Red Wigglers & Earth Week

We had a really fun gathering today in which we talked about Earth Week and the things we can do to give Mother Nature a hand. Our activity involved Red Wigglers and their amazing ability to eat anything in its path. We talked about how the scraps of veg and fruit, along with newspaper give this wigglers an awesome environment to basically... poop. Their poop is really what we are after, it is rich in nutrients and helps us to grow wonderful plants and potted veggies.

We'll definitely be adding this to our strawberries this season!

The materials - Box, mixed greens for wriggler munching, newspaper for shredding and covering

Collecting our new friends

Checking to see how many

Shredding paper to cover on top

Bodacious Biomes

This project has been a labour of love for us and it is now complete. We have been following a free Science program and it got into Biomes. At the library I found this amazing book and we went through the entire thing :)

We would read about a particular biome and then draw what we read about. It was great too beacuse they would mention many of the inhabitants of various biomes so we would spend time looking them up to include them in the drawing.

It was pretty awesome that during our trek in the woods the other day the boy said to his sister, "you know...we're in a deciduous forest biome right now". Pretty cool that he picked it up :)

The book!

Little Missy's Grasslands

The boy's Coniferous Forest

And finally the whole lot of biomes we did over the past little while. The kiddos were pretty surprised to see just how much we covered :)

Outdoor Trek

We decided we would go exploring a small forested area near our home yesterday and the kiddos had a blast. It was pretty awesome to see all the bits of growth making an appearance.

Climb, climb, climb

They spent the entire time clearing this little stream of debris so it would 'go faster'. Messy work but they totally enjoyed doing it LOL

He was pulling and pulling on something and when it finally released it sprayed him full in the face. Quite the funny LOL

In the park afterwards for a little boot launching :)

Clay Workshop

We attended a clay workshop this week with other homeschoolers and it was pretty awesome! We started with cardboard covered in a thin layer of clay and ended up with some pretty amazing art work!

The instructor broke it down step by step for the children so that it was enjoyed by all. Even though they were all given the same instructions, no 2 were the same :)

Thanks for organizing it Carol!

This is all the clay we were given and really only used a very LITTLE bit of it, we took a lot of this home.

Our little friend LOL

The finished product!

Victooooorious!

We have completed our Medieval Castle!! This was such a fun project to do with the kiddos! We took our time doing it but it was one of those requested things to do!

Our focus was to have the main structures within the castle: main wall, main building, towers, portcullis and draw bridge. We also wanted to cover, much to Mr. Monkey's delight, the different machines used for attack and defense during that time period: embrasures, battering rams, siege tower, catapults and a trebuchet.

Awesome project, everyone felt successful :)

Finishing the siege tower

Trebuchet during construction phase. This thing works well and became the new toy!

Firing the trebuchet

Our Medieval Castle completed with all machines present and castle pieces accounted for :) Lots of smiles all around!

Mystery Class - We have it all figured out...I think :)

We did the longitude calculations this week!! That was an exercise for the noodle LOL After some checking... and rechecking... labeling... and relabeling (not my fault, I blame the kids, yeah that's it...the kids), we have our graphs in the right locations (we think).

Here they are :)

Calculating... Carol Photoshop'd the smoke that had formed around my head :)

The results! Okay Alex how did we do?!?!?!


Fun, fun, fun!

The construction continues...

We've been galloping along at a steady pace, having almost completed math for the year!
Our other subjects are coming along nicely as well. We are back to 'hopefully' completing our Medieval Castle this week, we made some good progress today. We will be finishing the siege tower tomorrow and I would like to build a small trebuchet to add to our castle. We had a blast with the catapults so that should be fun too!

Making their Battering Rams

Tooth picks for the details :)

Dried and painted, maybe not totally authentic but done none the less :)

Painting the battle arena's walls

More to come!!