Meet Orbi the Garden Spider

In the last days of the Christmas summer holidays we had a visit from Orbi, a garden orb-weaving spider who'd set up her web next to our lemon tree.  Her scientific name is Eriophora transmarina.  We watched her over a number of nights create her amazing web, which took her almost 2 hours and started in the dark about 30 minutes after sunset.

When she was done building she would sit right in the centre of her web, her red warning colours evident at the top of each leg.  Each leg would monitor a separate radial line for any trapped insect.

Here is a video from the first night we found her (after almost walking into the web when going to water the lemon tree.  By the way, if you do walk into a web, apparently the best way to get out is to stop, reverse and walk backwards the way you came.  The web should just peel away.  Good luck holding your nerve with that one!)

Snorkmaiden's iPad has a timelapse function, so we tried to capture Orbi on another night.  2 hours have been condensed into about 30 seconds!  Although you can't see the web, you might catch the end of Orbi spiraling anti-clockwise from the centre to the outside laying down non-stick silk.  She then spirals clockwise back to the centre laying out sticky thread using the first spiral as a reference.

There's a very nice animation on How Spiders Work which steps through the web-weaving process.

Thinking that it would be great to get a photo of the completed web the next morning, we went out to find it completely gone!  Well, not quite completely.  There was a single line - the bridge line - connecting our rosemary bush to the neighbour's apple tree.  We had to spray the line using Moomintroll's spray water bottle to catch it in the photo.

After some research we found out this was normal behaviour for orb weavers.  Often the web is damaged by the night's hunting, so it is taken down and rebuilt the next night.  Orbi took her webs down around an hour before dawn.  We never saw her do it (perhaps all her secretive night time activity protects her from attack by birds).  Orb weavers spend the day concealed near one end of their bridge line.  After a bit of hunting we found her hiding place, cleverly concealed at the end of an apple tree branch.  Can you spot her?

To see a spider taking down her web, have a look at A Spider Takes Down Her Web, where an American barn spider kindly waited until the sun came up to pack up for the day.  What takes around 2 hours to build can be packed up in a few minutes!

So, when you come across a spider's single bridge line in your garden, think of the spider hiding near one end of it and of the busy night ahead!

The times are changing

The snork maiden started year 7 this week. She's having a great time with her new 

friends and meeting and working with her new teachers, most of whom she likes a lot.  The routine of getting up early really hasn't been too difficult - she knows she has to get up and out the door by 8am so she just does it without any bother. It's great to see her so confident and responsible. She's grown up so much in the last few months.

The days are quieter without Snork Maiden around but Moomintroll and I have been keeping ourselves busy with the new work plan that I have put together.  

Our maths goal for this term is learning the times tables but more about that soon from Dr P who spent his last week of holidays working through a course with Moomintroll.  

I am doing the follow up games and activities with her to help reinforce what she's learned. Our favourite games so far are Tableland (a super find at an op shop several years ago and it's so old and apparently rare that I can't even find a webpage about it!), our variation of

Island Conquer (downloaded from here), and inserting certain 'sticky' tables facts into her 

favourite songs. Uptown Funk with Bruno Mars is perfect for remembering that 6 times 9 

is 54!

Using Island Conquer for revising times tables as well as teaching area

This week we began our geography course. We are going to be exploring and keeping a record of the interesting walks in our local area.  First we began by confirming where we 

are in the world by making a Geography Circle (kind of like Me on the Map).

getting the 'classroom' ready at our local park

Geography circle

Our first walk was at Currawong Bush Park where we saw mobs of kangaroos feeding in 

the early morning. The walk is called Ready Aim Click. If you click here you will find a listing of all the walks together with brochures and audio guides to download.

Later in the day Moomintroll created a lovely Word document with photos describing our walk.

Our science this term will be using The Magic Schoolbus. This blog here has very comprehensive plans on many topics/episodes.   Our first topic was ants; we've watched videos on ants, observed ants on our walk, learned the German word for ants( Die Ameise) and thought about collecting ants for an ant farm but then decided it was far too mean to 

keep them in a  jar.

We're loosely following Essentials of English:Lower Grades by Henry Carr Pearson  for our English component. It's full of beautiful poems to read and discuss, dictation practice, and has some nice writing prompts as well.

Moomintroll enjoys photography and filming so I'm trying to incorporate those skills into her English work. After reading a short fairy story on how umbrellas were invented, she made her own comic strip using Strip Designer. It's a great app but not so good on an iPod as the screen is way too small, so I've also downloaded Comic Life onto my laptop. We'll definitely use that on a regular basis.

Books we're reading this week: various Mr Men and Little Miss books, Wind in the Willows, Ophelia and the Marvellous Boy.

