Metamorphosis

As part of our spring nature study, we've been watching caterpillars become butterflies. We purchased a kit from FlutterBuys, although next year we'll give it a go with wild-caught caterpillars.

We brought home our caterpillars on May 17, and all of them had become chrysalides 11 days later. Two days after the last caterpillar had become a chrysalis, we transferred them to their mesh cage. We're now waiting anxiously for our butterflies to emerge!

May 20, 3 days

May 22, 5 days

May 25, 8 days

May 30, 13 days
Ready to be moved to their new home!

This is what was left behind in the container; very interesting!
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Science: Observation and description

Boxcar Children Stew

Our most recent read-aloud was The Boxcar Children, and we all look forward to continuing with this series. The boys have continued to incorporate the children and their adventures into their daily play. After finishing the book, we decided to make a stew for dinner, just as the children had made while living in the woods.

Although we used potatoes in place of turnips and added some rosemary and pepper to ours (and cooked it on the stove rather than over a fire pit in the middle of the forest!), it was otherwise just as the book described. It was a great opportunity to practice some kitchen skills (peeling, dicing, stirring). We also baked some biscuits to go along with our meal.

* * *

"The girls were delighted with the meat and the little vegetables. With Henry's knife they cut the meat into little pieces. Then they filled the kettle with water from the fountain and put the meat into it, with a tin plate for a cover.

Jessie cut the tops off the vegetables and washed them in the brook.

'I'll put them in after the meat has cooked awhile," she said."

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Boxcar Children Stew

Ingredients:

Olive oil
2 lbs beef chunks
1 onion, diced
2 cups beef broth
2 cups water
rosemary
pepper
salt
1/4 cup flour
4 potatoes, diced
5 carrots, chunked

Directions:

Warm some olive oil over medium heat in a dutch oven or large stockpot. Cook the beef chunks and diced onion until browned. Add the beef broth, water, flour, and spices. Bring to a boil, then cover and simmer for one hour.

Add the potatoes and carrots. Simmer for another hour.

Serve and enjoy!

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Language Arts: Reading and Viewing, Speaking and Listening
Fine Arts: Dramatization
Health: Nutrition

Me on the Map

To help the boy get a better sense of how cities, provinces, countries, and continents fit together, we did a "Me on the Map" project.



Our project included the following categories:

1. Me - draw self-portrait
2. My house - draw house and write house number
3. My street - cut and glue paper road and houses and write street name
4. My city - use Internet to find city logo, print, paste, and write city name
5. My province - colour and paste printed province, add flag, and write province name
6. My country - colour and paste printed country, add flag, and write country name
7. My continent - colour, label, and paste printed continent and write continent name
8. My planet - colour printed globe green/blue and write Earth

We fastened the circles together using a one-inch fastener, which worked perfectly to let the circles rotate to see the layer beneath.

(With thanks to Finally in First via Pinterest!)

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Social Studies: Mapping

Farm, Zoo, Beach, Aquarium!

We took advantage of a stretch of nice weather to visit some of our favourite places.

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Science: Observation

Monkey

The boy has mastered the monkey bars!
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Physical Education: Skills

Fun with Carcassonne Jr.

Shapes!
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Mathematics: Shape and space

Endangered

Today the boys were organizing their Schleich animal figurines into habitats. They had forest, grassland, desert, and Arctic regions.

They weren't sure where their snowy owl would fit - Arctic or forest - so we looked it up in our Animals Visual Encyclopedia. Unfortunately, this not-so-complete encyclopedia didn't include the snowy owl, so we found some information online at Canadian Geographic Kids instead.

Once the snowy owl was placed in the correct area, we continued to browse through the animal encyclopedia. We noticed that each animal description included its status regarding whether or not it was endangered. This lead us to the IUCN Red List categories and criteria. We also explored both types of threats that cause species decline and possible conservation actions that can be taken.

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Science: Observation and description
Social Studies: Caring for the environment