M's quick sewing project

A few weeks back, I won a kit from Wee Folk Art's new store (they have since closed again due to family circumstances).  M decided that it'd be the perfect thing to sew as a personal birthday gift for her cousin.

How cute is this?! Didn't she do a great job?

It was a huge hit. Thanks again to Wee Folk Art! I totally understand why you closed the store, but we'll miss it!

Weekly Wrap-up May 28th-June 1st

I have really no idea what-all we did this week.

Do you ever have a week like that? You know you did a lot, because you're exhausted and you remember being in the car or walking places a lot, but specific activities escape you.

Through the murk of my brain, there are a few things trickling through. In no particular order, here they are:

-I was accepted to be part of the TOS Crew!!! Thanks again Nicole for sending me the application just in time! I'm pretty excited about this one!

-I was bitten by, at a conservative estimate, 200 mosquitoes. D and K are worse.

-We had a spectacular thunderstorm and torrential downpour. In downtown Montreal, about 45 kms away, it was so bad that it flooded the basement of the Musée des Beaux-Arts (Museum of Fine Arts) and reportedly destroyed some valuable artwork. Water mains burst and 10 foot geysers of water shot straight up onto busy streets during rush hour.

Here, we just lost power and spent several hours wearing a terrified dog....one of our furry family members is terrified of just about everything and especially thunder. She's a rescue dog so we don't know much about her first few months of life, but they have certainly done a lifelong number on her confidence.

-We brought home salamanders. In case you ever wondered, they feel like rubber.

-We did some more more of our ever-extending frog preschool unit. We're a little obsessed by amphibians in general right now.

-I have brought back an idea that I used when K was small. I've been making a large plastic tub of healthy, individually portioned snacks every day and putting them in the fridge. D can grab any or all of them throughout the day without having to wait for one of us. He feels like a big kid and he's pretty pleased about it. I just like not having to get up what feels like every five minutes to get the Ever-Opened Door another food item. And I know he's getting his Food Guide recommendations every day without having to do mental gymnastics every time he wants to eat.

-I'm reading Last Child In the Woods by Richard Loev...both Jimmie and Nicole mentioned it this week. Nicole is planning a weekly sort of bloggy book club starting next week and I want in! It also coincides with our signing up for David Suzuki's 30 by 30 Challenge, which culminates in Richard Loev and Dr. Suzuki speaking together in Toronto, so it's doubly interesting to me right now.

That's about it here! Have you read the book? What did you think?

Meet Sally, Dick, and Sully, and learn how amphibians drink

Yesterday, we decided to go for a walk in the woods in between thunderstorms. This was a brilliant idea, except that we had somehow forgotten about the mosquitoes.

This turned, for the most part, into three of us running, swatting frantically, and M (who, just like her dad, is never attacked by ravening swarms of bloodthirsty insects) strolling along behind untouched, and telling us where to swat next.

In between bursts of flailing, we turned over a few logs to see if we could round up some bugs for Toady. Instead, we found salamanders!

Now, some of you are probably wondering why we're excited about this. Here's why: we have been trying to find one since K was 4 or 5 (about 15 years  of searching) and for some reason have never come across one before now! Yesterday, they were under every log, in multiples!

 Yes, this picture is blurry, but it gives you an idea of their size against a large adult male's arm. They're pretty docile, too.

So naturally, we brought some home to observe.

This involved hastily buying a new tank, because it turns out that although normally they live in harmony with toads, in captivity they become a potential snack, as we discovered when we tried to put them in with Toady.

Aren't they gorgeous? These are examples of the Northern Redback Salamander, as far as we can figure out.


In other news, Toady continues to gorge himself and grow rapidly.

He also likes to stroll over and sit in his water dish unmoving for a good hour at a time. D wanted to know a) why he sits there like that, and b) why we are giving him only filtered water instead of tap water. Both good questions, so we did a little experiment to demonstrate the answer.

I explained that amphibians such as toads, frogs, and salamanders drink through their skin, instead of through their mouth like we do. We took a sponge and D put it into a bowl of water to see how it soaked it up just like Toady's skin.

See how much it soaked up?

Then we talked about how any "bad stuff" (toxins, poisons etcetera) can be absorbed too, and that we have to be careful to give him water that isn't going to harm him. To illustrate this, we took another sponge, added food colouring to the water to represent poisons, and put the sponge in.

