Melanie the Monarch has hatched

Yesterday morning I was awakened by excited children telling me that they could see the butterfly through the chrysilis. I wish I could have gotten a photo without such flash glare.
About an hour after getting up in the morning, we got to watch Melanie the Monarch emerge.
You can see a video from 2008 that we filmed of a hatching.....keep on your voloume because the kids voices are so little and cute!

After a few hours of letting Melanies wings dry, we headed outdoors to let her go free.


You can tell Melanie is a girl because she has no hind wing spot.


I showed the difference between the two genders in this past post.



I didn't even have a moment to take a picture before Melanie headed to the tops of the trees!

Science Sunday--Our Butterflies

Once again this year, I ordered painted lady butterfly caterpillars from Insect Lore. And once again, we weren't disappointed.
Our caterpillars arrived about 2 weeks ago, and within 4 days all the caterpillars had become a chrysalis.
This morning the hatching began.


I love how these butterflies like to stay around for a little while after being released from their "house". They seem to enjoy being held for a while before flying up into the trees.

Science Sunday--Learning about seeds

Spring is having a hard time arriving in our neck of the woods, so I thought I would try and speed things up a bit by doing a plant and seeds unit with my kindergarteners.

I used the book Oh Say Can You Seed? as out main guide for this unit. It is the perfect mix of information, using a rhyming text for my 4 and 5 year olds. The first activity we did was to soak bean seeds in water overnight. The next day we examined our seeds. The kids were very excited to be able to find all the parts of the seed...... including the cute little bean embryo.
We then lined a jar with papertowels. Then we gently put several bean seeds between the glass jar and the papertowel.

We were careful to keep the papertowel wet, and then we waited to see what would happen.

While we waited I found this great Garden Preschool Pack at HomeschoolCreations.

Make sure to head over to HomeschoolCreations and check out all free printables available.

We also discovered the hidden "star" in an apple. We also found a lot of seeds!

After 4 days, our bean seeds began to sprout!

At 17 days, we had these marvelous bean plants.

Luke is examining the original seed on his bean plant.

Happy science, everyone!!

We Made Worms--- Fun Science Sunday

I have to thank Steve Spangler science for this weekends fun science experiment. We had quite a bit of ingredients left from last years Leprechaun Fun Science kit--so tonight we made worms.

Insta-Worms are created through an amazing reaction involving a polymer taken from seaweed and combined with a little salt to produce instant worms.

First we measured the water into the dish and then measured the "worm activator" powder into the water.

Stir until completely dissolved.

Squeeze the "worm goo" into the water and activator....and instantly---you have made a worm.

I love the looks of concentration on my little scientists' faces.


We also discovered that pickle juice also works as a worm activator.

Polymers ROCK!!

Fun Science Sunday

This week's Science Sunday comes directly from Steve Spangler Science.

Items needed: jar or glass

coins

index card

interested small children

The object of this experiment was to get the coin into the jar without touching the coin.

We got a penny into a jar without touching it, using Newton's Law of Inertia.
The first Law of Motion states that an object at rest will remain at rest unless an outside force acts upon it. When you "flick" the card---on an even path---out from under the coin, there is no force on the penny, only on the index card.

This has great WOW! appeal. Sure to impress all the big brothers and sisters---and even the grandparents.

Science Sunday-oil and water and paint pictures

Oil and water are always fun things to "play" with during science time. Today, I added paint to the mix to make some fun science art projects.

We needed tempra paint, oil, water, a glass cake pan, small bowls and medicine droppers.
Put about a 1/4 cup of oil into a small bowl.
Add quite a bit of tempra paint and mix together. (If you have powered tempra paint this would work even better)

Stir the oil and paint together.

Put water into the cake pan. Using the medicine droppers, drop the paint and oil into the water.

We see that the oil and water and paint don't mix. We made wonderful snakes and great blobs.

After getting the colors "just right" I laid a piece of card stock on top of the water and oil and paint.

The results was a very cool design on our papers. Be prepared to repeat this time and again.

It is fun to see new designs with every paper placed into the pan.

On the science front, we learned that oil and water do not mix.