Monarchs on the Nature Table

We've lived in this house for a year and finally set up a Nature Table. For some reason, I think of this more as an early childhood activity, and now that we have Zac I feel like we should have a nature table... even though he's only 2 1/2 months old and his older sisters will get a lot more out of it than he possibly could!

It all started because we have a jar with four monarch caterpillars. Yesterday two were hanging upside down and one was wandering up and down the stick, indecisive. The littlest one was still eating voraciously!

We woke up this morning to one chrysalis, two hanging upside down, and the last one at the top of the jar, deciding if it's time. It's a simple peanut butter jar with some milkweed leaves in it, a long stick to get to the top of the jar, and a paper towel over the top held on with a rubber band.

We set up a little table with green and yellow silks to go with our monarch jar. I also added a small dish of wooden apples and a little sunflower girl.

Today the girls are all cooking something. Becca made the loveliest Fresh Basil Pesto, Leah is currently cutting apples for the Baked Pork Chops and Apples and Natalie will be making Oven BBQ Pork Steaks. Any recipe that calls for apples is ok with me, as we still have a large, LARGE number to use up. I'm contributing too, making an Easy Breakfast Strata.

The two older girls are also looking through some of our handwork books to see what projects they want to start with this year. Leah is more interested in sweaters, looking at

Natalie is more interested in flowers, looking at

And the patterns for a quilt featuring the state flowers for each of the 50 states

I am purchasing main lesson books from A Child's Dream Come True. They are listed under Arts & Crafts /Drawing & Writing on the site so they're a bit hard to find.

We have all the colors we need for our plan book except silver and gold. I called Hobby Lobby and they sell the prismacolor pencils individually. That will save us a lot of money compared to getting a Lyra Super Ferby metallic pencil set.

The school year inches just a little bit closer...

Also, I updated the page for the Rocks and Minerals block today!