Butterflies and Dinosaurs

After reading the Boys Adrift book, I got all motivated to provide hands-on educational experiences for my kid. We sprouted apple seeds (he's convinced he's going to grow an apple tree...) and we ordered caterpillar larvae to observe the life cycle of butterflies. He was very excited at each step in their developmental process, checking on them several times a day and running to our room to report any developments. One caterpillar was significantly behind the other and I even thought it died, but it grew suddenly and made its cocoon before the other one emerged so that was good. I wanted to be sure we set them free before their 2-week life span ended. I did not want the progress report to involve any "sleeping" butterflies.

Here is Nicco with the empty cocoons on the release day:

Here he is coaxing the butterflies out of their house:

Here is one of his butterflies in the fresh air and sunshine. It was hard to catch it with its wings open. Contrary to what it looks like, the butterfly is not "sleeping." :

It was a very successful experiment. Nicco had fun and even learned about caterpillars and butterflies. We may try a tadpole next!

Nicco has recently developed an interest in dinosaurs. We checked out a whole bunch of dinosaur books from the library, he can tell me quite a few facts about them, and he knows that a meat eater would make a bad choice for a pet. One of his books said that dinosaur bones have been found on all 7 continents, so who knows! There might even be fossils in your own back yard!

The Daddy was working in the back yard this weekend (do you love our tropical paradise, with the addition of 3 new palm trees? Ahhh....) so Nicco got his tools out to dig for dinosaur bones while his Dad was digging holes and moving rocks and gravel.

He found a "tooth."

He brushed off the dust and dirt...

He washed off the remaining dust...

He dried his collection of "teeth" on a paper towel, and now he is convinced he is going to build a dinosaur.

I may be able to come up with a satisfactory substitute for a real fossil dinosaur model. Stay tuned!