Showing posts with label science. Show all posts
Showing posts with label science. Show all posts

Wednesday, October 1, 2008

Rats and toads

We have Rats! Yes we have two rats in our house, they live in the bathroom. Their names are Harriette and Rita and they are our new pets (because we needed more animals!). Lily picked out a special breed of rat called a hairless rat and just like the name implies, she has no hair. She kind of so ugly she's cute! She's the one sticking her nose up in the picture above. Rich and Lily wanted to name her Hairy to be funny, but I talked them into Harriette since she's a girl. Here's a photo of her:
Rosie picked out Rita, the gray one on the left in the first photo. She is a sweet little thing who loves attention. She often hangs out on Rich's shoulder or in his pocket!

They are very friendly and the kids love them, they are actually good pets for little kids. Daisy spends alot of time watching them during the day and the girls look forward to holding them in the evening before we go to bed.


We did have to displace the toads in order to make room for the rats. We had long talks about toad hibernation. It took a while for Lily to come to terms with it, but when she was ready we made two toad houses in the garden complete with swimming pools! We just buried a clay pot and lined the bottom with dirt and leaves. We made one big house for the two big toads:


They seem to like it and hopefully they stick around.

and one little house for the two little toads.
Look closely and you'll see one of the little toads:

Monday, June 2, 2008

Tadpoles


A teacher at Lily's school has a fish tank full of tadpoles in her classroom. Well Lily got wind of it and has a newfound obsession with tadpoles. We already have two toads living on the back porch in a fish tank, Dickie boy and Charlie, but now Lily is the proud caretaker of a whole bunch of little baby tadpoles. Her teacher negotiated for Lily to bring home a container of tadpoles and I picked them up from school today. We have lots to learn and I am sure it will be a fun science project for the summer. Today we learned all about the word Metamorphosis. Right now they look like this:


We'll keep you posted on their development and all the amazing new things we learn on this new adventure!