Mar. 5, Lesson

Today we started our day with a nature walk. It is interesting looking at nature through a boys eyes. We were suppose to focus in on animal prints so what was his first focal point? His grandfather's shoe print, hmmmm, was their something to that? Well, we did actually find some prints.
Besides the Goose, Chicken and dog prints, we found quite a few Quail prints. After we found them we discussed the difference between the 3 kinds of bird prints; size in length and width, depth. The geese are heavier so their prints are deeper, also their claws are much more noticeable.
After looking at prints for a while we directed our attention to some field grass growing close to the fence line. There were Lady bugs, (Coccinellidae) crawling everywhere. Brennan took the pictures on his camera and I forgot to get copies of his pictures. So I went online and captured a couple to add to this blog. This ladybug pic was not from a nature site. Our ladybug only had four black spots not 7 like this one.
There was one lone White Cabbage Butterfly,(Peiris rapae), picture is from http://crawford.tardigrade.net/bugs/BugofMonth01.html
I want to take advantage of Brennan's interest in birds at this juncture in his life and will let him chose one bird a week to do research onI found a link at The Nature Study Bog for a Bird Colouring Book.
http://www.birds.cornell.edu/schoolyard/T_Resouces/ColoringBook.pdf

It will take 6mos to go through all their pictures and by then I will have found some more.

His first choice was the Red Wing Blackbird.
http://www.birds.cornell.edu/AllAboutBirds/BirdGuide/Red-winged_Blackbird.html

I am not sure if it was because I kept stopping and asking him to listen to the different "voices" of the birds so that he could discern that one or because I told him it was his Uncle's favourite bird.

Besides going to the Cornell sight to look up the Red Wing Blackbird we also click on the song link so that we could here it's song alone. I want Brennan to be able to identify birds by sight, sound, flight patterns and silhouettes. All these information is readily available at the Cornell site.
Every time I find really interesting sites I have been adding them to a Word Doc that I started a while back.
It was getting so long I started organizing it by subject. I have been thinking of making it into a pdf or excel file and adding a link to it on this blog. Don't know if anyone would be interested or not though.
We finished Chapter 3 in the Astronomy book and have only one chapter left. Brennan took the final test and afterward we took a virtual tour of the galaxy and the universe. I found the web sites through the Usbourne Internet linked Science Encyclopedia I just got.
I wish I would have bought it sooner. If you are limited on how many books you can buy, put this one at the top of the Science list. It can be used throughout the school years, covers all facts of Science, has great photos, information and resources. Brand new it costs $40.00 but I found it for a lot less including the shipping on ebay. I always check ebay.com, half.com, and Amazon.com when looking for a specific book. I have found some great buys. Thrifts shops have also been a good resource as well.
I think I have taken to long on each chapter. Although it has been a lot of fun. I also wanted to make it special for him.
This is the Carina Nebula as photographed by the Hubble telescope. This picture came from the Hubble Site, a fantastic source of space photos:
http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2007/16/image/a/