From the category archives:

Life and Living

Quiz – The Baby Edition

November 15, 2011 Life and Living

I should probably call it the reproductive edition, although I’m only looking at animals. But have you ever thought about all the different solutions to passing your genes on? What is the difference between precocial and altricial babies? A nice easy one for Australians – how do monotremes have babies? How is gender determined in [...]

60 Second Science

November 14, 2011 Energy and Change

Logo belongs to 60 Second Science, definitely not to me. The Victorian Education Department sponsors a fabulous competition called 60 Second Science. It’s very simple and open – make a video of 60 seconds or less and explain some science. That’s it. Forgetting the competitive aspects, this is a great idea for any teacher or [...]

Eggshell Seedlings

November 10, 2011 Activities

Some people seem to have the erroneous impression that I’m good with plants. This is probably because of the number of plant projects I start, but trust me they don’t last. The peas and terrarium sprouted but didn’t survive transplanting. One of the peas went mouldy. The seedlings in egg cartons were blown away in [...]

Kid Questions: Do Frogs Have Lips?

November 7, 2011 Kid Questions

The quick answer is ‘no,’ frogs don’t have lips. They have some very interesting features in their mouths, but lips like we have belong to monkeys, apes and us. Primate lips There are 5 types of large animals we’re most familiar with – fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals. Mammals have very different mouths to [...]

Wordless Wednesday – Weird and Wonderful egg

November 2, 2011 Food

I hope I’m not going too far overboard with all the chicken stuff, but I am finding them rather fascinating. Most people connect to nature through their gardens but I’m an abject failure at anything to do with plants. So the chickens are my chance to breed and grow and show where food comes from. [...]

Kid Questions: Do Sharks Have Tongues?

October 31, 2011 Kid Questions

The answer to this one is yes and no. Land animal skeletons and tongues are very different to fish and sharks, with very different jobs. Land Animals Our tongues are full of muscles and covered with sensitive skin and lots of nerves. They are very mobile and help mammals eat and drink, move food around [...]

Kid Questions: How do Bees Carry Pollen?

October 28, 2011 Kid Questions

I discovered with this one that different types of bees carry pollen differently, there are two main ways. One important thing to remember is that in spite of what you may see in movies, most of the pollen collecting bees are girls and any pollen that is spread is by accident – the bees would [...]

Investigating Insects

October 20, 2011 Activities

I‘m sure we’ve all kept insects at some stage – either making little temporary barriers out of twigs or putting them in a box or bug catcher. When you get a bit more advanced you can collect and pin them, we weren’t that adventurous as kids and just did the standard pin through the middle [...]

Rainforest Answers

October 14, 2011 Earth and Beyond

Do you know about rainforests? If you’d like to try the quiz, close your eyes and click back. 1. Rainforests are millions of years old. They developed before the last ice age when the world was much warmer and covered much of the tropics and sub-tropics. What we have left today are the [...]

Wordless Wednesday – Wasp Nest

October 12, 2011 Life and Living

We get a lot of wasp nests around here, one day we opened one to see. Each egg gets its own little mud house with caterpillars, then the whole thing is covered again.