From the category archives:

Life and Living

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. [...]

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 [...]

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 – 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 [...]

Kid Questions: Why do we see the lights after they are switched off?

December 5, 2011 Kid Questions

If you stare at a light for about 30 seconds then turn it off or look away you will still see a light in front of your eyes. This is called an afterimage, or technically a positive afterimage. In the back of your eyes are lots of little cells called cones. When certain types of [...]

Colour Answers

December 2, 2011 Energy and Change

1. We see because our eyes pick up light that has bounced off the things around us. It feels a little backwards, but the colour something appears is the colour it reflects rather than absorbs. A green book would absorb every colour except green and bounce the green back to us. Colour is determined by [...]

Quiz – The Colour Edition

November 29, 2011 Energy and Change

Does anyone else find the rainbow song frustrating? Red and yellow and pink and green are not the colours of the rainbow! But there are lots of other interesting things about it. If something appears green, what is it doing to light? Is mixing coloured light the same as mixing paint? For StuffWithThing, are colours [...]

Wordless Wednesday – Duckling Caesarean

November 23, 2011 Life and Living

People who follow me on Facebook might have seen these photos but they bear repeating. While I was away one of our hens went broody, so instead of popping some of our eggs under her my husband got some bantams and Indian Runner Duck eggs. As you would. The bantams hatched a week earlier so [...]

Baby Answers

November 18, 2011 Life and Living

Do you know about other babies? 1. Precocial and altricial describe the two opposite types of babies. Precocial babies are large and capable, often they are single or have very small litters. A classic precocial baby is a horse that can get up and run with the herd within hours of birth. They generally [...]

Creating Books

November 17, 2011 Activities

Both the girls love being read to, and big girl is reading. Of course this means little girl needs to as well, she’s at the stage where she can identify pictures and follow a pattern to ‘read’ to us and thinks it’s the best thing ever. She’s also starting to draw recognisably and loves making [...]