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On Saturday we found one of the butterflies dead at the bottom of the cage, so we spent a good long while looking at various parts under the microscope, which was cool. On Sunday, we found another one dead so we decided it was time to set them free. It was really neat to see them fly out and really stretch their wings, and we saw a couple of them later at some of our flowers, so the kids didn't feel so bad about it.

Today we finished off life cycles reading Bobbie Kalman and Jacqueline Langille's What is a Life Cycle?, and I gave E a "homework assignment": she has to present or demonstrate the life cycle of an animal or plant or insect (but not the butterfly) in any medium she chooses, to be worked on in her own time, due Friday. I figure "homework" is kind of an oxymoron in homeschooling, but she will likely have such assignments some day, so I plan to throw one at her occasionally so she can get the hang of them. We also read On the Same Day in March: A Tour of the World's Weather by Marilyn Singer, and the rather long but beautifully illustrated Taj Mahal by Caroline Arnold. After her spelling lesson, she did the "A" page in her new cursive handwriting workbook, and after lunch she worked a page of math problems dealing with "addition with renaming".