You can email me your submission at thesciencemouseATgmailDOTcom.

Thank you!

The topic is: The Family Dog.  I welcome personal stories about your dog, pictures, articles about different dog breeds, the history of dogs, how dogs help humans, wild cousins to our dogs and anything else about dogs!  You can email your stories, pictures and articles to me here:  thesciencemouseATgmailDOTcom.

We have not named her and we would like your help!  Please leave your suggestions in comments.  I will give a copy of Exploring Science to one random suggestion.

It is not a book I would take to the lake to help me identify frogs.  It is almost like a cross between a field guide and a coffee table book because the photos are so beautiful.

It has a CD at the back of the book.  It tells you each kind of frog in the book with the sound it makes.  That helps you identify frogs by their noises.  Some species look very similar, but can be told apart by their song.  Also when you go out at night, you cannot always see the frogs around you but if you know their songs, you can identify them by that.

My favorite part of the book is the pictures.

We have found four of the kinds of frogs in the book: the bullfrog, the leopard frog, the Cope’s gray tree frog and the woodland toad.

Have the birds gotten to your state yet?

Hummer at a feeder. Photo courtesy http://wikipedia.org.

When people drive long distances, we usually travel along highways and interstates.  These roads are designed so that you can keep going fast for long distances because there are not many stop lights or stop signs.  Ramps allow traffic to get on and off without making the other cars slow down.  There is a whole system of highways in the United States which generally go either from east to west or from north to south, connecting major cities along the way.  When birds travel long distances during their migration, they use a sort of highway system, too.  These are called flyways.

According to the msn encarta definition of flyway is a

birds’ migration route: a traditional route taken by migrating birds

In North America, there are four major flyways.  Each of them follows the geography of the country which helps birds find their way.  The winds in these areas also make updrafts which allow birds to fly high while using less energy.

General location of North American Flyways. Original map from http://www.freeworldmaps.net/

Many birds travel along these flyways, at least for a time, until they get close to their destination.  The Pacific, Central and Mississippi flyways actually all come together in southern Texas.  This makes southern Texas an exciting place for birdwatching in the spring and fall.  People come from all over the world to add new species to their life list, a list of all the birds you have seen.

Next time you see a flock of birds fly overhead, think about the bird highways they travel on.  What a great way to travel!

You can help the birds make their nests warm by making a bird nesting bag.  It is very easy to make and you probably do not have to buy anything you do not already have.  It is a good recycling project as well.

Instructions

You will need:

1) A mesh bag.

2) Hair.

This actually came from my toy ponies after I brushed them out.

3) Fur.

This is my puppy, Copper.

This is Hunter. I had to brush him because he got jealous.

4) Scrap paper, ribbon and anything else a bird might like to make a nest with.

Cutting up some left over paper from our lapbook project.

5) Put it all in the bag.

My finished nest bag!

6) And hang outside for the birds to find.

I hope the birds can make a cozy nest from our recycled materials!

Homeschooled Kids Blog Carnival

The Carnival of Homeschooling

Hands On Homeschool Blog Carnival

These are the phases of Venus. Image courtesy http://wikipedia.org

Venus is the brightest thing in the sky other than the sun and the moon.  Sometimes you can even see it before the sun goes down.  Because of this, it is also known as the evening star or the morning star.  In fact, people used to think that Venus was two separate, very bright stars.  Pythagoras, a Greek philosopher and mathematician, was supposedly the first person to realize that Venus was actually one planet rather than two stars.

Venus was named after the Roman goddess of love and beauty.  I think it was named after this goddess because it is very bright and pretty.  Venus shines so brightly because it is the second closest planet to the sun.  It is surrounded by very thick clouds which reflect a lot of sunlight.

These clouds also make it very difficult to study Venus.  Galileo was the first person to see Venus through a telescope way back in the 1600s, but he couldn’t see the surface.  Most telescopes we have cannot see through Venus’ thick clouds.

This is Venus' surface. Image courtesy http://wikipedia.org

In order to study Venus’s surface, we need to use radio telescopes.  These send radar through the clouds and back to earth for scientists to study.  On August 10, 1990, the space probe Magellan went into orbit around Venus and circled until October 12, 1994.  It gave us many maps of Venus by sending radio signals through the thick atmosphere and back to earth.

Venus’ surface looks a lot like our deserts mixed with some vocanos and LOTS of lava.  In fact, most of Venus’ surface has been shaped by volcanic activity, with lava rivers, lave hills and lava plains.

It takes Venus 225 Earth days to go around the sun one time.  But it takes Venus 243 Earth days to rotate on its axis one time, which means that a day on Venus is longer than a year!  Venus rotates on its axis opposite of most planets in the solar system.  Earth rotates from west to east while Venus rotates from east to west.

Venus’ thick clouds also trap a lot of heat, making temperatures on Venus reach as high as 900 degrees Fahrenheit.  As far as we know, there is no liquid water on Venus.  There may have been some, but it has all evaporated.  There is some water vapor in the clouds mixed with sulfur dioxide, which makes sulfuric acid.  This is poisonous to us.  There is also a lot of carbon dioxide.  This thick atmosphere is very heavy, making the air pressure there 90 times greater than on Earth.

Some probes have tried to land on Venus but the pressure is too great, and they only last a couple of hours.