From the category archives:

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Bird Answers

February 3, 2012 General science

How did you do? I had good fun working out the answers. 1. Lungs in birds are very different to ours, they are more efficient. In mammals we breathe into large dead end sacks of alveoli, use some oxygen then have to get rid of the low oxygen air taking up the space. [...]

Marvellous Marbling

February 2, 2012 Activities

The big girl received an art book for Christmas. Most of it is way too old for her, but she loves picking things out and then we get to work out how to modify them for her. She wanted to try marbling, but we had a few problems to solve so we tried lots of [...]

Wordless Wednesday – Responsible Fire Management

February 1, 2012 Earth and Beyond

We have a bush block in central Australia, so fire management is extremely important. It’s relatively cool and raining at the moment, so it’s time to deal with last year’s growth that is this year’s fire hazard.

Quiz – The Bird Edition

January 31, 2012 Life and Living

As you know I have budgies and chickens, so I’ve learnt a lot about birds recently. What do you know? How do bird lungs work? How do birds keep cool? Which bird lays the biggest egg relative to body size? How is the dodo special? And what’s with the boys in the picture? Answers on [...]

Engineer’s Report: Gingerbread House

December 22, 2011 Activities

Location: Slab has been well prepared, very smooth and level on a hard substrate. Block is minimum size, house too close to front boundary. Floorplan: A simple rectangle with only one room and firepit in the centre for cooking. Entrance centre front is decorative only, 6 windows give adequate light and ventilation but difficult to [...]

Can You …

December 15, 2011 Activities

For us, our bodies are familiar and generally predictable. We know what we can do, we are confident in our movements. But this is something that babies and children need to learn. For my little drama princesses, getting a camera out is a sure-fire way to get them to try new things Can you kiss your [...]

Wordless Wednesday – Rubbings

December 14, 2011 Materials

Do you have any idea how many patterned, textured surfaces you have around your home? Hundreds. Trust me. Obligatory Christmas tie-in – use rubbings to make wrapping paper, just use crayons or pencils on butcher’s paper. Kidlet’s creatively entertained and personalised paper as elaborate as you want.

Star Answers

December 13, 2011 Earth and Beyond

I‘m back! Did you miss me? Turns out that when you have ‘minor surgery’ you should listen to the ‘surgery’ bit and not so much of the ‘minor.’ I’m recovering nicely, but I’m also starting the round of Christmas relative visits with children but without husband, so posts may be irregular. I do remember that [...]

Wordless Wednesday – Budgie’s First Egg

December 7, 2011 Life and Living

When birds first start laying their reproductive system doesn’t always get it together straight away and you can end up with some strange eggs. One of our budgie chicks is starting and she laid an egg without a shell – we’ve had this with a couple of chickens, but you can see how tiny this [...]

Quiz – The Star Edition

December 6, 2011 Earth and Beyond

Twinkle, twinkle, little star. What is the main sequence? Will our sun die as a supernova? Why do stars twinkle? Are the stars in constellations ‘related’? And what do you know about the picture? Answers hopefully on Friday!