If a picture is worth 1,000 words...

...then here is my 4,ooo for today.

Chicken Run is at least 10 times her original size (she can no longer even fit into her tunnel!) and she is fully feathered!

Here is a timeline game I made, which we played today for the first time.

This is the sort of thing you would pay a hundred dollars for in a montessori shop! I paid about 20 dollars for the blue booklets (along with some yellow ones not pictured) and made all the other materials myself. I could have made the books as well, since they have the text in a free printable format online , but I bought cheap ink for my ink-guzzling epson CX6400 and now it won't print at all, anyway the ink cartridges for my model would run me about 55 bucks, so this was a bargain.

Here is a close-up of one of the cards. This one shows a trilobite, and some other ancient sea creatures.

Budding Paleontologists

We've come so far in our prehistory studies! As an introduction to fossils and paleontology I have lined up a series of really fun hands-on experiences. Today we started our day off with a discussion of excavation techniques and the scientific method while the kids "excavated" unknown skeletal remains (owl pellets, not exactly cambrian life, but I wanted something more realistic than the usual plaster-of-paris fossil experiences.) I have some of those lined up as well, but I wanted our introduction to be meaty (but I suppose "bony" would be more accurate!).

Chicken Run Update

She's almost fully feathered, as you can see, and about 5 times her original size!

We had to move her earlier this week because she figured out how to leap up and flap her wings to jump out of her box. You can see the red heat lamp in the background, which she won't need much longer, and some ramps and rocks we put in her cage for her to play with. We also made a tunnel out of two plastic cups duct-taped together and she seems to enjoy running through it several times a day.

She is very easy to feed. We just sprinkle crushed game bird meal (40 cents a pound at the feed store), very small universal bird seed mix, and millet sprays and she pecks at it on her own. We also saw her eat a small cockroach that was attracted by the heat lamp (yuck!) and small, live meal worms are her very favorite. It is very interesting to watch her hunt and peck (she is very accurate and can even consistantly select one color of seed out of many strewn on the floor of her box) and the growth and development from egg to almost-adult bird has been very fast paced and exciting!

Overall it has been a very fun and educational experience.

If you are interested, you can order a small incubator with instructions and 4 quail eggs here for less than 30 dollars.

~EH

Carlsbad Caverns Pictures

Above you can see the natural entrance to Carlsbad Caverns. The night before we watched hundreds of thousands of bats swirl out of this opening in the desert like a tornado!

In a series of S turns and steep ramps you descend 750 feet below the surface to see some of the most breathtaking geological formations imaginable lit with disney-quality lighting. You are permitted to take as many pictures as you want, but I found it nearly impossible to get a good shot underground, but no biggie since the bookstore has very affordable photos, postcards, and books.

You can see some examples of the pictures I wanted to take but couldn't get to come out Here.


Here's my (freshly 6 year-old) Scote. The blue folder behind his back is his junior ranger booklet. If you've never been to a National Park, the junior ranger program is a small workbook that you buy for a dollar, the kids do activities in the park and have rangers sign off on the different tours and programs they attend. Once they are complete you return them to be checked and the kids are fussed over, sworn in, and given iron-on badges and an announcement over the loudspeaker.


Here they are with their badges. They were so proud of being junior rangers they wanted to donate the rest of their spending money to help the park. I told them that any money we spend in the park helps the park, so it was okay to buy something they liked instead. They still put their loose change in a collection box, though.

It was a great trip!

~EH

The hatching of "Chicken Run", the quail