Yes!! and Yes!!

Blogger must have put back their old image import feature. I can put images on again! Yes! And the other "Yes" is for us finally racing. This is a picture of my hubby under the race car. I love this picture. It's a bit humorous. Disclaimer: No mechanic was harmed in the making of this photo... Ha ha ha!! He does a large amount of the work himself. 

We had a new engine built this year and it was suppose to be finished for the long weekend in May. It wasn't finished until a couple of weeks ago. It's in and ready to go! 

If you know anything about racing you'll know what I mean when I say that our car use to be in the 12's and now it should be in the 9's. We will find out this weekend. If it's in the 9's we'll have to get a special license. Also, if it has a really hard take-off we may need a wheelie bar.

Wish us luck!

No pictures?!

I am unable to post pictures on here anymore. They changed how it's done and my old Macintosh doesn't work with whatever they did. Without pictures I think that it wouldn't be have as exciting reading this blog. So, I may be taking a break until I get a new computer. I sadly say goodbye until then or until they change how they place images on this site. Hopefully I'll be back soon.
:(

Book Sharing Monday - Slop Goes The Soup

Want to talk to your kids about onomatopoeia (ahn-uh-mah-tuh-pee-uh)? Onomatopoeia means words that sound just like their sound. Slop Goes The Soup by Pamela D. Edwards and Henry Cole is a story about these words that describe (and sound like) sounds. It's a very simple story, but there is a page at the back that talks about onomatopoeia and has some questions/activities that help reinforce the definition.

Black Swallowtail Butterfly

Here is our butterfly house. We made it at a Homeschool Bug Co-Op. It works well. I wish I could find the instructions on how to make it so I can share, but I was unsuccessful. It's pretty easy but not so easy to explain without illustrations or pictures. Sorry, guys. If anyone finds instructions, please share them with me and I'll share it here.

We started with 6 caterpillars. Four of them are now butterflies and we let them go. Two of them are in the chrysalis stage. We've done well, with the exception of one butterfly that our cats got a hold of one early morning. We set it free because it was still alive but it was unable to fly. Now I keep the butterfly house hanging on a ceiling lamp in the office where I can shut the door at night, locking the cats out.

This is one of our success stories. I captured a picture of it while it rested on a tree branch in our yard, before taking flight.

Black Swallowtail Butterfly

Our oldest caterpillar showed signs that it would be coming out yesterday. The main sign is that the beautiful greenish colour goes a murky black colour. We took it with us everywhere we went so that we wouldn't miss it. 

Looking up close we could see more and more details through the chrysalis. 

We went out and while we were out we took the jar with us. We even brought it into Harveys when we ate lunch. Good thing we did because as soon as we got all settled and started to take our first bites it started to emerge.  I took video and was way too excited, so it's good that my hubby decided to edit it and add music. The kids liked to watch how he edited it on the computer. I'm glad you don't have to hear my shrieking, excited noises as we watch it come out. LOL! It was way to hard to contain the excitement. We've had many caterpillars but never actually saw the butterfly come out of it's chrysalis before. It's a good thing we didn't obey the signs as we entered Harveys that says "No Pets Allowed".

The kids took out the chrysalis for closer observation after we got home and learned that there was a liquid inside it. We identified the butterfly as a female. I'll take a picture of our butterfly tomorrow as we let it go outside so you can see the beautiful markings on it that helped us identify that it as a female.

Book Sharing Monday - The Usborne Art Treasury

The Usborne Art Treasury is a wonderful book for us. The write-ups about the artists are short enough that I can keep the interest of the kids. The projects are fun and easy.

Austyn wanted to do a bird craft, but I was unable to find one that he wanted to do from our library of craft books. So I adapted a lesson from this book to go along with his bird theme. We learned about an artist who made mobiles in modern times and he created his own mobile with birds.

Here is his finished mobile hanging on his ceiling lamp.

Dollar Store Masks

Today we were running out of pipe cleaners so I decided that it was time to take a trip to the dollar store. While we were there I purchased two mask painting kits. Austyn wanted a theatrical looking mask and Zoe wanted a cat mask. The masks came with paint, a brush and a little piece of plastic to mix the paint on. 

Here are the final masks.

Zoe decided to continue to paint on a paper plate.