Well, very quickly in my very carefully constructed plan they got bored. So, they went off rock climbing and going over the pond. As they did, they noticed this:
Ducks and turtles. Well, being the inquisitive kids they are. Of course we had to observe them. First they counted and discovered there were a lot more turtles than last time we were there a few weeks ago.
Now, what to do with this? Of course, let’s see what they’ll eat.
So, they ran over and started breaking off pieces of bamboo and throwing them in the water. At first nothing was biting, so they tried other plants.
So, they threw in this plant. The ducks and turtle had no interest in it. However, these little polliwogs swarmed the plant. Then we had a lot of speculation on whether or not these are tadpoles or fish. We didn’t have enough evidence to make a conclusive decision.
Bother, got distracted by shiny photo products and seeing if another site had something that would work better. FOCUS Ticia!
After a little bit, however we looked over and the ducks were devouring the bamboo they had thrown in the water. So, the kids were all excited that ducks eat bread and bamboo. This led to the question: Are ducks like pandas? Can pandas eat bread too?
And that led to a discussion about different animals and what they prefer to eat, and that ducks are not like pandas, pandas only eat bamboo. That got me to thinking someday I should go to Enchanted Learning and print off all of their animal printouts because it usually has most of what my kids really want to learn. Back when I taught first grade, we used these pages for the kids to write reports on animals.
So, what’d you guys do this week? Ours was fairly boring, but I had fun seeing the connections my kids were trying to draw.
It is so fun when they create their own science this way. We didn't do anything for Science this week.
Good luck on your Father's Day gift!
I can't wait how your Father's Day gift looks like. I will link up my post on Monday, but it's funny that ducks eat bamboo – I didn't know that.
Unfortunately, I don't have a science post this week. 🙁
But we did learn that pandas do eat other things like biscuits, popsicles and even meat if they are really hungry. They used to eat meat but over time became vegetarians who eat mostly bamboo. And oh, technically, they aren't true vegetarians because they eat the insects that come with the bamboo. We mainly do animal studies too because that's what JC loves. But amazingly, we learned so much from studying animals…a bit of geography, food, habitat, classes of animals, etc.
Your young scientists always have so much fun hpothesising and testing their hypotheses. Sure does make for some memorable times.
Your fairy tale collection is very impressive. I love the fact that your children will get to enjoy a version of Beauty And The Beast that you wrote. How sweet that you hubby wrote a fairy tale for you.
I also have a collection (very small compared to yours) of fairy tales and particularly like to collect the tales that have beautiful illustrations.
What a neat pond! I think we would have had to scoop up a glass of those guppies/polliwogs to study further 🙂
Your kids are so clever. I really like how they experiment, I would have never thought that the ducks would eat bamboo. We did science, I am just not in the posting mood. My kids keep asking me when I am going to blog about Science Sunday, I told them Sunday(lol).
I need to find some polliwogs for Tornado Boy to check out. We've read about them when we were studying metamorphosis, but he's never seen one.
There is NOTHING boring about this post- especially with your usual side comments (focus!).
Just walking around in nature brings about SO MANY educational opportunities…