Wednesday, July 12, 2006

Snail poem

I couldn't resist posting this cute poem. I found it at the Snail Facts site. See link below in the Boy's snail post.
Mistress LB

SNAIL
It hasn't any windows
It hasn't any doors
Although it has a ceiling
It hasn't any floors
'Twas built without a builder
A hammer or a nail
Because you see this funny house
Belongs to Mr Snail.

Author unknown

A shout-out to Auntie P!

Hey P,
You are most welcome to borrow my copy of Pocketful of Pinecones. It is a delightful read. I am really surprised the library doesn't have this one!
Mistress LB

Snails!

Today while we were delivering food for the Food Bank, we saw some common garden snails. They were crawling all over the walls in the garden, and sliming down the pathway. They were eating the grass in the planters, too. They are light brown on top, and their shells are mottled brown, black, and yellow. They have tannish undersides, and four tentacles, two of which (the longer, top ones) have eyes. These eyes however, cannot see actual images, just changes in lightness and darkness. They are all sensitive to touch. Humidity is important to snails. If they get too dry, they start to aestivate.(For the young ones, humidity means temperature(hot and cold), and water in the air. To aestivate means the snail draws itself into the shell, in order to withstand unfavorable conditions. If you still don't understand, ask your parent.)

Anyway, back to the original subject, now an answer to that age old question: Can snails come out of their shells? The answer is yes. If you plan on keeping snails (as I'm sure you will by the end of this blog), you will notice that after you wash the snails( you must do this weekly), they will sometimes come out of their shells and slime around. This will surely be an interesting time to observe them. Snails move by coating their foot (a muscle-like appendage on their belly) with mucus(snot). The snails need to live in a humid environment, however, if the environment is too humid, then mold will grow and kill the snails. They also need calcium of some sort, and a piece of shell from the beach will suffice their needs. Calcium is essential to shell growth. Keep them in a gallon jar (we are using an old pickle jar) with some cheesecloth over the top(secure with rubber bands) .Layer some wet paper towels over the bottom of the jar. The snails will eat this, so you don't need to give them anything more, although if you want, you can give them a treat such as lettuce, carrots, and occasionally apples as long as you clean the jar afterwards. Most land and water snails have a structure in their mouths called a radula. The radula works like lots of little teeth to scrape away little bits of the food. There now you have something to do with the "common garden pest" the snail. Hope you enjoyed this.

The Taxonomy of the common garden snail:
Phylum: Mollusca(soft-bodied marine animals)
Class: Gastropod(snails, slugs, and limpets)
Subclass: Pulmonata(slugs and most land snails. Mantle cavity has become a lung.Hermaphroditic)
Order: Stylomattophora(two pairs of tentacles, with eyes on top of the second pair)
info for this post is from The Big Book of Nature Projects, by: The Children's School of Science

Some snail links:
Snail facts lots of fun stuff here for little kids
brown garden snail this site describes how the snail got to America and all over the world, and is now considered a pest in California.
garden safari This site has cool pics of snail eggs.
eye to eye with garden snails experiments and teacher notes
BBC snails basic info, good pics
and last but not least, eating your garden snails!

Signed,
The Boy

Thursday, July 06, 2006

We're getting closer!

Yesterday, day 1 of our summerschool term, it took the kids 9 hours to get 4 hours of work done. Today, it took 6. I am really hoping tomorrow we can actually get it down to 4! I am ever hopeful!
Mistress LB

Intensive summer school term

Due to illness and life last year, we didn't finish several textbooks, so are doing an intensive summer term. We won't do our yearly assessment testing until the end of August. We just started yesterday, and I am hoping today and tomorrow go smoother. Here are the goals for summer.

For the Boy: When asked what grade he is in, I am telling folks "Eighth and a half". He is not ready for high school work yet, in several areas, and will be taking co-op classes in the fall; my goal is to strengthen his writing, latin, and math skills, and to develop some strong study skills . He will be doing his best to move through almost a whole year's text in math, doing a chapter a day sometimes.

For the Girl, we are strengthening her math and Latin, to prepare for co-op classes in those areas. She will be doing pre-algebra in the co-op class, so we are focusing on building up her 4 math functions, and she needs some work in division.

So, for the Girl, the days look something like this:
Math, Latin, and Grammar (just building it up a bit this summer- we will replace it with writing in the fall), an hour a day.
Same for the Boy, but we are focusing on the writing lessons as much as grammar.

For both kids, but mostly for the benefit of the Boy, we are doing weekly contracts- we both intital that this is the work he is expected to complete for the week, and he acknowledges that if it isn't done, nothing fun happens, and he gets an "F" on it. I know it sounds drastic, but if you had been trying to teach this student for the last 3 years, you weould feel this desperate, too!

To keep track of our work, support the contracts, etc. we are using the agendas by Franklin Covey. This is the Girl's, this one is the Boy's, and this is the one I am using, although it bums me out that mine doesn't start till August, even though the student agenda starts in July. Bleah! I will be using mine to plan and keep trackc of the kids' work/schedules, but I will mostly be using it to keep track of the work I assign myself (reading of ancient lit,latin, etc. This is the second year we have used these planners, but the first year that I will used the column for teacher comments and will actually mark their grades in them (remember, I gotta keep transcripts this year!).

Both kids do their instrument practice (horn for Boy, Piano for Girl) daily as well.
1/2 hour of literature reading a day (Little Women for both of them), about a half hour of me reading Calendar Quest (scroll down and click on it to read more) to them, and that is it for the daily stuff. We bought all the ingredients for the Physics experiments, and will be doing that about 2 times a week. I will add other subjects in this fall, but for now, I still want them to have a few hours of free time- it is summer, after all. So if they are integrity, they can be done with their school day by 2 pm and still have the afternoon for fun stuff.
We shall see.

I am still working with next year's schedule/plans. After reading The Latin Centered Curriculum, I am trying to figure out how to simplify and still get in all I want to. I will post more thoughts on LCC soon. There were some really good thoughts on literature that really hit home with me.
Mistress LB