Winnie-the-Pooh

Ian is obsessed with the Winnie-the-Pooh chapter books.  For the past month, I have been reading two chapters per day out loud.  Ian also listens to audio recordings of the books.  We made special bookmarks with an appropriate story picture for each book.  Both of the boys make daily references to the Pooh stories.  They talk about visiting the Five Pine Trees, Pooh Corner, and Ian Corner when they play outside.  Some of their favorite phrases are "Bother", "Ow! Hot!", and "Silly Mama (old Bear)".

Books:  Winnie-the-Pooh by Milne;  The House at Pooh Corner by Milne;  Return the the Hundred Acre Wood by Benedictus

Earthworms

Experiment

First we prepared a worm jar as described in Small Wonders by Garrett & Thomas.  We collected worms for the jar from our compost pile.  Then we placed the following food on top of the soil: carrot, apple, brussel sprouts, & lettuce.  Every few days, we sprayed water into the jar and made observations.  After a few weeks, we returned the worms to the compost pile.

Hypothesis

• worms will eat cornmeal
• worms will eat all food left on the surface
• worms will mix layers

Observations

• apple peels disappeared first
• carrot peels were pulled underground
• brussel sprouts & lettuce remained on the soil surface
• worms were often seen in the sand layer
• soil layers were mixed
• castings were found on the soil surface
• less cornmeal could be seen at the end of the experiment

Books:  An Earthworm's Life by Himmelman;  Wiggling Worms at Work by Pfeffer;  There's a Hair in My Dirt! A Worm's Story by Larson

Arachnids

We collected a harvestmen from the backyard for observation.  Harvestmen look very similar to daddy longleg spiders, but harvestmen are not classified as spiders.  We also caught a fly to feed the harvestmen.  Harvestmen do not have venom or silk glands, so the harvestmen intensely fought the fly physically and took his legs off.

For Halloween, we decorated our front porch with an orb-web made out of yarn and a stuffed garden spider.

Books:  Spinning Spiders by Berger;  The Very Busy Spider by Carle