Advent Calendar part 2

Lots of crafty activities on our advent calendar this year, like air dry clay decorations, duct tape flowers, and felt softies. We finally put up the Christmas tree and decorated it with all our newly made treasures.  Another day we baked a huge batch of gingerbread cookies which we ate non stop all day.  Other days saw us donating bags of toys and clothes to Savers, doing The Hour of Code, visiting the Gingerbread Village at the Melbourne Town Hall, and seeing the film Nativity! at ACMI,

Little snowflake people from here

air dry clay decorations

duct tape flowers

Totoro under the christmas tree keeping company with some wise men and other clay characters

Advent Calendar 2014

Our advent calendar this year is big and bold, made on a budget and takes up lots of space in the kitchen.

I have reused the little envelopes I made for last year's calendar; the frame is an old one we've had for years and the decorations were leftovers from Dr P's year 9 class. Total cost: $0!!  I have more baubles to add as we progress through the calendar. Each morning we'll cover up that day's date so we'll always know what day we're up to.
Yesterday's activity was a day out at Funfields with loads of other homeschoolers to celebrate the end of another year. An awesome day out complete with all kinds of Melbourne weather - cool winds to start with then an almost thunderstorm, some rain, sudden humidity and then scorching sun.  All that in just five hours!

Day two - Make beaded bubble wands.

We made a pile of these as presents for Moomintroll's birthday party guests.
With the bowlful of leftover beads we also made some sparkly new decorations for our tree.

The girls are desperate to put the tree up now, but we'll have to wait until the Advent Calendar says it's the right time.  I've actually forgotten which day it will be so hopefully I'll get a surprise that day too!

Painted faces

Painted funny faces

acrylic on canvas

"..no more teacher's dirty looks."

So, we've pretty much come to the end of our 'school' year. We've all decided enough is enough and it's goodbye workbooks, worksheets, essays, maths, and whatever else is considered too 'work like', and hello to iMovie, Photobooth, Magic Piano and other fun stuff!
The last few days have been quite arty. We've done 3D hands, Mondrian inspired paintings and Selfie Portraits. It's nice to be getting the paints out again after such a long time. I don't know why we haven't done much art. Sadly it's one of those activities that is easy to forget once you let it slip.
Well, we're trying our best to make up for it now.

3D optical illusion hands from this site.

Paintings inspired by Piet Mondrian

Selfie Portraits. They were supposed to be done in lovely smudgy oil pastels but after turning the house and my brain upside down trying to remember where the pastels were, the portraits were done with boring old twister crayons!  Gotta remember to put new pastels on the shopping list...

Oh, and we went on another fun walk and Scavenger Hunt yesterday. The results are on the Ready Rosie and Oobi Doobi blogs. My camera is officially dead, so I didn't join in. Maybe Santa will bring me a new camera this Christmas?

Venturing further afield

Yesterday the Snork Maiden started the first leg of her new journey and attended a pre-orientation day at our local high school. She was so nervous in the days leading up to it but as usual she rose to the challenge, mastered her fears and came out all smiles when Moomintroll and I arrived to pick her up. According to reports, everyone was lovely: the girls, the boys, and the teachers.  The woodwork teacher held them all in thrall as he manfully demonstrated how not to use the wood burning tool.
The science teacher had them experimenting in the lab with such rare and dangerous chemicals as vinegar and bicarbonate of soda. Amazing styrofoam block prints were artfully designed under the guidance of an art teacher and the day ended with a rousing game of general knowledge a la Million Dollar Minute, complete with nifty hand held devices.
The Snork Maiden is chomping at the bit to start school next year; it's really satisfying to see her so eager and keen to spread her wings. She's ready to move on to the next phase of her life and to see her embracing it with so much enthusiasm makes me so proud!

Someone who is not too happy about the thought of losing her favourite playmate, however, is Moomintroll.  She has absolutely zero desire to do anything remotely 'school' related, so yesterday while her sister enjoyed her day, Moomintroll and I went on our own adventure.  I devised a list and by incorporating her desire to 'just jump on a bus and see where it takes us', we embarked on our first photographic scavenger hunt.

Just to set the scene, this picture tells you where and which bus we took:

As I was enjoying the ride Moomintroll suddenly pressed the next stop button and we screeched to a halt. Our scavenger hunt began.

1. Something round

2. a tree from an interesting angle

3. your reflection

4. Eyes

5. a green car

6. wheels

7. an insect

8. a barcode

9. water

10. something peaceful

Then my camera suddenly ran out of battery, so I missed out on clouds, an animal and a 6 sided shape.  Kind Moomintroll took the last picture for me:

11. a 6 sided shape

I am linking up with Ready Rosie for The Scavenger Hunt Linkup.