Monarch Butterfly Online Course is Here

It is here! The online course on Monarch Butterflies is available now.  When your child completes this course they will be an expert on Monarch Butterflies! I will teach them how to grow a butterfly garden, how to find monarch eggs on the milkweed, everything about their peculiar and strange lifecycle, and the wonder of this incredible migration we get to witness right now! Click on the link below to see an outline of this course. Lots of fun videos and teaching tools and many hours of labor and love have gone into this project.

Click Here to Enroll!

I'm Never Gonna Die Part 2

I am obsessed with glowing rocks.  Its another addiction along with the others (lizards, rabbits, coffee, antlions, toads, kids, HIS presence, joy...) The list keeps growing of things to explore and discover thus I will most likely never die.  

Here is part two of the bucket list!!! 

Yooperlite Rocks.  If you are from Michigan like I am you will know instantly what a Yooper is.  My brother-in-law Gary, is a Yooper. 

Yooper's say weird things like "ish" and tell Onei and Ano jokes (ask a Yooper).  They are definitely unique ancestors of a "Fin" or a "Swede".  I love these people.  They are hearty and resilient just like these glowing rocks.

At the last rock lab in December, one of my all star parents, Eric Anonsen, 

introduced me to the latest addiction.  He showed me this video and I was hooked!  

So this summer I am packing up as many grandchildren as my kids will allow to kidnap and we are heading to Lake Superior to find some of these beauties.  I'll keep you posted and let you know how it goes!

Blowing Up the Science Fair

I love this quote by Albert Einstein.

Recently, my grandchildren "mopped up the floor" with their science projects at the Northern Illinois Regional Science Fair. (Can you feel the humility in this statement)? All three of them won the coveted grand champion for their age category and they also made the front page of the Freeport IL Journal Standard.  Grand champion winners were: Ella Leverton for kindergarten through third grade; Gabriel Leverton for fourth through sixth grade; and Breanna Leverton for seventh and eighth grade.

I am SO proud of all of them and also for my daughter Rachel who does an amazing job of organizing this event

and son-in-law Andy 

for helping the kids achieve this remarkable accomplishment. Each of the children had to practice giving their presentation for the judges over 10 times with their dad, Andy.  I'm convinced that this is what helped them connect with the judges.  Go Andy!!!  So Andy, I will forgive you for marrying my daughter and whisking her and all my grand-babies off to the frigid north! 

Ella did her project on ants!  She was so excited to find out we had an ant lab back in November.  

Gabe did his science project called "Fabulous Flatulence".  Yes you heard it, flatulence!!  

I am so embarrassed... It actually was quite scientific.  He really knew his stuff!!  Gabe's presentation to the judges was explosive!

Breanna gets to go on to the Illinois State Science Fair with her project on how sun screen affects the ocean waters.  Recently, she was in Hawaii with her mother and they saw first-hand how the coral is disappearing and dying due to the toxic sunscreen in the ocean water.  I wrote about this in a previous post.  Let me know if you need some organic non-toxic sunscreen that my goats help me make.  

And in case you are an overwhelmed mom who can't find the time to really do justice to teaching science, let me help you.  I am creating online courses and would love to have your children join us.  Email me and let me know you are interested and I will keep you informed.  The next one will be in February.  It is a course called "Me Myself and I, My Amazing Body".  Students will find out how unique and wonderful God created them to be.  We will study their hair, skin, eyes, blood type, pH, and other aspects of their amazing human body.  Join us if you don't live nearby and can't come to the lab!!  Thank you for passing this on to your homeschool friends.  

My Ant Dream Come True

I have dreamed about constructing an ant lab for years and years.  For one reason or another it just never happened.  This school year is the last year that I will be creating new labs.  From here on I will blow the dust off the labs I've taught before every three years or so.  So I had to do it now or never.

Did you know ants share food from their social stomach by kissing other ants?  Most ants have a chemical called formic acid in their gasters. They can squirt the acid out of their bodies when provoked.  Wood ants can even drive off large animals like cows from their colonies. They all group together and spray formic acid into the air.  Most ants are female worker ants.  The queen ant can live for up to 30 years and will lay eggs continually after mating only one time.

(we call her Ella Bella Petronella)

And wouldn't you know it, our granddaughter Ella will be presenting an ant collection in the Northern Illinois Regional Science Fair.  Ella and I plan to have lots of conversations about ants when we see each other at Thanksgiving.

Here is a soda bottle formicarium that I made about a week ago. It took four days for the ants to work their way up through the bottle connector to the top.

This formicarium is evolving daily.  I keep finding new plastic containers in the dumpsters that make awesome extensions to this priceless piece of ant real estate.

This amazing three room mini-mansion has a kitchen, a cemetery, a restroom, and lots and lots of tunnels.  I keep a jar of petroleum jelly handy to smear up at the top of the container.  This keeps the ants where they belong.  They don't want to get stuck in petroleum jelly and I don't want them all over my classroom.     

notice the mandibles extending from the head

This Red Harvester ant is quite hairy.  

This ant has two petioles.

Stinger protruding from the gaster.

We had a great time looking at ants under the microscope.  Ants have six legs, two claws on each leg, a head, mandibles, compound eyes, three ocelli, two antenna. one or two petioles, a gaster and stinger, two stomachs, and much, much more.

I walked out to our pasture and carefully dug up a fire ant colony.  It was cold outside so they were kind of groggy but still moving slowly.  Ants like all insects, are cold blooded. They don't get out much in the cold weather. We found some pupae and larvae in the jar of fire ants.  How exciting!

I can't wait for this summer when the queens and male ants take to the air for their yearly nuptial flight.  You might see me outside with a net trying to catch a queen.  I hope all my students have been stung by the ant bug and are ready to build all kinds of interesting formicariums on their own.

I know I've got the ant bug!

Mom I'm Bored...

My heart goes out to kids these days.  When I was one, 

(just a couple of weeks ago) I had lots of time to roam 

and run free.  My friends and I would make rafts and float 

on the pond behind our house.  We collected clams and 

made clam beds.  We created forts in the woods and rode 

our bikes for hours.  

So why does my heart go out to kids?  Because "the boogie man" 

has stolen their freedom to explore and to create.  This has 

been a heartache of mine for a long time.  You can read about it here.

My dear husband 

rolled up his sleeves and decided to help me put my dream together 

by creating a small area where kids can be kids and get down and dirty 

with their four and two footed friends. 

Do you see the black rabbit running in the background?  That's Ruby and she got out.  

Not to worry I have a plan and will get her back soon.  Believe me, I am an expert now 

at catching escaped rabbits...

 

Meet Maxine.  

She's the pretty girl in this place.

Here is Ruth, aka escape artist.  

If anybody is going to dig their way out, it's Ruth.  She is very tame.  

A dear friend of mine named Ruth used to hold her in her arms for hours

every time we met at our house for a gathering.  Ruth is so gentle and sweet, 

(both of them). 

Cleopatra 

is my oldest rabbit.  She birthed Ruth and several others who I sold.  

My grandson Gabe, has one of her offspring, named Josephine, 

formerly Jo until we discovered he was a she.  

Oh My...

Antonio Valentino the only male. 

He was born on Valentine's Day thus the name...  And true to his name 

he got out of his pen and now all the girls are expecting.  They are all 

getting quite hefty and digging holes in preparation for the new brood.  

I am about to be overrun with rabbits!  

Register for a lab and see for yourself!!