Aliens and Terrariums

Last night when I went to bed I decided I was going to wake up and do something fun. The weather was supposed to be perfect so Cash stayed home from preschool, we abandoned normal homeschool work ("Just do your math") and the kids and I built a terrarium. I intended to take pictures of every step but I forgot. I've got a good excuse(s). I was dealing with four loud children who seemed to think they knew exactly how to do something they'd never done before. Plus, they all had hammers and were flinging dirt.

Meanwhile, I'm shushing everyone so the baby wouldn't wake up, doing constant laundry (can't suspend laundry day, sorry) to the tune of my dryer which squeaks like 200 fingernails on a chalkboard, and I cut myself on an exacto-knife. So the camera kind of took a back seat.

But here are the steps we used to build our terrarium. And the pictures of steps I did remember to photograph. A friend recently gave us his aquarium so that's what we started with.


Step one: Fill the bottom of the aquarium with dirt. That little plastic container on the side is cut on the top and half the remaining bottom of it acts as a little ramp a creature could go down to get inside the little "cave".

Step two: Add a layer of rocks. We didn't have rocks (and I don't take all five children to the store to buy rocks, puh-lease) but I did have some tile under the house so we used hammers to break up the tile into small pieces. The children totally should have been wearing eye protection and Cash and I both cut ourselves on tile, but sometimes you just live on the edge.


Step three: A layer of spanish moss. There is plenty of this in my yard.

Step four: Put a bowl for a little pond.

Step five: More dirt.

Step six: Plants! Plant them and water them. Add whatever bugs or worms or caterpillars or centipedes the kids can find. Jackson found a lizard, put his hand down into the terrarium to let him go in and the lizard ran up Jackson's arm and leaped as far away as possible from our terrarium. The lizard is no dummy I guess.



I'm going to get some more plants and hopefully one of the boys will catch a lizard and make it stick. It was a beautiful day and fun to be outside. And tonight for dinner I made chicken with onions on top and rice. Penelope looked at it and said, "I don't want aliens!" We gave her chicken without aliens and the kids went back outside to play. I love nice weather!