 D was horrified when he thought about poor Toady sucking up "bad stuff" like that!

What creatures are you observing right now?

10 Easy Ways to Incorporate Science Into Your Homeschooling

1. Observe ants. Carefully lift a rock near an ant nest and see all the ants try to move the eggs as quickly as they can! (Make sure you lower the rock carefully afterwards too, so you don’t harm the ants.) Try placing different foods  (salt, bread, honey, for example) near the nest and see which food the ants are interested in. This can occupy your kids for weeks if they keep trying different foods.

2. Study the birds in your backyard. Some children might enjoy participating in the Great Backyard Bird Count, too, or the lesser-known annual loon count.

3. Check out all the live animal cams available on the internet. Watch eagle eggs hatch, see a barn owl up close, or find out what animals visit an African Watering hole at different times. Google and you'll be amazed at how many are out there.

4. Watch Man vs.Wild (older children only!), Bill Nye, Kratt Brothers, and Magic Schoolbus.

5. Go on field trips: the local hydroelectric plant may offer tours, the chocolate store may offer a tour (we did this and it was great!), there’s maple syrup season, horseback riding, working farms…….you get the idea. It’s all learning.

6. Go to the beach. Look at the waves, find seashells and look them up in a field guide, catch a little crab, let the minnows nibble your toes and guess what kind of fish they are.

7. Teach your kids to weed the garden. Besides the obvious benefit of your not having to do it, they’ll find all sorts of creepy crawlies to observe, and see how plants grow from the seeds up, as well as learning how the weather in different years can affect the “crops”. If they are “veggie-resistant” at meals, you may find that picking their own food right off the plants they grew may increase their enthusiasm.

8. Polish rocks. As you walk, let them find pretty rocks of various kinds (I usually carry a Ziploc bag or two when we go out). Look them up in the field guide or online, talk about it, and throw them in the rock tumbler. When they’re all shiny and polished, put them as a decorative accent on the dining room table and they start all sorts of great conversations.

9. Magazines. Know, National Geographic Kids, Dig, Click, and Odyssey are just a few great ones off the top of my head. I casually leave the latest issue on the table or in the sun porch on a chair. I find them in a child’s hand a few minutes later and they are often telling me something they’ve just learned.

10. Colour! When we’ve been out walking and seen a new plant, bird, or tree leaf, I can usually find a colouring page to go with it (www.edupics.com is a great site for a lot of things).

How do you include some easy science?

Preschool frog unit, part 2: How frogs eat!

Here are a few more things we've done in our frog study (if you missed part 1 you can see it here):

Crafts

(This is one my oldest came up with while I was at work. He drew lily pads, and D added glue, beads, and "frogs peeking out of the pond". I love it!

This one is to show the difference between frogs and toads. We talked about how frogs are shiny and wet, but toads are dry and bumpy. Then we made one of each.

The frog he just painted with a high-shine green paint. Naturally, this photo is so bad that you can't see the shine (and don't ask me why half my photos are sideways here...they're right way up when I look at them on the desktop!)

For the toad, he glued on lentils and popcorn and let it dry, then he enthusiastically sponge-painted it with two different browns. And of course, no frog or toad craft is complete without googly eyes!

Worksheets

 (He dictated, I wrote)

Games (What Time Is it, Mr. Frog? was a big hit) in costume

But the highlight of our week was our lesson on how frogs eat. Did you know that their tongue is attached at the front of their mouth so that they can unfurl it? Neither did we! We played this fun game. And when I saw "we", I mean we all had a go....it's irresistible!

I printed some dragonflies. On each one I stuck a circle of velcro.

On a paper noisemaker thingy, I placed the opposite circle of velcro onto the underside at the tip. Then D had to unfurl the tongue and try to "catch" a snack!

Success!

Firehouse visit

Today, we went to our local firehouse, along with Val from Glittering Muffins and her son. This field trip was probably one of my all-time favourite field trips.....and not only because of the very, very fine firemen who let us photograph them (relax, my husband was there too)!

It cost us nothing. It was 5 minutes from our house. It was not with a group of 20 overexcited Cub Scouts like last time. This was a real tour, with older kid answers as well. M enjoyed it as much as the little kids.

