bugs -- the theme that just won't quit

In case you've all been wondering what's been happening on the homeschooling front lately, we've been totally stuck in the bug theme. Everything seems to be about bugs! Obviously, they're just everywhere, so our ongoing real-life study of bugs is never-ending. But we also seem to keep ending up in ideal educational settings for insect studies!

Take yesterday, at Bigelow Hollow State Park, there was a pond-study set up to find the little insects and critters that live at the bottom of lakes and ponds. Of course, the boys got TOTALLY sucked in by this activity. First, they had to identify all the possible insects and insect larvae that could be found at the lake bottom. Here a volunteer patiently discusses pond bugs with them. (They are a VERY willing audience on this topic!)

Then they used magnifying glasses to examine the contents of the trays she had set up with live examples of the bugs on the charts, as J is doing here. (Zoo Boy was either under the table picking out his net, or bombarding the volunteer with questions about snails and water striders. After one close-up look at what he might find in the lake, he was ready to get moving on this activity!)

Here's one of the things they were looking at (and that they captured themselves when they got into the lake with their nets) -- a damselfly nymph (one of several lifestages that damselflies go through before becoming adults and leaving the water to fly away).

Then we took off our shoes and socks and jumped into the lake with our nets. We dredged the bottom muck with our nets, then sifted through what we brought up to see what living critters we captured. In addition to the damselfly nymphs, we also found several varieties of water insects, some snails, and one dragonfly nymph (which is similar to the damselfly, but bigger).

J met a fellow bug-enthusiast and the two of them set out to dig interesting things out from under the bank of the lake.

I used to teach classes at nature centers and environmental camps, and Pond Study was always my favorite activity, so I'm pretty thrilled that my kids were so into it. One of the reasons I wanted to homeschool my kids was so that I could be the one wading around the muck with them, instead of their teacher or camp counselor. So today was sort of a dream come true for me. The kids are looking for me to get them their own nets so we can do more pond study at other lakes and ponds. I'm all over that idea!

So anyway, our reading over the past couple of weeks has been -- you guessed it -- about bugs. But also about gardens -- our favorite book being Jack's Garden, by Henry Cole. The kids went absolutely nuts over that book, and there's so much IN that book to look at and talk about, both about the plants and the bugs that inhabit the garden, that we decided to keep that one book as our complete story time for one week. And then this past week Zoo Boy sort of took control of our Family Story Time and picked books out of his favorites collections (off his book shelf) for us to read, and even chose the songs we sang during storytime. I've got a couple pond-themed books I've been saving for just the right opportunity, looks like this week will be it! I'll blog about them after I get a feel for how the kids like them.