Book Sharing Monday :: Bubble Homes and Fish Farts

Bubble Homes and Fish Farts is written by Fiona Bayrock and illustrated by Carolyn Conahan. We picked up this title from the library to add to our fish study. This book talks about many more animals than just fish! It is all about bubbles and how animals, from Violet Sea Snails to Pearl Gourami, use bubbles. 

"Bubbles are soft and squishy and full of air. They shimmer. They float. And they are very handy. Animals make bubbles, ride bubbles, breathe bubbles, and even live in bubbles. Animals use bubbles in amazing ways."
To participate in Book Sharing Monday, please leave the link to your book sharing post below. Thank you and happy reading!

Passing Through Our Yard ...

Book Sharing Monday :: Life-Size Aquarium

"Life-Size Aquarium" by Teruyuki Komiya  is a fun and educational book! There are beautiful photographs of 35 different animals that you might find at an aquarium. All the photos are true-to-life, even for the larger animals which show only parts of their bodies. Along the photos are facts such as the scientific name, the approximate age, the home, and more interesting facts on each animal. There is a section for each animal called "time for a close-up" that is similar to i-spy questions.

Here is the introduction from the walrus page:

"Wow! Look at those long tusks! What do you think they are used for? He needs them to help pull his enormous body out of the water and to poke holes in the ice to breathe through while he swims."

And here are a couple sentences from the "time for a close-up" section of the walrus:

"Can you see that this walrus has a pink tongue? The tip is split a little bit.
Can you see that this walrus has two long tusks? These are elongated canine teeth."

There are two other books in this series "Life-Size Zoo" and "More Life-Size Zoo". We will be looking for these at our library!

If you would like to participate in Book Sharing Monday, please add the link to your book sharing post below. Happy Reading!

Book Sharing Monday :: Over in the Jungle :: Over in the Ocean

Today I am sharing two books, both from the same author and illustrator. Over in the Ocean and Over in the Jungle are written by Marianne Berkes and beautifully illustrated by Jeanette Canyon. The art in both books was made completely with polymer clay. I am always amazed by the details!
Celeste still loves to check out baby board books from the library, so these two are in that format. Both are counting books and include many animals from each habitat. The story also rhymes, they are both a lot of fun to read aloud. At the back of each there is an activity suggestion to go along with reading the story. The Over in the Ocean includes a fingerplay activity, while the Over in the Jungle has some body movements suggestion to go along the story. You could also sing the story.

"Over in the ocean

Far away from the sun

Lived a mother octopus

And her octopus one."

"Over in the jungle

Where she knew how to wait

Lived a mother ocelot

And her ocelots eight."

{this moment: corn snake and Celeste}

{this moment} - A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.

hosted by Soule Mama.

Native snakes up close!

A few days ago, we visited one of the local library branches for a special reptile show. It was called Reptiles at Risk On the Road. The show was very interesting because all the reptiles they showed were native to Ontario and most could be found in the wild around where we live. The presentators did an excellent job at presenting all the reptiles and explaining how these snakes behave in the wild, especially if they feel threatened. They also explained how it is illegal for anyone to keep any of these native reptiles as pets.

They did bring one type of snake (Corn Snake) that wasn't native to our country to show what a good option for a pet snake could be.

I am only showing photos of the native snakes in this post. The presentation was the first part of the show, and in the second half everyone could hold the snakes! I included links to the names of the snakes if you would like to learn more about each kind.

Black Rat Snake (photo above and below)

Eastern Fox Snake with Adrienne:

Hog Nose Snake:

Andre holding the Hog Nose snake, and Adrienne the Fox snake:

Celeste is holding the Milksnake:

We stayed until the very end of the presentation, when they were starting to pack everything up. Celeste loved holding the snakes and didn't want to leave, actually all 3 of my children have held snakes before and are confortable with them. The one man doing the presentation decided to show us two extra reptiles, both little turtles. The first photo is a Spotted Turtle, the two other photos are of a rare tiny turtle called a Stinkpot Turtle.

~

If you are in Ontario, be sure to check the events calendar for this free educational event on the Reptiles at Risk website!
We loved it!

a little visitor in our front yard

Sketch Tuesday ~ Native Fish or Reptile

This week's assignment was to sketch a fish or reptile native to our country.

We live in Canada, and so grabbed our field guides and set out to decide what to draw.

Andre loves sharks and asked me if Canada had sharks. I wasn't sure about this, so we looked it up and found out that we do! Even one of his favourites, the Thresher Shark. It can be found in the Atlantic, off the coast of Newfoundland.

