From the category archives:

Observation

Wordless Wednesday – Whirlpools

February 22, 2012 Babies

I can’t say how happy it makes me that the girls love watching the whirlpool when you pull the plug out. I love seeing the two waves on top of the water – the huge influence of such a tiny flaw. A shining, silvery hole twisting and turning in the water. Excuse the scum.

Wordless Wednesday – All Around Us

February 15, 2012 Life and Living

I had a couple of examples of interesting life around us on the holidays. The first was the enormous moth above – it’s as long as my finger! It’s a hawkmoth, which comes from the Yeperenye caterpillar and is an important Dreaming spirit in the Alice Springs region. It was just in a corner of the [...]

A Farm in a Box

February 9, 2012 Activities

When we were kids we, like so many others, had silkworms. It was a fun introduction to lifecycles, responsibility and the ethical dilemma of collecting the silk easily or letting them eat their way out. Now I’ve discovered there is an even easier version where you can see the pupae rather than having them tucked [...]

Wordless Wednesday – What is it?

February 8, 2012 Observation

OK my friends, what do you think it is? Or is this incredibly simple and you all know?

Pendulum Waves

February 6, 2012 Energy and Change

First watch this video: How cool is that? And did you like the setup in the beginning when they showed you there were no tricks, it’s just a line of pendulums of different lengths. This, my friends, is all about maths. And physics, but at this level physics is pretty much applied maths. Pendulums Pendulums [...]

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.

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 [...]

Wordless Wednesday – A Day

November 30, 2011 Earth and Beyond

This is something I’ve been trying to do for ages, either life gets in the way or the day is deadly boring. Most photos are half an hour apart, the evening gets closer and the last sunset shots are only a couple of minutes. For a camera set up on a tripod there’s a worrying [...]

Sparkles

November 24, 2011 Activities

Little girl loves gluing at the moment. She doesn’t care if it’s a stick or brush, the sheer pleasure of spreading glue around is enough. It’s even more important than actually sticking anything to the glue, which is driving the control freak in me mad. In a bid to make it a bit different I’ve [...]

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 [...]