Funny Friday

I try to make Fridays light and fun but also inadvertently made this past Friday Funny. I was cooking dinner and grabbed what I thought was a squash from the piles of garden produce. Everyone said, that doesn't taste right, then Colin realised that it was a strange cucumber he had grown in his garden! It can be a bit tricky to identify what the kids grow since they like to plant random seeds!!

Another funny happened when the frog and toad food was left on the kitchen counter, it was almost used to season food since the container is a lot like a salt or pepper shaker, photo below. Must watch where we put that frog food!

Speaking of frogs some of the tadpoles we brought in from the cold pool to finish raising have changed into tree frogs. I knew a good warm up would speed their development and they were doomed in that pool on the below freezing nights. As it turned warmer and rainy on Friday we  released the 6 tree frogs that had finished morphing.  We'll have to over winter some of them, since they'll change too late and I don't know if we'll get another warm up but hopefully not too many.

For fun Friday science we built K'nex paddle boats, learning about wheels, axles and force, we took them to the lake to try out. As they were they didn't float but using some foam I had and some plastic lake toys the kids all got them floating, they did travel quite far.

We finished this week's batch of Mammals, the marsupials. This week we also learned about Pangaea which is when the continents all might have been connected. the kids had fun making their own variations of what this might have looked like.

We have been learning about Spain this week, didn't do anything too exciting but I'll make a Spanish themed meal some time this weekend. We are going to skip around a little more in geography since Europe is getting a little monotonous, not the countries themselves but the similarity of the lessons.


K'nex paddleboat photos:

 Comet's 24 week old photos:

 Tiny new tree frogs, one day a tadpole swimming, the next a tiny tree frog climbing up the edge of the cage:

Releasing a few tiny tree frogs on a warmer day:

 A couple of the kids variations of Pangaea:

 Would you like salt, peeper or frog food with that:

 Pretty autumn puppy!

Bugs and Boy Scouts

This week seemed to be all about bugs and Boy Scouts. Colin, Tristan and Trevor spent some more time helping their fellow scout and friend David to complete (almost complete) his Eagle scout project. It is a kiosk leading to a woods with trail information, information on wildlife and other things about the woods. Colin and Tristan also had to do more work in the insect merit badge. I think this will count as the easiest, because they already knew a lot about insects, badge for them that took the longest! They did it over the summer then handed in their work in September when scouts started again, only to be told they needed to re-do parts of the badge. We then did a new version more as a lapbook since I didn't want to just print out the same old merit badge worksheet again. For the second go round I tried to find new or unusual insect information for the boys so it wouldn't be insect 101 for the millionth time. I think it was somewhat fun but they were also very glad when it was done. Also one part of the badge requires taking 209 insect photos, my camera is not that great so our first bunch didn't come out very well, small insects are hard to photograph. So I challenged the boys to look for larger insects which in itself waqs tricky with it being October and less of them are around. They found quite a few species of beetle, wasps and the October prevalent wooly bear caterpillars. With Hayley's help they were able to photograph most of these pretty well. At the Thursday scout meeting we handed in their new work and brought along some of our insect friends only to be told that the counselor was actually satisfied with their old work. Oh well!!! At the scout meeting the boys learned more about first aid. They learned how to do CPR, on a toy bear, and how to make fake blood and fake skin for an upcoming disaster day. Tristan was elected as the "victim" for his patrol so he will act out being a snake bite victim next week and his patrol will have to save him.

Photos
One of our fall insect finds, Wooly Bear caterpillar

Trevor, Colin and Tristan helping David with his Eagle scout project:

 The dogs and sister came along too:

 The kids signed their names on the roof of the project, it will be covered over with shingles:

 More insects:

 Insect lapbook/scrapbook:

Insects and lapbooks at scouts:

 Scouts learning some first aid:

 Scouts making things for fake injuries:

 All the scouts wanted some fake blood on them!

Colin's Hike up Mt Jefferson

It's Colin's adventure not mine so I can't fill in the words, I'll let the pictures speak for themselves.  He and a few other scouts hiked up Mt. Jefferson over the weekend of 9/11/11 as part of the annual 9/11 ceremonies. Colin had a great time, except for the fact that it was near freezing on top and they had to stay for awhile.  He wants to do more mountain climbing in the future.