Living Science

FACT: When you homeschool, you are never just satisfied to read things out of a book!

You are always wanting to show the practical, and sometimes impractical, side to everything. For example, when the Monkey Man was in his dinosaur phase, we measured off the length of 6 of his faves on the front sidewalk. After all, when you realize that some of those cool looking animals in the book were the length of your neighbor's property and half of yours, it's impressive and most of all... tangible. It's hard to imagine just how big 150 ft. is when you're 5 years-old.

It is this philosophy that has landed me with two very unusual housemates! We have been studying the life cycle of frogs and toads, can you already see where this is going??? My good friend Mama Doom decided to order some tadpoles from the internet. When the package arrived she was slightly taken aback, to say the least. These were not the cute little tadpoles that we see in the creeks around here, but BIG, HONKIN', bullfrog tadpoles! Seriously, Godzilla comes to mind! And of course these little lovelies are not native to the area and since the transformation can take up to a year or more, they will have been hand fed and completely unreleasable when they become frogs. So in the name of science and discovery I have two plump, lazy tadpoles for pets! Oy!



I guess I can't complain though, Monkey Man adores them! Seriously, what 7 year-old boy wouldn't kill to have his very own tankful of transformers?!? They have been named "Ribbet" and "Krokus" (can you tell my son is a fan of 80's Butt Rock?). We figured "Ribbet" was pretty gender neutral and if "Krokus" turns out to be a girl, we can just change the spelling to "Crocus". And I will have to admit, the more they grow, the more they grow on me! We are starting to see little leg buds on Krokus and it's so freakin' cool! Besides, you can't ever go wrong with living science. These are the things that will make an impression and the Monkey will remember for a lifetime. And if nothing else, they will be good for at least a couple of decent blog entries! ;)