Nature Walk Takes a Deadly Turn

not Riah's foot ( my camera was charging) courtesy of raptor.7syllable.com

Ahh yes, the cool weather beckoned us to start our nature journaling bright and early, at around 6:30 am. This was a perfect time period for us because we needed to observe some ants at work. We stepped outside and it was so pleasant. The air was cool, refreshing and everything was quiet. The kids and I took off and quietly kept our eyes on the ground looking for any sign of ants or their colonies. Per one book we've been reading, there are 7,000,000 ants per every 1 insect so I was pretty confident we would find some.

Oh did we ever! There were some black ants busy searching for food and moving it back to the nest. All four of us crouched down and observed. After awhile, I took the tip of my pen and gently pressed it into one of the holes. Black ants everywhere came rushing out, ready to fight. It was really interesting to watch the work ethic that the ants had, no matter the perpetrator. After observing this for a time, we set off again.

Not more than a minute later Austen and Moriah started screaming bloody murder, jumping around and flailing. We had come upon a red ant nest and they were EVERYWHERE! The quiet, still morning was literally shattered by screams of terror. Did I mention that both of my children that were being attacked are also horribly afraid of ants in general ( I was trying to debunk that fear for them, no such luck). I set about slapping their legs and whipping their sandals off to shake out any evil ants. The red ants are ruthless, simply ruthless. The kids kept screaming and screaming and jumping and dancing, anything to get those ants out of the crevices of their poor toes and I kept slapping and slapping. I felt so bad for them. Finally, after much beating, the kids and the ants, we were ant free and both had little welts all over their feet :(

We quickly walked away from THOSE ants and almost abandoned our nature walk when I tried one more time to revive our "quiet, peaceful, morning" walk. Finally, from a distance, we viewed a large ant hill and hypothesized what the ants might be doing, since we had no desire to actually get closer to watch.

I ended up carrying Riah on my back, her baby stroller bumping against my knees and as we rounded the neighborhood we stood still and listened and watched, in an ant free zone. Let me just say, forget the ants. We listened to chickadees fluttering and tweeting, two large birds that appeared to be geese flying overhead and sprinklers turning on. The kids than, right on the sidewalk, squatted down and recorded their sightings in their journal. Moriah drew a picture of a bird in the journal.  My favorite, all time favorite moment was when Austen sat down and tapped his chin, looked into the sky and said, " I saw 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8 birds ( wrote those down in his journal) and 2 flying ostriches." I couldn't help bust our laughing. We walked home, on the opposite side of the sidewalk past the treacherous valley of red ants. When we arrived back to the home front, Ben was up ( the poor guy has been deathly sick lately) and I told him about the two flying ostriches, we were laughing so hard we could hardly breathe. Love you Austen!

Later today, we listened again to "High Hopes" and the " Ants Go Marching". We also read about the Grebe and the Woodcock and how they display responsibility. If you have never researched or read about these birds, I highly recommend it. We used Character Sketches. I also read a chapter from 101 Dalmatians by Dodie Smith.

Tomorrow we will finish up our ant study by making ants on the log and learning more about the various jobs within the ant colony and reading some more books. I am very excited about next week's topic as we will delve into history for six weeks to round out the rest of our unit.

He's Got High Hopes

Yep, and so do we! We really laughed learning this song today. We listened to a few different versions with Frank Sinatra and some kids, an old character on Sesame Street and a strange digital ant singing in a high pitched voice. All I know is I have " high apple pie in the sky hopes" for this lesson. Just say it, "nerd". Funny, I did not even know that this was a real song; it just reminded me of The Goofy Movie, when I was a little girl.

Anyways, we sang the "Ants Go Marching" and Hannah about leaped out of her pants getting so excited for this song. It was so funny :) Aesop has a fable entitled, " The Ant and the Grasshopper". This was read and then dramatized by Jay and Austen. I was very proud of Austen, he actively participated as the "ants" instead of sporting a sour look. This is something I have been praying about a LOT lately!

The boys than wrote/dictated their own fable. Jayden's was about a lazy ant, a hardworking ant and a praying mantis who, in the end, devours the lazy ant. Austen's was a more "round robin" approach. I began the story of a cow eating grass in the pasture and a mouse scurrying around getting ready for winter. Again, he did very well with articulating and telling a story- two of the goals I have for Austen this year.

We read Proverbs 6:6-9 and discussed as well as worked on memorizing this passage of scripture. Also, we read a bunch of Ant books today and discussed the four senses that they have, how they are used, the different types of ants in the colony, how a colony is formed ( did you know the queen ant mates with male ants in the air and then they all die, except the queen who flies down, rubs her wings off and then begins laying eggs-rough life guys). Also, we observed a cross section of an ant nest and the different chambers and finally the boys drew pictures of an ant from memory, then studied a labeled ant's body for 1 minute and did their best to recreate it accurately.

Austen was able to remember the thorax, abdomen and head. Jayden drew these three circles on top of the ants head and I asked what those were and he said, "its simple eyes" and sure enough, that is what they are called because they only detect lightness and darkness.

Tomorrow, we will observe an ant hill, make some observations and conclusions and hopefully, HOPEFULLY our ant farm will arrive tomorrow!

The Ants Go Marching One by One - Hoorah

Yes, we began our study on ants today. Was it as invigorating as I had imagined. No. To be honest, thinking back to our reading I am so grossed out. My stomach is churning.

Our day started off slow. We had some friends come over this morning, which was nice and they all played for a couple of hours. I then scurried us to Riah's dance where I highly encouraged her to be a good helper as the last time she was pumped about dance and then decided to cry the entire time. She did great!  We arrived home, after lunch, I put the kids down and needed a few moments to collect myself. I was feeling rushed, imagine that. Earlier, I had 15 minutes to spare before Riahs' dance so I dropped the van off at walmart for an oil change and decided to load the kids up in the double stroller and literally, almost, sprint to her dance class which was about 1/2 mile away. Puffing and panting and sweating profusely, we arrived- hence my note of " she did great" - I really wasn't sure with our grand entrance, how she would acclimate.

Anyways, there was just a lot going on today, but we made it, I prayed and then went upstairs to find the boys playing quietly and reading on their bed. We read a bunch of ant books and learned some interesting tidbits today. First off, drum roll please, ants take care of aphids because they enjoy the aphids sugary poo- yes you heard it hear. Sounds lovely after lunch, doesn't it. Also, like the bees, male ants job is simply to mate. All the workers are female! Ben thought this sounded great, ha!

We went over the life cycle of the ant: egg-larvae ( gross looking worms)- pupae-ant. I had some other high aspirations on my white board for today but those will wait until tomorrow. Honestly, it was one of those days. We worked on language arts and math and then the kids played National Geographic.

Dinner went well, grilled chicken, smoked almonds, spinach, diced onion and carrots and poppy seed dressing. Light and refreshing. Finally, reading the Bible before bed, we were discussing in Proverbs 6:6 the verse, " consider the ant...." and asked the boys, what can we learn from the ants?? Jayden said, that they like to eat poo.....I was looking for something a little more in depth, but thank you. The best part about tonight, the wind picked up and I stepped outside- it was a chilly 82 and it felt chilly! Praise God for cooling temperatures at night and in the morning!