Spiders and Tornadoes

Spiders...

When I decided to get The Very Hungry Caterpillar, I came across some other Eric Carle books that looked interesting, so I looked on Ebay to find a used lot of books that included the caterpillar book and a couple of the others in which I was interested.  One of them is called The Very Busy Spider.  Last week we talked about spiders, which included reading the aforementioned book and a couple other cute ones we have.

We had recently finished reading an issue of Ranger Rick that included a section on jumping spiders, which was thoroughly enjoyable for Jaden and me.  Trusten followed along, too, but usually Liv doesn't sit through our magazine readings.

We're being tight with our money right now, but I used what I had on hand to make spider treats for the kids.  They could have come out better had I used some things I had in mind, but the kids don't care.  I used some natural dot and long sprinkles I had on hand for the numerous spider eyes and fangs.  Too bad I didn't have size differences for the eyes.  I had vanilla wafer cookies left over from making banana pudding for our previous Sabbath dessert, and I melted some semi-sweet chocolate chips (with some water) to coat the cookies.  Then I cut up a fruit leather for the legs (like I did for the caterpillars).  Jade is happy I'm making more treats like this.  I made them often for him when he was between Liv's and Trusten's age, but I can probably count on my hands how often I've done it the last four years!

Among their Youtube videos last week were spider videos--some on jumping spiders, some on the two venomous spiders in the U.S. (black widow and brown recluse), and then some random fun ones like the largest spider in the world.

Tornadoes...

I think I may have already mentioned that Trusten became stuck on tornadoes, asking us numerous questions about them.  So, I got a couple good used books for cheap on Amazon (as usual) on tornadoes--Tornado Alert and then an Eyewitness Book, Hurricanes and Tornadoes.  The former gave facts and kid-friendly pictures about tornadoes, talked about Tornado Alley, and explained what to do in the event of a tornado, depending on where you are.  The latter book has info on all sorts of natural disasters, but there is a good section on tornadoes. 

In addition, the kids all watched several tornado videos during Youtube time, which mostly consisted of real video footage of tornadoes in action.  I printed out a tornado coloring sheet for Trusten, and his coloring itself is tornadic.  Actually, I was pleased.  I did not sit with him to assist him with coloring in the lines, and he's doing better on his own.  I admit, I do not spend a lot of time coloring with my kids, so they learn to do it well later than many.  I really want to watch the movie Night of the Twisters with the kids, but it will have to wait until I can reasonably afford to buy a copy of it.  It's apparently rare on dvd.  I looked into renting it, and I can't find anyone in the area who carries it, but I think it will be a better movie than Twister.  I've never seen the former, but I read the book as a child, and I read the movie reviews, and it sounds really good.

 

What the kids really enjoyed, though, was the tornado-in-a-bottle.  We had talked about the tornado's vortex and the vacuum that is created.  So then I demonstrated it with two one-liter bottles (the only size of something I could find with something decent for drinking in them),  with water halfway filling the bottom bottle and the second bottle taped to the top using duct tape:

Jade and I took turns flipping the water-filled bottle over and giving it a quick couple of twirls.  Voila--a water tornado in a bottle:

I was afraid they weren't going to tire of watching the water tornadoes.  It was a real hit!

Trusten's conclusion, though?  He came up to me a few days ago and said, "I hate tornadoes now." 

His current obsession, what he interrogated Jaden about last night after they went to their bunk beds?  Dinosaurs.  "If you saw a dinosaur, what would you do?"  And on and on it went.  He has already approached me today asking me similar questions.  So stay tuned. 

Some Periodicals We've Read...

Ranger Rick, Big Backyard, Arbor Day, and Weekly Reader

Animal Binder...

Remember Jaden's animal binder?

A couple months ago I got copies of pictures of him with animals over the last several years of his life, plus some of the pictures I've taken of animals we've seen (but that he's not held).  In his own time, he's going to use the pictures to make his own collages and add the pages to his notebook.  There are 84 pictures for him to go through, and some of the animals include butterflies, caterpillars, worms, sharks, cows, goats, chickens, cats, dogs, salamanders, snakes, and penguins. 

Children and Pumpkins...

All the leaves have fallen off our trees now.  It was beautiful while the color changes were happening.  Winter will be here soon.  I took fall pumpkin pictures of the kids, and I've started baking our pumpkins and freezing pulp for pumpkin pies.  Yum!  Here a few of the pictures:

Pumpkins, gourds, and three sweet chillins!

My sweet babies!

Jaden is doing well on his book work.  He blows through grammar like it's nothing...like his momma.  ;-)  He may not speak it well, but he sure thinks his lessons are easy, and he gets them finished quickly.  He works on his handwriting practice and daily math word problems on his own, and I quickly go over his grammar and Language Lessons, and he does those on his own, and we do his spelling lesson together, which usually doesn't take long.  I've had to slow down on his math (not to be confused with his daily math word problems).  Rather than doing one lesson a day and then his doing his corrections and another lesson the next day, one lesson is now spanned out over two days--the lesson one day, then he makes his corrections on the next day.

He's still making candles and reading, and now that it's freezing on some nights, he dresses in his bibs on those mornings and goes out to bust ice.  :-)  One more picture:

Jaden William using his Light Wedge to read a Tintin book in bed at night

Until next time...