Our tour guide  took us through the office area first. It was clean, well-organized, and well-lit.

There's a cabinet of memorabilia

and this, which you are not allowed to ride on.

Then we went through the building. First stop, the equipment room. It's arranged by team, and the teams alternate by shift. Our guide told us that the total equipment weight is about 65 lbs, down from 80+lbs about 20 years ago.

Next stop on our tour was this room where they recharge all the batteries for walkie-talkies, flashlights, and the like. Each team recharges the batteries and replaces with freshly charged ones at the end of their shift.

We saw where the firefighters wash their uniforms. This was really interesting! Our guide explained that they have to use a special detergent because regular ones are flammable. I never even would have considered this! In case you wondered (we did) it holds a maximum of two sets at a time, but one at a time gets it a lot cleaner.

The tool room - they can fix small things themselves, but the city has the contract for bigger repairs.

Then on to the fun stuff:

This is the vehicle that arrives on-scene and determines the cause of the fire.

This bus is owned by a different company and staffed by volunteers. It's hugely important because if a firefighter runs out of energy midway through fighting a blaze, they are useless if they can't refuel. The volunteers make sure that it is always filled with quick, high-energy food and drinks...some that were mentioned were Chunky Soup, Gatorade, water, bread and butter, and fruit. There is a little microwave, fridge, and the whole thing has a backup generator.

These are the water rescue boats and floats:

The yellow inflatable is known as "The Banana" and can be extended from the main boat to help a drowning person. It also goes on ice, and it has paddles so it can be used to navigate tighter spaces where the boats can't pass.It can be used in any kind of waves.

This one has a floatable ambulance board that can be used in an emergency situation (a broken neck or back would qualify) to prepare someone for the ambulance and make the transfer faster at the shore.

Our guide told us that they don't generally go into the water themselves if it isn't absolutely necessary. If they do there's specialized gear to protect from the cold. Notice the attached gloves - brilliant.

This is the fire truck that carries all the air canisters. It holds a maximum of 4 firefighters.

Here are the ready-to-use air canisters and equipment. Because in a fire situation, the air only lasts about 20 minutes, they also have a bank of fully filled ones ready to switch out.

Here's where that happens. This machine is so loud that they have to wear ear muffs, so there's a flashing light on top of the machine in case a call comes in while someone's recharging the canisters.

Here are the hoses. You can see that the outside is a tight (non-flammable) weave, whereas the inside is a rubbery substance.

Here's the hose drying rack. It lifts up to a maximum of 25 feet (hoses are 50 feet long) so each hose can dry properly. They last a lot longer since this invention.

Then there are two types of fire truck: ladder truck

I asked our guide how high a firetruck ladder will extend in a hotel or high-rise situation. The ladder is 105 feet, but it has to go up at an angle, so he said not higher than the 6th floor. If you have to be higher, he advised the following:

-As soon as you arrive, familiarize yourself with the exits and find out if the roof door is unlocked (ask a concierge).
-If the fire bell rings, never ever take the elevator because they operate on heat sensors and will open directly onto the fire as you descend.
-Head for the stairwell immediately - if one is smoky, the other probably isn't - and head down as quickly as you can. A structural fire, in any kind of building, doubles ever minute to minute and a half.
-Never, ever go back in. Ever. Even if you accidentally left your millions under the mattress.
 -If you are trapped and both stairwells are dangerous, head for the roof ONLY if you know that it's unlocked.
So now you know.


and water truck.

D and N liked the water truck the best because they got to play fireman in the front seat!

And finally, a little treat for my fellow fire-fighter admirers, some very good-natured firemen who were willing to pose and/or demonstrate their skills.

 The helmets are heavy enough to break a child's neck, so Val held them up and I snapped photos.

Yum. 

This firefighter below, we're told, can slide down the pole holding two full plates of spaghetti. He was kind enough to demonstrate with a mug of water.

A huge thank you to the fire department (who we are not allowed to name) for letting us go on this tour!!!!

Note: We were told that we could not show the fire station logo in photos, so wherever it, or other things such as license plate, appeared I have (clumsily) blocked it out in Paint. I think I have covered all indentifying materials; if you spot one I have missed PLEASE let me know as soon as possible so that I am in compliance with their request.