A varied day

Today we started off our day by checking out a site that homeschool freebie of the day directed us to.  It's called Make Belief Comix.   This site has a variety of pages done up with clip art and make believe statements.  We had fun going through about 10 of them.  :)

This led to the lad's question of the day "how much water is in the oceean".   The answer was found here.

According to the U.S. Geological Survey, there are over 1,386,000,000 cubic kilometers (332,519,000 cubic miles) of water on the planet. A cubic kilometer is the volume of a cube measuring one kilometer on each side. Almost all of this vast volume of water is in the ocean.
That's 36,614,237,300,000,000,000,000 gallons of milk!

World History

  

We continued reading about Knights and Castles. Learning today about how they practiced.

I asked the lad on Tuesday what animal he would like to study today and he said "spiders".  My response was okay..we can continue in our study and then he said "NO!   Can we study FLIES instead?"     I said "what?  you don't like your spider study"?   his response..."no mommy, I like it but I want to draw the flies too"!   So... my little template that I did up on studying an animal of the day with it's drawing aspect really appeals to him...That's cool!  :)   I'll need to figure out how to take a pic of it so I can link it for you.

So here I am sitting down trying to figure out flies to study and did you know there are TONS of different flies in the world?

We learned that

Flies, insects in the order Diptera, from your basic house fly to mosquitoes and gnats, are defined by having two wings.

and

 Here are some other things you should know about flies and fly control:

• Depending on the species, the life expectancy of a fly is eight days to two months, or in some cases, up to a year.

• Flies belong to the Order Diptera, meaning two wings. There are 16,000 species of flies in North America.

• Flies plague every part of the world except the polar ice caps.

• One pair of flies can produce more than 1 million offspring in as little as six to eight weeks.

• As many as 33 million microorganisms may flourish in a single fly’s gut, while a half-billion more swarm over its body and legs.

• Flies spread diseases readily because they move quickly from rotting, disease-laden garbage to exposed human foods and utensils.

• Because they only have two wings, flies land often and therefore can deposit thousands of bacteria each time they land.

• U.S. Department of Agriculture sources reveal that flies contaminate or destroy $10 billion worth of agricultural products.

• For every fly seen, there are an estimated 19 more hidden from view. This means humans don’t even see most of the flies present at an infestation.

types of flies

• bee fly
• black fly
• blow fly
• bot fly
• cheese skipper
• crane fly
• flesh fly
• fruit fly
• gadfly
• gall midge
• gnat
• hessian fly
• horse fly
• house fly
• maggot
• mediterranean fruit fly
• midge
• mosquito
• robber fly
• sand fly
• screwworm
• tsetse

so we learned a few things about flies, and then moved on to learning about fire safety...we've finished that unit now.

Then played a game of mousetrap which involved setting up the board, following instructions, learning how to be a good sport and of course, having fun.  :)

this day worked out well for us.