Uranus, Neptune, Pluto and making a cloud

Uranus and Neptune are also gas giants like Saturn and Jupiter. They are blue because of the methane gas in their atmospheres so we made our background paper color two shades of blue. One shade for Neptune the other for Uranus.

The next chapter and the last one for us this year is on Pluto and the Kuiper belt. We have been using Jennie Fulbright's text Exploring Creation through Astronomy.

There has been a big debate whether of not Pluto is a comet or a planet. Officially it is now a comet, but we looked at the evidence and I gave the boys a chance to vote for themselves...they voted that Pluto is a planet, I think it is a comet. What do you think?

How to make a cloud in a jar

1. add warm/hot water to a jar.
2. light a match and top it in.
3. place a ziplock bag with ice in it over the opening of the jar and seal the opening closed.
4. watch the cloud form.

This T.J's final map drill of the planets. Great job Guys!!

And that is all for our astronomy studies this year....we are already onto looking at birds and insects.

Seashore Diagram

After  long walk on the beach and bringing back several buckets full of treasure such as these I sat down with the boys and to them a bit about the strand line and the intertidal zone from our One Small Square: Seashore book. The strand line is the area on the beach where certain things are commonly found. For example, the crabs were almost always found at the strand line. The strand line is where the water comes up to the shore and leaves new things from the sea. You usually can find eel grass and other sea weeds there as well as kelp. It is easy to spot on any beach. After reading and looking at the beach itself to see just what the book meant, we made a cardboard diagram of it.

 This is Max's diagram of the tidal zones.

T.J.'s diagram

Zak's diagram.

How to make one:

• First select a nice piece of cardboard for the diagram.
• Next paint on the sea portion using up about 1/3 of the cardboard surface. This breaks the composition into thirds.
• Let dry completely before going onto the next step.
• Then paint some white glue onto the rest of the cardboard and sprinkle sand on it. Make sure the sand covers all of the surface. 
• Let dry completely before going onto the next step.
• The glue on articles from the beach from each of the tidal zones.
• Label the tidal zones if you want to. 

Have a look at the process in our slide show below:

Overrun by Caterpillars

These are some of the caterpillars the boys found in the park the other day. They are literally all over the place. Since it was a drizzly day the caterpillars were climbing up the fences and on top of logs easy to find. In the span of say one half of and hour they had filled an empty one liter water bottle half full of them. They just about everywhere you could look. They were on the road trying to get across and getting smooshed. There were sooooo many of them it was impossible to count. They are in our yard, on the grass, on the road by the millions!!!

We also found some cocoons that day in the park. And as we were riding the ferry today, Zak notice one of the cars had cocoons embedded in the spokes of the hub caps. More than 10 in each wheel. How beautiful it will be when all of these caterpillars and cocoons become butterflies!