Mommy toad

On another trip to Bushy we came across this female toad laying eggs, you will see here more clearly if you click on the photo to enlarge it. We were amazed at how many eggs she had laid, they are small black eggs, and there are literally hundreds all over her and around her. (Thanks Grandad Jim for correcting us, we looked it up on the internet to check).

The tadpoles are growing!

The tadpoles are getting really big now, and have a big appetite(we are feeding them gold fish flakes and boiled lettuce). They spend a lot of time at the top of the tank getting oxygen from the bubbles on top, there are 8 who have survived, and their names are Squiggly, Bumpy, Lettuce, Wriggly, Bubbly, Lazy, Gobbly, Jumpy

Microscope

We finally have a microscope after wanting to get one for a year. This one can be used in two ways, either as a normal microscope with light shining from under, or as a high powered magnifying glass with the light shining above (making it possible to see flowers, leaves and spiders up really close). We were lucky to pick up some prepared slides already, and could not believe it when they had slides of human blood, brain cells, heart, kidney from a mammal, and stomach cells, as well as a whole selection on frogs (frog skin, intenstines, lungs), everything that we are studying right now. So we really enjoyed looking at all of these things today, it was great to actually see red blood cells after just studying about them. The children then collected flowers, leaves, rocks, an ant and a spider to look at under the magnifying glass function, we were all amazed to see that the Lord puts such a lovely pattern on every grass blade, and colours the flowers so delicately and beautifully. We looked at an ant through the microscope and magnifying glass, Jude loved this one, and couldn't stop looking, but Eden said that she regrets ever picking up an ant, and wondered why God had made it. The spider was incredible to look at, the detail of the eye, and the legs, as well as the different hues of hair all over its body, Eden and Niamh could not bring themselves to look at it for too long though, they will have to get used to being this close and personal with hairy insects. We also looked at a human hair, and the cut on moms finger, really amazing to see a small cut in such detail, and how the body is in the process of repairing it.

Learning about Bach

Since Eden has played quite a few Bach pieces now, and her teacher keeps on giving her titbits of information (like you thought you have a big family, well Bach had 20 children), we have decided to do our own study of him at home.


This is a lovely lighthearted biography of Bach's life. In the cd he arrives at a little girls house who is practicing a piece of his music (coincidentally the one Eden has just learnt), and he plays for her, he then brings his whole orchestra in, and gives her the story of his life, and plays his music from the different times of his life (he was even jailed, and wrote some lovely music for his wife and children while in jail).
This cd is a lovely selection of Bach's most famous pieces.

We have also been playing a lot of his music through spotify, which is an amazing online application that allows you to play any music for free, they have loads and loads of classical, so there is no need to buy any more cd's.

Paintings using Monet's style

We have taken this photo from our friends the Bucklands, who took this photo on their recent holiday in New Zealand, to use as our painting.
Monet focused on the effect of the light on a scene, and how quickly the light would change a landscape. He tried to capture the effect of the light in his paintings, and would paint the same scene over and over at different times of the day, and at different times of the year. We studied this photo to see how the light had affected the landscape. We tried to capture the colours as closely as we could. Mom printed out the above photo on card, and we painted over the photo with earbuds for the sky, and different thicknesses of paintbrushes to get the brush strokes. We used acrylic paint, and mom mixed most of the colours. We did all of the painting ourselves, and really really enjoyed doing this painting. Thank you Auntie Belinda for taking such a great photo, we would love to come to New Zealand, and can't believe that Rachel was standing right there.
This is Eden's - I really enjoyed doing the mountain on the right, and was really proud at how it turned out, I liked blending the many colours in. I was also happy with how the grass in the front looks.
This is Niamh's.

Claude Monet

We are studying Claude Monet, at first we did not like his paintings, but the more we have studied him, the more amazing they are. Niamh and I will be doing a Monet style painting of our own. Hopefully we can go to Paris to visit his famous garden where he painted all his waterlilly paintings, and all the pond paintings with the Japanese bridge.

The tadpoles emerge!

There was huge excitement in the house today as some of the tadpoles begin to emerge.

Here is one at the bottom of the new tank. He did not swim around immediately as we would have thought, making us think that he is not doing well with the fresh water we put in his tank (even though it is treated to remove all the chemicals). Tomorrow we will go and get water from the pond and see if they will do better in that water (as well as get some more eggs, just in case these one's die because of the new water).

We are studying the life cycle of a frog!

We went off on a trip to find frogspawn today in Bushy park. It did not take too long before we found a clump of jellied frogspawn floating on top of the water, it was in an offshoot pond of a mainpond. We were all sooooo excited to find it, especially after Eden had said there was no way anything would be living in that disgusting water.

The mass of jellied frogspawn that we took our eggs from.
Holding up the jar of 13 eggs. We noticed one of the egg sacs are damaged so we think already that that one won't survive.
A little distance on we came across another little pond, and were astounded that there were literally thousands of eggs on top of the water, all in various stages of development, some looked just about ready for tadpoles to emerge, they were mostly black with very little egg sac around.
Our eggs arrived home safe and sound.

People sketches

Top one by Niamh, bottom one by Jude.

Sketches of people

by Eden

Learning about cells

We loved exploring the different parts of a cell on this website we came across:

http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/begin/cells/insideacell/

Experiments with skin - receptors and nerve endings Part 1

In this experiment mom used a piece of wire that had two points. We were blindfolded and had to tell mom if we could feel one or two points on the top of our hand. If the points were close together on the top of our hand we could only feel one point. Mom then moved the points wider and wider apart until we could feel both points. There are not many nerve receptors on the top of our hands and so when the points are close together, we can't feel both, it is only when they are moved further apart that another receptor can feel the point.

No matter how close the points are on our fingertips, we could always feel the two points, this is because there are much more receptors on our fingertips.
The top of our feet could also not feel two points until they were moved further apart. Not many receptors here either.

Experiments with skin - receptors and nerve endings Part 2

We were blindfolded while mom drew a dot on our foot. We had to take the pen and draw a dot exactly where mom drew hers.
There are not many receptors on the top of the foot, so look how far away our mark is from moms.
Our fingertips have the most nerve endings and receptors, so we managed to hit the mark exactly where mom had.
Our pen mark was right on top of the one mom made. We use our fingers to feel everything and discover the world around us, so they have so many receptors - we don't use the tops of our feet to feel things, and so they don't have many receptors.

Learning about the skin - Eden

This is my first drawing of a cross section - it is the skin, I had loads of fun drawing this.
My poster on the skin.

We love Ms Frizzle

We have quite a few of these books that cover many aspects of Science in a unique way, so it was quite nice to get hold of one on the human body, we are looking out for the dvd. It makes quite a nice change for the younger ones from all the reference books on the body, and Eden loves the imaginative side of it too.

Niamh reciting Psalm 8

We are really enjoying memorizing portions of the bible, even Jude is picking up parts of the verses - we have started learning chapters, or parts of chapters. This is Niamh reciting the whole of Psalm 8.

Jude learning about the body.

Since the girls are learning about the human body, I thought it would be a good idea for Jude and his friends to join in too.

Jude painting an full sized outline of himself - he is extremely careful in his painting and colouring in, very nice fine motor control Jude ;)
Ciara could not keep away from the paints for one second.
Our first lesson was the sense of taste, this is Jude most probably tasting very concentrated unsweetened coffee - it is bitter.