Sooner Than I Thought

We started our Hermit Crab unit study today. The kids all liked the book A House for Hermit Crab when we read it this morning. From there we learned a bit more about crabs in general and hermit crabs in particular. We looked at different shells, then talked about different homes. For our lapbook we made a piece on different homes like apartment, igloo, pueblo, and tent, a card with our address which we're trying to learn this week, and we'll add our shell card to our lapbook later. BigGirl's spelling words this week are crab, claw, shell, house, and ocean. She writes them every day on her dry erase board until she can spell it without looking, then she doesn't have to write it again. The preschoolers are writing the letter H all week for Hermit crab.

Math today introduced addition facts with the sum(answer) of 10. BigGirl doesn't enjoy math, but she is getting better at it, and can already remember most of the sums of 10 facts in just a few hours. AcrobatBoy practiced identifying numbers 1-10, and he knows a few(1, 2, 3, 4, 7). Tagalong Girl did the same and could identify 1, 2, 3, and 8. We'll work on that more as the week goes on.

I also got to pick up a free aquarium today from another homeschooling mom, so we were able to take a FIELD TRIP to the pet store again. Of course, we came home with three little hermit crabs. Each child picked their own and they all are different. Each has it's own shell style, and personalities are emerging. When we got home and put them in their crabitat(haha) we started to wonder if TagalongGirl's crab had died in our short trip home. It didn't come out of it's shell at all. Deciding patience was called for, we waited. And waited.

BigGirl actually chose the smallest of our 3 crabs. It is very active at the moment and crawls like crazy when you hold it as well as when in the crabitat.

AcrobatBoy's crab seems a perfect match to him. The first thing it did in the crabitat after crawling backwards was climb some driftwood we have and hang upside down from it! Just what our son would do. Back to TagalongGirl's crab. After nearly 40 minutes she finally peeked out of her shell and crawled around a bit. When we picked her up for this picture she held very still mostly back in her shell. (Which is a good fit for TagalongGirl, who is nervous about getting pinched the minute the crab moves in her hand!)When we sat the kids down to take their pictures here is what BabyBoy did:

He wanted to hold a crab and have his picture taken too. We skipped the crab, but took the picture.

So now we are the proud parents to 4 children(going on 5), 2 cats, 2 turtles, and 3 hermit crabs. We are going to read a neat book with the kids about caring for your hermit crabs that we found at the library. It's very informative and full of pictures as well as a Daily and Weekly chore list. (Daily chores like clean water and food, and weekly ones like scrubbing water and food dishes). And we will continue with A House for Hermit Crab. Tomorrow we talk about all the friends hermit crab made in the story, about how to be a good friend, and about the months of the year. Also we'll try to identify just what kind of shells our crabs have and decide on some names as they are not yet named.