Our adventure started with us attending a Reptile Show that was hosted by a fellow homeschooling mom. It was my first time meeting her even though we have "talked" through facebook. And we have a mutual friend. The snakes were really neat! The owner of the snakes was informative and very patient with all of the questions the children were raising their hands to ask. We had watched a show on PBS a few weeks ago about pythons in the everglades and how large they are becoming. It was called Monster Python...Watch the full episode HERE! They did a dissection of the large reptile and showed very graphically how a snake is able to move, eat, reproduce and survive. It was very informative! Jesse took a keen interest in this show with me and at yesterday's reptile show...well, he had some questions! One in particular and that was about the little "claw" that is on the underside of the snake towards the tail. In the show they related it to being "feet" at one time as a lizard but with the evolving of snakes it stayed but is not used. As our reptile expert said yesterday, he doesn't believe in evolution that way and sees the "claw" as a way for the snake to hold on to his/her mate. We were able to talk more about Jesse's question when we were holding and examining the snakes. We could see and feel the "claw" in questions and found it very interesting. The only way I know to describe this would be to say it felt like a cat's nail...but softer.
Shockingly, I did hold the snake and at one point I about dropped the snake because its head touched my arm and the tongue scared me as it tickled my skin! Okay, that gave me goosebumps all over again!
On to our next adventure of the day. You know that if you are going to a reptile show at a library what is the first thing your kids are going to want to do? Get a book about the snakes they just heard about. At least one child did, haha! Jesse wanted to read about the snakes. And I wish I had taken my camera out of my purse as he was reading in the bathtub (they have a navy blue bathtub in the library as a unique place to read). All you saw was his head and the top of his book.
I find that the computers they have to search for books are always in use and hard to grab one. This time I had my kindle fire with me and was able to use it to search for books I wanted to check out. As I said in a previous post we are switching some social studies curriculum around and trying out the GuestHollow American History for Jesse and Elizabeth Anne. I wasn't able to findall the books listed but I did find a few.
1. Night Bird - A story of the seminole indians. (I will have to go through this one as the cover looks kind of scary. But inside it looks ok)
2. Seminole Children and Elders talk together.
Today I will head to the teacher store and see if they have the History Pockets for Native Americans. I think it runs about 15.99.
Jacob picked out a dinosaur drawing book and Elizabeth picked the book, " Our New Cat". I think she has had this book several times before!
This Friday we are having a science lab on fingerprinting and part of the lab will be making fingerprint art so we checked out a couple of Ed Emberley's books! How creative they are too...lots of caterpillars, bugs, flowers, hearts...so excited!
As we were walking toward the check out I ventured to the DVDs. I was shocked at how many series they had for educational purposes! I chose a Civil War series (part 1 of 4) The DVD set came with a course book that has the outlines of the material. I figured I will scan it in and print the page larger. Jacob and Emily can watch and add their own notes to the material. Not sure how well this is going to go but I am going to try this instead of a textbook. Also found a PBS show that will be airing tomorrow about the women in the civil war.Other titles we picked up were on English Grammar and also a Sign Language DVD. Of course they are the firsts in the series.
