Happy Hearts

We are on week 4 of 6.  This is what we’ve learned so far:

Week 1:

Learned basic body parts: head, thorax, and abdomen.  Also what the exoskeleton is, and what it is for.  We read Bible verses where insects were mentioned and discussed our thoughts of why God made them.  We got an insect terrarium, and caught different insects and observed them.  We caught ants, beetles, dragonfly, mud dauber, earwigs, 3 black spiders (who fought the whole time until 1 killed the other 2!), roly-polys, a tiny grasshopper, a centipede, a houselfy, and a butterfly.  We also caught a huge wolf spider we that was really cool! 

We read in Exodus about the plague of locusts and talked about crop damage made by insects and pesticides farmers use and some of the toxic effects they have on people.  We made insects out of construction paper, and we went to a local river and they waded in the water looking for water striders.  We hiked through the woods and we saw what seemed like millions of dragonflies.

Week 2:

Learned about insect’s eating habits and parts needed to eat with.  Mandibles, probiscis, antennae, and compound eyes were learned this week.  We talked about how we get our food, compared to how insects have to get theirs.  We made “ants on a log” snack and colored insect pictures. 

We did an experiment by placing honey, old meat, and plain water in little dishes outside to see what kind of insects were attracted to each one.  Ants loved the honey, we didn’t attract any flies with the meat, only more anys.  Nothing touched the water.  We made hats with antanne on them, and pretended to use them as one of our senses.   

We got videos and books from the library about bees, praying mantises, and beetles.  They enjoyed those very much.

Week 3:

This week we learned about mating and the metamorphosis of butterflies.  Some of the vocab words from this week were larva, pupa, and crysalis.  We read in the Bible how God made animals and man alike to be “fruitful and multiply the earth”.  We talked about how males and females were made to mate….each after their own kind, and how perfect and wonderful God’s plan is for a man and a woman to marry and create new life.  We read butterfly poems.

We made a poster of the stages of a Monarch butterfly metamorphosis.  We ordered a butterfly kit with live caterpillars.  Right now 3 out of 5 of them are in the pupal stage.  We are still waiting for the slowpoke ones to catch up!  As soon as they are all in a chrysalis, we move them into their “house” and wait for them to emerge as adults!  This has been the coolest project, we all were amazed at how fast and how big they grew!

We acted out the butterfly life cycle with leaves from outside (to eat after we hatched), a sheet to wrap ourselves in for our chrysalis, which we “attached” to the couch, and then we emerged, waited for our wings to dry, and then we “flew” around collecting nectar out of flowers with our probiscis.  The kids loved this so much, we did it several times.

We talked about migration, and they learned where Mexico is.  We took turns making our way to Mexico through the US, naming the states we traveled through.  We made butterfly kites.  We watched a video about butterflies.

Week 4:

Learned about dangerous insects and diseases some spread.  We also learned about insects that are nymphs when they are born, and only molt throughout life instead of going through complete metamorphosis. 

We learned a lot about mantises, and played a camouflage game.  More nature hiking, looking for signs of insect life, of course we found so much.  T1 especially enjoyed finding spittle bugs.  We made insect sun catchers out of wax paper and crayon shavings.  All 3 of them really enjoyed this activity.  We watched a video about beetles.  We made bugs out of playdough.

Tomorrow we are learning about parasites.

I am only planning updating week by week.  A or I may stop by and put some random things that happen in, but for the most part, this will be pretty slow moving.:)

Well, yet again, another attempt at a blog. 

The name we chose for our “school” is Happy Hearts Christian School.  T1 is starting “kindergarten”, so I wanted to keep track of his progress, and H and T2’s preschool progress.  We have decided (finally!) to go with Konos curriculum, since we’ve always taught things this way.  We are starting our first unit from that after we are finished with the insect study we are currently doing.

“A” will hopefully be joining in here, as he is just as an important ”teacher” to them as I am.  Here’s where the kids are at as of now:

T1 (4) – Is reading now at I’d guess 2nd grade level.  He loves to read, especially his Bible!  Handwriting skills are practically zero.  He can write his name.  We have been working on the rest of the alphabet, and he’s got a long way to go.  I haven’t seen any improvement since we’ve really started focusing on that.  He knows everything taught in a regular kindergarten already, so we are just teaching him whatever we want this year.:)  We will be working on basic math skills as well, but we are not doing a math curriculum for another year or so. 

H (3) – She has been asking me to teach her to read for about a month now.  She is on the 2nd book of the Bob books.  She has been doing surprisingly well.  She has known her alphabet and letter sounds for quite some time now, but I really didn’t think she was close to being able to start sounding words out.  I was wrong!  She knows her numbers, shapes, etc.  Her handwriting skills are very good for her age.  She is very artistic, and enjoys every kind of art activity. 

T2 (2) -He’s our little follower.  He wants to do everything his big bro and sis do.  Far to often, he just gets frustrated because he just can’t.  But we encourage him to try.:)  He thinks every letter is “A”.  He knows animals really well.  He likes to color, paint, and do playdough.