Homeschool – Natural Science

Written by admin on 08 May 2009

Emeraude gently cradles the millipede in her hand.

I was absolutely thrilled Thursday afternoon (May 07.09) Lloyd & Emeraude came home from a walk {they had gone Lloyd pulling Emeraude in her wagon to pick the dog up from K9 sitting but were not able to get her} and Lloyd came into the house, proud as can be to insist I come outside because they had found a millipede which Emeraude was holding carefully in the palm of her little hand.

Grandmaman had, a few weeks ago, come back from Thunder Bay with a slew of new home-schooling materials for Emeraude, among them, tools for nature sciences such as a very simple microscope, a magnifying glass, a pentagonal holding case, etc… Lloyd found an old tackle box which I washed up and she stored all the equipment in then just last week Vickie gave Emeraude a great bug cage and a couple other tools (including an ‘ant maze’ see photo) which we added into her ‘bug tool kit’.

Lloyd and Emeraude watch as their little spider crawls out through the air hole with plenty of room to spare lol.

I grabbed my camera before taking a few deep breaths and heading outside. Seeing it did not have the negative reaction I expected and Lloyd pointed out that my memories were probably of a centipede which would be less ‘cute’. I took a few photos and then hurried back into the house to get her ‘science tool kit’ for them.

Lloyd was in full brother mode, even more so than usual, and obviously enjoying the chance to teach Emeraude, whose attention was completely focused on the science lesson. We used the bug tools to get a closer look at the millipede. The large plastic tweezers are great with no sharp edges to harm the fragile creature, the magnifying glass helped us inspect his many legs and what looked like minute hairs on them, it took a little figuring out but we were able to watch through the microscope how it stretched. It was wonderful to have so many tools to enhance the lesson.

Sitting on my bed, working at my laptop, I could hear the two of them in the back and felt so grateful for spring and the beautiful clear skies & sunshine they were out in. They did find the water beetle and chose to fill the domed ‘ant trap’ with water and watch as it maneuvered the maze.

Emeraude guides her millipede into the 'bug trap' before she and brother added in natural elements to keep it comfortable.

The bettle manoevers through it's watery maze.

Emeraude then put the millipede gently into the ‘bug trap’ (it isn’t really a trap but is shaped like a lobster trap) as Lloyd explained to her that even though it would just be there for a little while they needed to add some natural elements to the cage. After some discussion on where they had found the millipede and what other similar bugs they are more familiar with eat, they added a chunk of soil/moss/grass and then were off to look for a water bug that had been in the back yard that morning.

a closer look...

All of this continued nearly until supper time, with them also finding tiny aunts and a miniscule spider. I was so proud of both of them, Lloyd for his patience and ability to remember how interesting it all is when seeing them at Emeraude’s young age; Emeraude for her desire to learn, attentiveness and fearlessness. Great work guys!