Zoo, Greek, Mercury

We had an exciting day at the zoo today. We got there just in time for Mr Will's story time and we got to pet a guinea Pig. On the walk to the Educational Building Taylor noticed a big green caterpillar, so of course it is now sitting in a jar in my kitchen. I have done a little looking and I think it might be a Tobacco Worm.. which turns into a large moth.. I am still looking to see how to take care of it and hope we can watch it through the stages to a moth. My biggest concern is making sure what it is and if I have the right leaves for it to eat.
Kaleb said his favorite part of the zoo was catching the monarchs... I have photos that cat too I will post later. We also saw a black and light blue butterfly BEAUTIFUL! and a Rabbit! The zoo has definitely become a favorite place to see animals.. in and out of cages.

The kids did Math and Handwriting before we left this morning. Cat and Jo actually had theirs done before 8am! .. before BREAKFAST!... The came in asking if they could go ahead and do theirs and I said.. SURE! ...

We also discussed our memory verses. .. This weeks is the letter F.. "For God so loved the world.... " John 3:16

For Greek we went over all our words and learned a new one. Tropos which means turning. For example some plants are phototropic- photo meaning light and tropic meaning turning.. so these plants turn toward light.. like the sunflower, etc..

In Science we learned about Mercury. Here are the HIGH points of the lesson: Mercury is the fastest planet in our solar system. It only takes 88 Earth days for Mercury to make it around the sun. There is hardly any atmosphere so the sky there is black even during the day .. the sun appears white. A full day on Mercury would be just under 30 Earth days of bright sunshine and just under 30 days of cold darkness. Our day on Earth is 24 hours. Mercury's day is 59 Earth days. We looked at a website that had images of Mercury and a few neat interactive sections one where we could compare the mass of planets with each other. The kids loved that. We looked at Messengers website. Messenger is a unmanned spacecraft that is heading for Mercury right now! It will be at Venus in Oct of 06! cool!

Yesterday we went to the library. We always have fun there.

Things I am hoping to get to this week:
Have a measuring marathon :) .. I think I will get out my cups, pints, quarts, and gallon measuring things and have the kids measure with water. How many cups are in a gallon? What is the measure for cups in metric? Is there one? Are they exactly the same?
I want to have the kids figure out how old they would be if they lived on Mercury. How much they would weigh and if they could play baseball there. :)
I would also like to start the kids working on a Greek and Latin word box or book. They will write the words we have covered on index cards or paper and have a place to illustrate and add words they think up that contain that root. I also want them to try and write their names in Greek.

I hope to post photos tomorrow. Happy Homeschooling!