millipede fun and much more

today we studied millipedes.

the lad has been in to catching them lately so today I decided we could run with that.

We learned that they lay between 10-300 eggs at one time and they take a few weeks to hatch.

Having learned how to tell the boys from the girls we are pretty sure we have three boys and three girls.   Which would give us anywhere from 30 to 900 babies in one shot.   The lad was kept busy trying to imagine what 900 millipedes would look like.   Rather hard to imagine...and then if they each lived 10 years, we end up with 9000 and then if each of them had babies... WOW!!!  we'd have a million before you could even think about it...and since one of the books we are currently reading is "one Million Dots" the boy was simply amazed.

So by taking the time to pursue a lad's interests we covered math, English, geography, science...graphing and spelling and using a magnifying glass and what not.

Very fun.  Very captivating for a six year old. :)

we let the guinea pigs out today after selling three of the adults we no longer wanted.   Nice to have them out on the grass and not crowded in their winter cages any longer. :)

Then we had a HOOT building cardboard equipment for knights and having battles.   Duct tape, cardboard, sharp knives and regular tape... all made for excellent fun and research and remembering all that we had learned in studying knights.   We learned about adding some aluminum foil to make knives look real.


The lad came up with the armour design himself.
I helped him figure out a holder for his quiver of arrow.  See the bow that he made himself?
Mommy?   What weapon can you make?   What will you be?  you can't be a knight cause I'm a knight.
Okay.. I'll be an assassin.  
What does an assassin do?
Oh.. they kill people in all kinds of different ways.
With potions mommy?   
yep.. and knives too.  
OH.. you should make a knife.  

So above you see my knife.
we made cardboard potions to.
The lad made this halberd all by himself.

He needed idea help to make the mace.
I made one too, just to even the score a little. :)
Showing me how he's going to get me with the spear and halberd.
but he's going to be a walking knight, not one with a horse.
 
and then before supper we had a rousing game of Knights after the assassins!!!!

 Where I unleashed my secret weapon.....a hand spear!

Complete with dad saying "isn't this a better game to play outside?"  :)