April 17-19

And… back to snow for one last hurrah… we hope! The bigger kids have really stepped up and now love having Echo out there with just them. They are growing up so quickly.

Spot the bunny

We squeezed in a Wild Kratts…

Black Footed Ferret

And Artistic Endeavors (that really do need capitalization! We are one with our creativity lately!!)

And then Easter Eggs! The girls did the traditional dye.

But the boys and Ken tried out this new way of doing it using shaving cream and dye… though if you plan on eating the eggs after it is highly suggested you switch the shaving cream with whipped cream. You can find instructions HERE.

Our Friday was a bit more quiet with a  half day to allow us to deal more with getting ready for the weekend and EASTER SUNDAY! We worked more on England through our Little Passports.

And got packages in the mail from Gammie.

On Saturday morning I dressed the girls up in LAST year’s Easter dresses. My cousin’s little girls said that they looked like the princesses off Frozen.

We paired those with the shirts Holly sent us from Canada and Voila perfect pic op!

We downsized Echo from super fluffy to a purple piece that was Trinity’s ages ago.

So we started our Easter with dress up and pictures. Easter 2014 is off to a great start! Enjoy the overflow!

And now for something completely different… well sorta!

We have covered dinosaurs and reptiles that were NOT dinosaurs but this is our first mammal! With the fossils unearthed earlier this month I just could not resist teaching Emanuel (and in the end Zander as well) about the Woolly Mammoth! You can read all about the rather unusual find in France HERE with a video or a simply textual with the National Post HERE. Either way, a rather amazing find. The only dissapointment I found with the research on this creature is that the main focus of the videos was on a hoax of a debunked image of a so called living specimen (I do believe it turned out to be a bear with a fish or something) and another batch talked about ALIENS being the cause of their extinction… so we stuck with the I’m a Dinosaur video on youTube and the one about the French find.

As well as a rather good but short BBC Science one.

In addition I have a long list of links to share so I figure I should get right to that! Enjoy our information about our last Ice Age mammal! First off there are some AMAZING images of a frozen specimen found in Siberia back in 2009! You can find those HERE. There was actual fur, skin… all of that. What we found most interesting was the smaller ears and tail to keep warmth in and the more nimble trunk and long tusks to allow for food collection!

Discovery has another article on this amazing find but a young boy in Siberia HERE. Apparently this is not an unheard of occurrence, unlike the surprise in France. As the weather at the time of death for the Mammoth was ideal for freezing. National Geographic Kids has a nice printable card and article HERE (if we had colour toner I certainly would have, I plan to return to this site later and do so). eHow.com has a short blurb about the history of the Mammoth HERE.

A site called Interesting Facts has… well… interesting facts about the Woolly Mammoth HERE. Dinosaurs.about.com has their usual 10 questions HERE. Fossil Treasures of Florida has some information and what looks to be an example of fur HERE. AnimalsTime.com has a great article HERE. EnchantedLearning has an article about this late Mammoth HERE. Wiki has the usual article HERE. And you can find out print out that Emanuel coloured HERE. 

Such a cool character with his Woolly friend