Adrienne drew a skink. It can be found in Ontario.

Celeste told me she drew a little snake.

I quickly sketched a Midland Painted Turtle. We had seen these turtles on one of nature walks recently.

You can visit Harmony Fine Arts blog for more information about Sketch Tuesday.

Outdoor Hour Challenge ~ Winter Series ~ Mammals: Wolf, Fox, and Dog

This week we decided to study mammals. Barbara at the Handbook of Nature Study blog has been posting some beautiful spring wildflowers photos, but we don't have those here yet, so we looked at other challenges and picked Challenge #51: Wolf, Fox, and Dog.

I started by reading one of the stories from the Burgess Animal Book for Children. while the kids were finishing their lunch. We don't have a copy of it, but I found it online at Project Gutenberg. I read aloud story #28 Old Man Coyote and Howler the Wolf. We enjoyed this story a lot.

Next, Adrienne and I watched the documentary from PBS Nature : In the Valley of the Wolves. The documentary is beautiful, set in Yellowstone National Park, and very informative. I agree with Barb that some parts may be difficult for younger children to see, but Adrienne and I were fine with it, having watched nature documentaries with top predators before.
We coloured while watching the movie, a fox colouring page and a grey wolf one. We paused a few times during the show to discuss what we were seeing, and many times we were amazed how the wolves looked like our dog Orion.

Our colouring pages:

After we were finished the PBS show, we filled in our Mammals journal page. I printed a mammal journal on both sides of the paper. We completed one side for the Red Fox.

The other side we decided would be our dog study.  I grabbed the Handbook of Nature Study, our dog, and we set out to answer some of the questions from page 258.
Here is a description of our dog:

Orion is our Siberian Husky. He will be one in April and was very cooperative with us.

We measured him from head to the tip of the tail. He is about 54 inches, with 13 inches being his bushy tail. We knew that he was about 70 lbs, so I didn't bother trying to weigh him!

He has a few different colours in his thick coat, grey, black, beige and white. His coat has two layers, an undercoat and a top coat. His eyes are beige/yellow. The journal page asked "how does this mammal defend itself?", we haven't seen him defend himself, but we guessed that he would growl, show his teeth, and bite. Adrienne also said that he might just run.

We then moved on to the questions in the book.

We looked at his legs and compared them to our cat's legs. His legs are long and strong, which we thought would allow him to run for long distances.

We looked at his feet and pads and compared them to the cat's. Our cat's pads are soft and the skin feels lighter, thiner. Orion's are hard and tough. We talked about how dogs would be able to travel through rougher terrain with those pads. Siberian huskies can also withstand colder temperatures, even though in the frozen areas they would need booties to keep their paws safe, if they were out for long periods of time.

Orion's (dog) paw:

Clara's (cat) paw :

We also looked at the differences in their claws. Orion can't retract his claws and they are thicker and harder. They are heavier and we can't bend them. Adrienne deducted that this might help him grip the ground better when he is running.

Orion's claws:

Clara's claws (we never de-clawed her):

We noticed that Orion's body is lean and muscular, as opposed to Clara, our cat, which feels soft and squishy (we didn't squish her, but hug them each and that was the best word we could come up with!).

Another difference were in their eyes. Their pupils are also very different. Adrienne talked about how cats could see better in the dark than dogs and how dogs would likely rely on their sense of smell more than their eyes at night.

We looked at Orion's ears and read the explanation in the Handbook of how important the shape of the ear is to the dog's ability to hear. Orion's ears are covered in fur.

The nose on the dog is up front, with the nostrils right at the front. The skin is rough around the nose. We thought this would help protect his nose while he is sniffing rough ground or surfaces. We talked about how dogs use their sense of smell to "identify" people.

Last, we talked about how Orion expresses himself and shows us his emotions. Our dog "talks" a lot. He hardly barks, but talks a lot. It sounds a little bit like howling, but he has so many different sounds that it's quite entertaining! He can also "cry". The position of his ears is important as well to his language. He doesn't wag his tail as much as other dogs.

We didn't go outside for this Outdoor Challenge but we had a great time learning more about wolves, foxes and our dog.

You can read more about the Outdoor Challenge here.

If you would like to do the same nature study on wolves, foxes and dogs, you can read all about it here.

Penguin Notebook by Celeste (with Adrienne's help)

The girls worked on this little notebook together. All I did was print a few worksheets that Adrienne chose. They read a few books on penguins, completed the worksheets, and put it together in a notebook.
Celeste's first notebook!
The printable worksheets came from Lapbook Lessons.