Ren Allen

I just noticed that the list has over 2,000 members as of this week!
We are also celebrating the 4th birthday of Unschooling Basics later
this month. So in honor of the list Kelly Lovejoy and I started up 4
years ago, I am declaring this week UnschoolingBasics week.

How do you celebrate UB week? Here are my suggestions...I'm sure any
good unschooler could make a list of their own. Feel free to add yours
anytime.:)

~Make some ATC's with your family: http://www.cedarseed.com/air/atc.html

~Blow up a bunch of balloons and make up games with them as you go.
Fill some with water. DRaw faces on some. Ooh...FREEZE one with water
in it to make a huge ice ball!

~Read some unschoolers blogs: http://theparentingpit.com/
http://sandradodd.blogspot.com/
http://www.xanga.com/juliepersons

~Subscribe to an unschooling publication:
http://connections.organiclearning.org/
http://www.livefreelearnfree.com/
http://www.lifelearningmagazine.com/

~Read Dr. Suess books in a VEeerrryy animated voice, especially "What
was I scared of?" (pale, green pants)

~Try to get marbles out of a pan of ice with your feet.

~Start an insect collection, not the dead kind, the kind you have to
feed and take care of.:)

~Go for a walk someplace new

~Have a water fight

~Grow a sunflower house to hide in:
http://www.rain.org/~philfear/sunflowerhouse.html

~Don't wonder if you're child "should" be learning ANYTHING this week.
Just live. And be. And suck every bit of joy out of every single
moment together. Because you can.

Happy Birthday UB.
Thanks to all the great members that make this a fabulous place to be
on the internet...and welcome to all our new members!

Ren
learninginfreedom.com

Debra Rossing

We don't have insects but we just started up our second 20 gallon
aquarium and got 2 snails and 2 african frogs (the kind that live
underwater and just surface occasionally for a gulp of air). We were
amazed at how FAST those snails move, compared to the stereotype of
snails. They'll surely not win any foot races (especially since they're
gastropods and walk with their stomach and not feet as we know them lol)
but they move quite rapidly when they choose to. And it's fun watching
the frogs swimming around rather than the usual hop hop hop. Once these
guys are settled in, we'll be picking up a few fish - we were looking at
the Australian rainbow fish in the fish department and they looked
really cool so we might get a couple of those. Anybody have any favorite
tropical community type fish? Oh, and no live breeders - our momma molly
in the other tank is doing terribly well in delivering live babies...

Definitely WON'T be reading the Green Pants Dr Seuss story - that
freaked DS out too much...

I don't really want to encourage DH in water fights - LOL when we were
dating, I was often at his parents' home for dinner (since he still
lived there) so we'd offer to clean up afterward (hey, no one else
wanted to do the dishes so we got some private talking time while we
cleaned the kitchen). Anyhow, we almost invariably ended up, one of us
with the sink sprayer and one with a plant mister or two and well, let's
just say I often had to borrow a dry t-shirt to drive home in :-)



Deb


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Ren Allen

~~Anybody have any favorite
tropical community type fish? ~~

Guppies...lots of 'em!

Ren
learninginfreedom.com

Debra Rossing

>Guppies...lots of 'em!

LOL Is there any way to only have a couple guppies? We bought 1, just
one, dalmatian molly around Jan 2007. We have now had at least 3 broods,
averaging 5 to 6 mollies per brood. That's why we have two tanks - two
weeks after we brought her home, we noticed these little "things"
swimming around in the tank - baby mollies! To many (what with the other
fish we had in there) for the tank to be healthy so we got another tank,
got it going, transferred momma and several other fish to that tank.
Tank two eventually died off bit by bit and we cleaned it all out (right
down to washing the plastic plants and gravel) and waited a bit before
re-setting it last weekend. Within the last two weeks, the momma has
had, as best we can tell by their sizes, two broods. Mollies are
interesting in that not only are they live breeders but the female, once
fertilized, can decide WHEN to have the babies. If she feels stressed in
any way (aggressive fish pestering her, overcrowding, too warm/cool, pH
or ammonia levels not to her liking) she can choose to not have any and
can wait for up to something like 6 months before popping those little
ones out, all at once or in small batches. Guess she likes us LOL

We're thinking of the Aussie rainbow fish and maybe some gouramis -
we're trying to balance the colors, sizes, and preferred 'living spaces'
(some prefer the bottom third of the tank others the midsection and
others swim nearer the top) so that they're not all bumping into each
other in the bottom half of the tank. We don't want any live bearers
anymore and we're trying to get away from the black & white 'theme' of
the tank full of mollies.

