Butterflies

I may be jumping the gun a little bit, but it's about that time to be thinking about ordering caterpillars if you want to do your butterfly science project.

I ordered from Earth's Birthday Project last year, and we were not disappointed!  www.earthsbirthday.org  The earliest arrival date is March 1st this year.  We ordered ours to arrive in mid-March last year and by the time we let them go, the weather was perfect.  We reside in central AL.  I'm assuming the northern states may want to hold off a month or so for their arrival date???

Earth's Birthday Project is having a 12% off sale in 2012 for all online orders.  To just receive the caterpillars with food & a chart, the cost is $13.  Last year we spent the $16 to get a butterfly house too.  We didn't realize that the house was consumable.  So we ended up buying a butterfly net house at our local retailer for $10, that we can reuse.  (Earth's Birthday also sells the butterfly net house for $10)  So, my suggestion to you, if you want to reuse the butterfly house for later, is to buy the $13 package and buy a separate butterfly house.  (Just my own opinion).

I know there are other places that sell caterpillars out there.  I've had friends order them from different sites.  I just use EBP because they were referred to me by Sonlight Curriculum and I trust their opinion.

I love this project!!  Can't wait to do it again this year!

Just some pointers:
1.  You may want to use a penny or ruler to measure the growth of the caterpillars.
2.  Take pictures!! (and video too if available)
3.  Sugar water seemed to be their favorite thing to snack on, but EBP also suggests watermelon or oranges.  We put in oranges along with the sugar water, but they preferred the sugar water.
4.  It's fun to take them out and hold them, but don't do it for too long in your house.  They may take their temporary freedom to a whole new level.  And they're not easy to catch once they taste that freedom! (plus they poop red...not easy to clean up off carpet or furniture etc.)
5.  I don't recommend keeping them in the butterfly house for over five days after they emerge.  Ours started either fighting or 'knowing' each other and it was crazy in the butterfly house.  They became very aggressive.



Below is last year's experience with the Painted Lady Caterpillars that we ordered.

The day they arrived.

Can't stop looking at them

Toward the end of the 3 weeks.  Ready to form their chrysalis.

We finally catch one emerging on camera.

We were told to provide them oranges or watermelon for nutrition.  They liked the oranges, but they liked the sugar water best.

The underside of the butterflies wings

The butterfly enjoying a little bit of freedom in the house.  But not for too long!!

Teaching Textbooks 3 Glitch

My kids have discovered a glitch on the TT3 CD Rom.  It's on the CD only.  Lesson 103's lecture has a glitch when answering the first lecture problem.  When your child answers 9 during the interactive lecture, the CD will tell your child that he missed it and then proceed to say that the answer is 9.  Same thing when your child answers 12 on the next question.  This is in the Lecture only.  We have notified the company of the problem, so if you buy this program later on in the year, it may not even be an issue.

Also, a friend pointed out to me that on Lesson 9, the picture puzzle Problem #6 should have the letter 'e' beside it and the letter beside problem #7 should be a 'g'.

2/9/2012  We just found an error in the workbook, page 571.  On problem 14 of lesson 112, there is no blank for the hundred thousands place nor the ten thousands place.  I had my son skip that problem in his workbook and just do it on the CD.  It is already reported to TTs Errata page.

There is an Errata button that you can click on their main site with and it will tell you all the mistakes that have been found.

Magnetic Chalkboard

I had this great idea this past summer to make a magnetic chalkboard.  Our school room is small, so I had to make the best out of our space as possible.

The chalkboard right after it was painted.  It hadn't been used at this point.

I thought this would be the perfect solution.  I needed a large magnetic board for AAS and I could also use it as a chalkboard without taking up more wall space (which I don't have a lot of!).  Well, there are two problems right off the bat with this solution that I didn't foresee.  Problem #1: In order to use it as a chalkboard, we had to take down all those magnetic letters and put them back up when needed.  I'm teaching 3 different levels of spelling at the same time, so there are different letter combos.  Short story long, We had to repeatedly take all the magnets down and put them back up throughout the school day in order to write up on the board - as opposed to just taking a select few down and changing them if we didn't need it for a chalkboard too.  Problem #2:  Washing the board (which you have to do - reasons to follow) slowly takes away the chalkboard and magnetic paints over time.

Washing the board:  There are a couple reasons why you would want to wash the board before putting the magnets up.  Reason #1: The magnets don't stick well if the board is covered in chalk dust.  Reason #2: The board looks unsightly (dirty looking) when it is just erased without washing it.

Example of the board freshly erased

Now I'm the type of personality that likes my chalkboards shiny black.  This just drives me crazy!  Even after it's washed, it still has a slightly dirty look to it.  I guess I could get over that fact, if that was the only problem with it.  But what I don't like the most is that it 'demagnetizes' after repeated washings.  We are daily having letters fall off the board.  And it's VERY frustrating when you're in the middle of teaching.

I had said after I painted the board to begin with, that I would never do it again.  And I so desperately want to stick to that.  I remember that the magnetic board paint was a pain in the behind to wash out of the roller.  It got stuck all over the sides of our utility sink and it will adhere to any metal that you touch with it.  The chalkboard paint is a very thin paint.  Therefore, no matter how careful you are, it splatters.

The only solution I can come up with, is to repaint the magnetic paint on the wall, cover it with wall paint and use it as a magnetic board.  It won't need washed, so it shouldn't lose its magnetism.  My other thought was to have some screws sticking out of the wall above the magnetic board and I could hang my old chalkboard up on those.  When the board is not in use, I could just set it off to the side or in the hallway or something.

Anyway, I am very disappointed in the whole magnetic chalkboard.  In my opinion, there are way too many disadvantages to it, and not enough positives to make me want to redo the whole thing.  Sigh.

Hopefully, I'll be able to figure out an acceptable solution to take care of my teaching needs while making the best use of my space possible.