue sticks are less messy and will work well when gluing paper to paper, white school glue works better when affixing the googley eyes to the bird. Be sure to allow for sufficient drying time when using white glue.

8. Glue the two brown triangles to the sides of the birds for wings.

9. Glue googly eyes to the head of the bird.

10. Have your child tear another sheet of newspaper into strips. Place the strips into a shoebox, forming a nest. Place the bird in the nest. You can also use this time to talk about all the things birds might use to build their nests.

For books to go along with your craft, you might try About Birds: A Guide for Children by Cathryn Sill ; Birds, Nests, and Eggs by Mel Boring; and Bird Songs by Betsy Franco.

While visiting in Florida, we took a day to visit Kelly Park in Apopka, FL. If you are ever in the area during the spring or summer, this park is a must-see.

The main feature of the park is Rock Springs, a clear, cold freshwater spring that comes up from a break in a rock outcropping. The spring becomes a stream that visitors can lazily float down on inner tubes, and it eventually empties into a pool where they can swim before continuing on a little further. Lifeguards are stationed along the stream and around the pool. The park has a well-build boardwalk to follow as you enter or exit the stream, and there’s also a sandy beach where small children can play.

Although the floats aren’t provided, you can rent a tube from $3 – $5 per day from nearby businesses, or you can bring your own. We did some of both — took a few floats we had on hand and rented a couple more, but the kids also enjoyed swimming down the stream with no inner tube at all.

Our other favorite activity to do at the park is search for shark teeth. When we reach the end of the first part of the stream, everyone hops out of their floats, reaches down to the bottom, and pulls up handfuls of shells and rocks. We carefully search through them, looking for very small shark teeth or some other treasure. This past trip, we found a different kind of tooth, which we believe to have once belonged to an alligator.

You’ll also find playgrounds, pavilions, and picnic tables at the park, along with a couple of bath houses and a concession booth. Entrance to the park was just $1 per person or $5 for a carload of eight. All in all, it was a great way to spend the day. It was also the impetus of a new homeschooling investigation: Just where do all those shark teeth come from?

Up above us, in the three metal beams that held up the roof of the gas station, was nest after nest filled with baby birds! Every couple of feet along the beams, barn swallows had built their nests and were now busy feeding their young. And each time an adult would fly to the nest, the babies would open their mouths and eat, and the bird would take off again. There were so many of them in one place – we counted at least 20 – and because their location at the gas station meant people were always coming and going, they didn’t seem to mind us one bit. 

We all were out of the car now, just standing by the gas pump and watching the birds. Not only did I wish I had my purse that day, but now I really wished I had a camera. Who knew we would witness such an amazing bit of nature, especially when all we had set out to do was drop off a boy scout book? 

We watched the birds a little longer, then loaded back up in the car and started towards the interstate. I didn’t recognize where we were yet, but I took my best guess as to which direction we needed to go. Fortunately, I chose the right way, and we were finally headed home. Unfortunately, we still had thirty minutes to go. 

As we drove along, we talked about everything that had happened on our adventure. We thought Dad must be home by now and was probably wondering where we were. After all, by the time we pulled back into the driveway, our twenty-minute round trip had taken us nearly two hours! 

But Dad wasn’t even home yet!  The kids thought that was great – we had been on this big adventure, and if they didn’t tell him about it, he would never even know! (They did wait a while to tell him the story.)

Though it had been a long trip, we decided that seeing the birds had made it all worthwhile. Even five-year-old Luke, who doesn’t like long car trips, didn’t seem to mind this one. And we decided we should go back sometime to show the birds to Dad and John… we’d just take a shorter route.

Photo by Jerry Ting

Over the Memorial Day holiday weekend, we went to the Smokey Mountains of Tennessee for a camping trip/family reunion. Late Saturday and Sunday nights, we saw a most amazing sight: the blue ghost fireflies. 

I had first seen these fireflies last year when a friend told me about them. A gentleman in our community, Mr. Don Lewis, has acreage out in the country that is heavily wooded, and each May he invites people to his land to watch the fireflies. We went on Mother’s Day, a good time to go since it wasn’t crowded, and witnessed these beautiful insects. 

The blue ghost fireflies don’t blink – they just glow – and fly low near the ground. If you catch one and shine a light on it, you can see that it’s dark in color and only about as big as a grain of rice. But when you let it go again, it will fly and glow a beautiful luminescent blue color. There were quite a few of these fireflies in Tennessee this year, glowing back in the woods, much like little blue fairies. 

Mr. Lewis has found other types of fireflies on his land as well. Besides those that blink intermittently, he’s also discovered some that blink at exactly the same time, as if they were synchronized. 

Though we’ve learned a lot about fireflies from Mr. Lewis, he taught us another lesson as well. He encouraged us to go out and watch the fireflies in our own yard and woods, to sit in the dark and just see what appeared. What amazing wonders of nature we could observe if we just took the time to slow down, sit down, and see what comes into view, both during the day – and at night.