Deb

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Ren Allen

~~LOL Is there any way to only have a couple guppies?~~

Apparently not! I keep thinking it would be fun to add a different
kind of fish in there, but then I remember how crowded they are
already and decide against it. There IS a plecostamis (sp?) in there
too. We used to have snails but they all died and I have NO idea why.

It's soothing to hear the water running in the tank at night. I love
aquariums.

Ren
learninginfreedom.com

keetry

--- In [email protected], "Ren Allen"
<starsuncloud@...> wrote:
>
> ~~LOL Is there any way to only have a couple guppies?~~
>
> Apparently not! I keep thinking it would be fun to add a different
> kind of fish in there, but then I remember how crowded they are
> already and decide against it. There IS a plecostamis (sp?) in there
> too. We used to have snails but they all died and I have NO idea why.
>
> It's soothing to hear the water running in the tank at night. I love
> aquariums.
>
> Ren
> learninginfreedom.com
>


I just recently set up both my aquariums. We have a 3 gallon fresh
water tank. DS picked some silver barbs for it. He kept saying he
wanted sharks but picked the barbs instead. He thinks they look more
like sharks than the sharks do. LOL

We bought a clownfish yesterday to start our saltwater tank again.
That fish was expensive! Wasn't expecting that so I didn't even ask
about the price. If it survives, we'll get some damsels, an anemone or
2, some shrimp, maybe a yellow tang and a seahorse (if the tank is
safe enough).

I love the sound of the water in the tanks and I love watching the
fish swim. I remember the first time I realized one of my fish came up
to greet me when I came close to the tank. That was cool.

Alysia

shari bergquist

We rescued a toad or maybe it's a frog from our pool yesterday and my
3 yr. old son insisted that we keep her for our new pet so we went to
the pet store to get some bedding and a little pool type thing (we
already had an aquarium that we were not using anymore) and while at
the pet store he talked me into getting a hermit crab. Only now I
think the little tank thingy we bought the hermit crab is to small and
I want to go get him a bigger one and give the little tank to the
caterpillars that they have in a bowl on the front porch:) I don't
want the spiders to get the caterpillars( i think I am getting way to
into this:) Oh he also wants to keep the crickets we bought to feed
the toad as pets lol. We are having a blast! Shari

On 5/9/08, Ren Allen <starsuncloud@...> wrote:
> ~~Anybody have any favorite
> tropical community type fish? ~~
>
> Guppies...lots of 'em!
>
> Ren
> learninginfreedom.com
>
>


--
Shari Bergquist
Independent Stampin' Up Demonstrator
www.sharibergquist.stampinup.net

barefootmamax4

--- In [email protected], "Debra Rossing"
<debra.rossing@...> wrote:
>
> We don't have insects but we just started up our second 20 gallon
> aquarium and got 2 snails and 2 african frogs (the kind that live
> underwater and just surface occasionally for a gulp of air).

We have two of those frogs too! They are about 5 years old and in the
spring and summer they sing at night! It's a lovely little trill.
-Kelly

Mara

This sounds just like us! Last year we had one garden toad, 4 firebelly toads (in different aquariums), crickets for pets and food seperately, a snake, - some caterpillars and eventually butterflies, now we have some tadpoles in a tank and just build a frog pond (with two fishes in it already and some snails) in the backyard. Our garden toad liked lots of dirt to bury under.
Mara and 4 boys


----- Original Message ----
From: shari bergquist <shari.bergquist@...>
To: [email protected]
Sent: Saturday, May 10, 2008 12:30:58 PM
Subject: Re: [unschoolingbasics] Re:Happy almost birthday and 2000 strong!!


