Russell Ramblings: The week where we were busy as & with insects

It was insect week here at Russell Homestead!  We felt busy as bees in more ways than one this week.  As pregnancy #5 is drawing to close, there is lots to do - weekly check-ups, packing for the hospital stay, washing baby clothing, etc.  

On the homeschool front, we thoroughly enjoyed learning about insects.  One of the special activities in our My Father's World curriculum was to have an ant farm.  MFW conveniently includes an ant hill in the deluxe package along with a voucher to send off for the ants.  The ants arrived last Saturday in a small tube in the mail.  We carefully prepared our ant farm with sand, water, and food.  We released the ants into the hill (after refrigerating them for 10 minutes to slow them down).  They immediately got to work excavating the sand and haven't stopped since!

Even though I admittedly wasn't thrilled about having ants in my house, they have been fascinating to watch.  I asked the boys what they learned from watching the ants and our discussions about ants.  They said, "Ants work hard without a leader."  "Ants work hard to store food for winter."  "Ants dig tunnels."

We also studied ladybugs in our insect unit.  We learned how they are helpful to farmers and gardeners by eating aphids.  We learned that different types of ladybugs have different amounts of spots.  We made ladybugs by painting rocks and attaching wiggly eyes and pipe cleaner legs and feelers.  Here we are painting our bugs.  MJ wanted to be included, too, but she got markers instead of paints.

Below is the finished project, which we hid in our flower beds for Daddy to find when he came home from work.

We have moved onto our last insect that we will be studying - bees.  We are working on making a simple model of a beehive.  We learned about all the things in the hive including the queen, the eggs, the larvae, the honey, etc.  We have looked at a bee's life cycle.  The boys (and I) were quite surprised that a typical worker bee makes about 1 teaspoon and a half of honey in her lifetime!

We will be wrapping up our insect study next week.  Yet another aspect of the MFW curriculum that I appreciate is that the kindergarten units are set up for 6 days instead of 5.  At first, that may seem unusual, but it frees me from having to complete a unit within a week.  I really like the flexibility it allows.  (Can anyone tell yet that I LOVE My Father's World curriculum?)

I hope you had a blessed week!  Thanks for stopping by!

This post is linked to the weekly wrap-up at Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers.