A monarch chrysalis!

In Homeschool This Week: Spring time here in Central Texas doesn't last very long. It goes from spring to summer quickly so we have really made time to enjoy nature this spring. It has been an amazing year so far. We have more butterflies and bugs than ever before......or maybe we are just noticing more. We spend some time observing and then Bodie writes in his journal about the things we have discovered. It's so much more fun to see these things in real life then just as a picture in a book. Here are some great things we've been able to observe. This year there have been tons of monach chrysalis everywhere in our pasture. When we found this one we made a point to try to watch it every day so we could see it when it came out. I'm mad at myself because I got a great picture of it the day it hatched, while still completely encased and I deleeted it by accident. So here is the blurry version, but you can at least see the color change. It went from bright green to clear with the colors of the wings showing through.

I wish now that we had stayed and watched the butterfly actually emerge, but I wasn't sure how long it would be. About an hour later I went back outside to look and it was already out and on the ground. It's wings were still really wet though so we were able to watch it for a while.

how cool is this?

 After a while Brylee got her hair close to the butterfly and it climbed right on . She was so excited. She thought it was going to be able to live there forever!

On to the next thing. Every spring we have dew berries that grow on our fence line. There are never too many, but the kids get excited every year. Between three kids we never make it back to the house with any left. They aren't quite as sweet as blackberries or as big but good just the same. I could make a pretty mean cobbler with them if we ever had any left over. 

Picking berries requires team work. This was Brooke's first year to eat dew berries. Every time her little mouth got empty she would squak and Brylee would fill her up again.


There is just so much to learn from observing nature and so much to talk about. It is a great way to teach them how all things work together and how everything has a function and purpose.

 Lady bugs are everywhere this year! Brylee loves it. She catches them and puts them in the garden. Need to think about getting a ladybug house.

another monarch chrysalis

Ladybug pupa

 Here are some other great things we have 
 been able to observe.











We get down in the dirt to observe somethings. We look over and under and in things......

some serious observing.

And sometimes........

we have to even get a bird's eye view!

learning to observe things just like brother and sister.

Bodie's journal entry about butterflies.

http://www.thehomeschoolchick.com/about-the-homeschool-mothers-journal/