We rescued a toad or maybe it's a frog from our pool yesterday and my
3 yr. old son insisted that we keep her for our new pet so we went to
the pet store to get some bedding and a little pool type thing (we
already had an aquarium that we were not using anymore) and while at
the pet store he talked me into getting a hermit crab. Only now I
think the little tank thingy we bought the hermit crab is to small and
I want to go get him a bigger one and give the little tank to the
caterpillars that they have in a bowl on the front porch:) I don't
want the spiders to get the caterpillars( i think I am getting way to
into this:) Oh he also wants to keep the crickets we bought to feed
the toad as pets lol. We are having a blast! Shari

On 5/9/08, Ren Allen <starsuncloud@ comcast.net> wrote:
> ~~Anybody have any favorite
> tropical community type fish? ~~
>
> Guppies...lots of 'em!
>
> Ren
> learninginfreedom. com
>
>

--
Shari Bergquist
Independent Stampin' Up Demonstrator
www.sharibergquist. stampinup. net



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[email protected]

-----Original Message-----
From: keetry <keetry@...>


We bought a clownfish yesterday to start our saltwater tank again.
That fish was expensive! Wasn't expecting that so I didn't even ask
about the price. If it survives, we'll get some damsels, an anemone or
2, some shrimp, maybe a yellow tang and a seahorse (if the tank is
safe enough).

-=-=-=-

Do you have an aquarium nearby---I mean the BIG kind?

Our aquarium at our zoo gets clownfish ALL the time from folks who
can't care for them. They have an overabundance of clownfish. Always.

Maybe ask whether they will part with a few?

I don't know how generous they would be; I know their first concern
would be the welfare of the fish. But I know the head of the aquarium
here in Columbia (and she'd be NUTS to give *me* a fish!), but I know
they have too many. I didn't ask whether they would part with any, but
I'd ask! What do you have to lose? <g>


~Kelly

Kelly Lovejoy
Conference Coordinator
Live and Learn Unschooling Conference
http://www.LiveandLearnConference.org

keetry

--- In [email protected], kbcdlovejo@... wrote:
>
> Do you have an aquarium nearby---I mean the BIG kind?

We do have several aquariums relatively close. I hadn't thought of
asking them for fish. That's a good idea.

Alysia

Debra Rossing

Well, in addition to the two snails (we named them Banana and Blueberry
because, well, one's yellow and one's blue lol) and two african dwarf
frogs, we now have an Australian Rainbow fish (which is way prettier at
home than in the bright store lighting) and two hatchet fish because we
thought they looked kinda cool and unusual. In a week or so, we'll go
back and pick up a couple more fish of some kind - we're looking for
bright colors and not too big (given the tank size we want to keep to
fish that don't get more than about 4" long so we can have several
kinds). We decided against tetras (for now) because they need to school
and we don't want to just have a group of them. Our last tetras didn't
last all that long - we came to the conclusion that schooling fish just
didn't feel comfortable in our unschooling household LOL

Deb


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Debra Rossing

>We have two of those frogs too! They are about 5 years old and in the
spring and summer they sing at night
REALLY?!! Cool! Haven't heard ours sing - they're mostly busy
rearranging the gravel in the bottom of the tank to suit themselves (so
are the snails for that matter). How do you hear them when they're
underwater?

We've decided that Banana, the yellow shelled snail, is a Xtreme games
types snail. It (I always want to call Banana "she" and Blueberry "he")
climbed itself to the top of the tank wall, right to the water line,
then wiggled loose and floated down to the floor of the tank, landed
right side up and started crawling away. It's a very active snail (and
pretty fast as snails go). It's really amazing to watch as it climbs up
the plants then extends the gastropod and transfers to the wall of the
tank without a slip or hitch. Wow! Blueberry is more 'traditional', slow
moving, generally less active.

Deb


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