Abi's Adventures

My home education journey

  • Sheep Surveillance

    There are lambs in the field next to our house. The farmer was happy for me to go in the field to see them, they are very cute.

    Learning Opportunities:

    • Female sheep are called ewes
    • Male sheep are called rams
    • The lambs squeeze milk from their mums udders
    • When lambs are happy they run and jump and play just like children.
    • A shepherd is someone who looks after sheep for a living.
    • Sheeps outer layer is wool. Wool is made into yarn and yarn can be made into all sorts like jumpers.
    • A group of sheep is called a flock.

  • Bumblebee Rescue

    Whilst helping daddy work on Rockstar, I spotted a poorly looking bumblebee in the middle of the workshop floor.

    We carefully moved it into a jar, it was moving it’s legs very slowly. I was able to have a really good look at it before we released it on some flowering heather. Early flowering heather is really important for wildlife as there’s not much bee food (nectar) around in winter or early spring.

    We discovered online that Queen Bumblebees hibernate. I learnt about hibernating very recently when I found a butterfly in my bedroom. I didn’t know there were different types of bee, there is around 270 different types of bee in the UK.

  • Wordsearch

    Whilst on holiday recently, I learnt how to do wordsearches.

  • Building our Campervan

    At the start of the year we bought a minibus, which daddy is converting into a campervan.

    I’ve been helping out along the way:

    • my biggest contribution so far, is the name “Rockstar”.
    • washing & cleaning various things
    • fetching tools and learning what they do
    • holding things for daddy
    • accompaning daddy to builders yards for supplies
    • choosing the worktop

  • Hangar 5

    I love trampolining and from time to time I get to go to Hangar 5 with friends.

    I went with my friend Maisie at the weekend, we spent 2 hours playing games and running around.

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  • Hibernating Butterfly

    I found a butterfly sleeping in my bedroom. Mummy told me it was hibernating. Hibernating is a long deep sleep that many animals do over winter. Other animals that hibernate are:

    • hedgehogs
    • bats
    • dormice
    • frogs

    We identified that it was a small tortoiseshell butterfly and google confirmed that the adults do hibernate. We also found a BBC Bitesize page on hibernating which we read through together.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/articles/zg2shcw#z8dmywx

    I carefully moved it outside and put it in the shed where it can continue it’s hibernation in peace.

  • Learning about Icicles

    It was very cold last night and this morning the bird baths were all frozen. Our outside tap drips leak and this morning we found an upside down icicle, known as an ice spike.

    Icicles and ice spikes are formed when drips of water freeze on top of each other. They are usually pointed in shape with the wider end attached to the surface.

    They are cold and wet to touch. This one will melt once the sun gets round onto our back garden.

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  • Making Bird Food – part 2

    A few days ago mummy and I made some bird food. However, it didn’t stick together as well as we’d hoped, so we ended up using spoons to transfer it all into our fat ball feeder.

    During the last week we’ve enjoyed watching numerous species of birds and a grey squirrel come and have a bite to eat.

    Birds we’ve seen:

    • Blue Tits
    • Coal Tit
    • Great Spotted Woodpeckers
    • Great Tits
    • House Sparrows
    • Jays
    • Nuthatches
    • Robins
    • Starlings

  • Looking at Leaves

    Whilst down by the river I collected an assortment of leaves.

    At this time of year, I could only find green leaves.

    We discussed why they are all different sizes, shapes and textures. I learnt the difference between evergreen and deciduous plants.

    Leaves are different shapes to help them do different jobs. For example the long thin ferns leaves make a great tail 🙂

    We found some wild garlic growing by the river. I didn’t like the taste, it’s too spicy.

  • Time for toads

    March is toad mating season. Seeing as it was warm (which is when they are most active), mummy and I took our cameras down to the pond to learn about the toads.

    They are much braver than normal when they are mating, so we expected it to be fairly easy to get a good look at them. However, we underestimated how brave they would be and ended up having to be extremely carefully not to stand on them!

    We crouched down carefully in the shallow water and remained still. After less than a minute, the toads started re-appearing. Before long, there were toads all around us. They seemed to be attracted to mummy’s bright red underwater camera. We think the lens appears like a mirror when underwater so the toads see another toad.

    The toads were very easy to pick up, if we just put our hands under the water, often a toad would swim over and climb on and wrap it’s legs around our fingers. A couple even started to climb up my arm!

    We noticed there were big groups of toads all holding on very tightly together forming a big ball. Mummy explained that the larger toad at the bottom was a female and all the others were males trying to mate with her.

    We also saw a few newts and leeches, mummy recorded a short video of them which can be viewed here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wniwiQrta74

    Toads look quite different when they are underwater, they look like they have thin bellies, but when they are out of the water they look like they have chubby bellies. We think this is due to the pressure of the water pushing the flabby bits in.

    I was surprised by how well camouflaged they were against the bottom of the steam. I was also surprised by how different they look, the colours and sizes really vary.

    Frogs & toads: identification
    Common Toad