We had a busy second day of school!  

Austin circled words that begin with the letter I, then did another worksheet about the number zero.

Then we read a book about butterflies in keeping with the insect theme.

Next he did symmetrical butterfly paintings.  I cut a piece of card stock in half (so he made two of them), then I folded the two pieces in half again and had him splatter paint one side (or one fourth of a whole page).  When he was done we unfolded the paper and squished it together to form our symmetrical painting.  Then we let it try.  It look a long time, the picture of the final product is at the end of the post.

Gavin got to open another package from Little Passports today.  He found one of those children's toys that is a cup with a ball attached to it that you're supposed to be able to land in the cup.  He also discovered that this month we are learning about Mexico!

Here he is reading Sam and Sofia's letter.

We read half of this book about Mexico and will finish the rest on Thursday.

Then he traced a map of Mexico and added landmarks.

Next we went on to history.  We read this book about Egypt.

Our activity for today was to make a reed boat like the Egyptians use on the Nile River.  I wasn't quite sure how this craft would turn out but it was actually pretty awesome.  Gavin loved it!  First we put two bendy straws together with the bendy parts on the sides.  The directions said to pinch one straw into the other one.  Neither one of us could make that happen so Gavin had the great idea to put them in a bigger straw instead so that's what we did.

Then, we carefully taped the straws together so they wouldn't fall out.

Gavin put the bendy part of the straws up and we added tape to the ends so it looks like they are tied together.

Luckily, we had some brown spray paint in the garage so we took the boat outside and painted it brown.

While we were letting that dry we came inside and Gavin made us fish tacos with Spanish rice.  I did point out that fish tacos are not native to Mexico, they eat beef, but he thinks he's an expert in cooking fish tacos so we sacrificed authenticity a bit.

After lunch it was off on a nature hike in search of water.  We were lucky yesterday because it rained for a while and we got a water sample from a puddle in front of the house.  Today we got a water sample from a lake near the house that's in a protected nature area, and then went over and got a sample from the lake at the dog park.  Surprisingly, just by looking at the water, the dog park water looked cleaner than the nature area water.  Anyway, we came back to the house and got out our microscope to look at our water samples to see what's in them when I read the directions and it said the microscope has to be plugged in for twelve hours before first use!  So, we will try again tomorrow.

Here is Gavin with his finished reed boat.

And it floats, even with Playmobil on it!  I found a pool in the clearance section at Walmart that's big enough for all three kids to play in together!  So we set that up and the kids played in it most of the afternoon.

And finally, Austin's butterflies dried.  Because he splatter painted them there we some globs that took forever to dry.  So, we added pipe cleaners (necessary for just about all preschool crafts) to make the body and antennae.  Then Austin said they needed legs so we added six (cut) pipe cleaner legs to each of them but they are on the bottom so you can't see them.