Guinea pigs!

I got my guinea pigs on Sunday! I got them from Pets at Home and they're so adorable! I think they're different ages because one of them is so much bigger and a completely different colour than the other. The largest one I've called Noah and I've called the smaller one Dan. Noah is mostly white with a large patch of ginger on his right eye and a patch of black on his left eye! Dan is mainly black with a ginger back and a ginger marking on his face that looks like a moustache!
They're getting along mostly fine but Noah is so big he keeps pushing Dan out of their little sleeping hut!

March Madness! (Part 2)

I forgot to mention that in the first sleepover, Holly died :(. I noticed that she hadn't been out of her sleeping hut at all that day, so I went to have a look at her when Tilly started to go to bed. When I lifted up her sleeping hut, she looked so helpless. She was curled up in a ball and she was gasping for breath. I felt so devastated, but there was nothing we could do except stay with her. Tilly stayed up late with me until she passed away peacefully. The next day we had a funeral in the garden. We buried her in a pretty, pink box right next to Miley the 1st. I wrote a little poem for her and me and Tilly said a prayer for her. I try not to think about her. Even though the noise of her wheel was so annoying, I'd do anything to hear it one last time.

R.I.P Holly.

Anyway,  later in the week, me, mom and dad went to Pigeon's Farm! We thought it was absolutely awesome! Here's a list of my favourite animals! 12 day old baby chicks! A mother pig with 7 baby piglets that were only a few days old! Baby lambs that you could bottle feed! 4 adorable donkeys! A gorgeous stallion that me and my dad fed! The cute but noisy guinea pigs!!! The fluffy, cuddly rabbit! The greedy goats that eat duck food! The ugliest boar in the world! The mother sheep and their tiny lambs! Basically everything!
We had a tractor ride around the farm which was really fun! It was a bit bumpy though!

Me bottle feeding the weak, slow baby lamb! Good job I'm patient!

There's a chicken on my head!!

One of the donkeys that tried to eat my hand!

Me and dad feeding the horse!

Me feeding the miniature goat some duck food!

3 of the donkeys together! They were so gentle.

The ugly, grumpy Boar!

Mother Pig and her seven hungry Piglets

                                                                                                                                                                                     

Next we went to Butterfly World in Hertfordshire. It was a long journey ut worth it!

They had loads of exotic butterflies that landed all over mom! They didn't seem to like me though...

There were massive blue and black ones that seemed to glide around and never sit still!




There was a man who told us about the butterflies, but he was also looking for spiders because the spiders eat butterflies and moths! I helped find 2 spiders, so I might have saved quite a few butterflies! He used an electric swatter to kill the spiders!!

Here's a beautiful black and blue butterfly!

The Butterfly Buffet!

Here, he was telling us how there's two different types of butterfly feeding!

There were lots of different gardens to look around. They had a garden that showed what a house would look like if it was abandoned and plants grew wild for years!

This is what the bed looked like!

Me climbing through a tunnel in a bug garden!

There was also a woman doing a talk about the rainforests and habitats. It was really interesting! She had a diagram to show all of the kids the layers of the rainforest. We were all given picture cards of an animal that lives in the rainforest, and we were asked to read a description of it and place it where we thought it should go. Me, Tilly and Lavinia were debating for quite awhile where our monkey should go. We decided to just put it in the middle and the woman told us that it was a trick question! The monkey belonged everywhere! There was no right or wrong answer!

Listening to the Rain Forest Talk

There were also two colonies of Leaf Cutter Ants! They were amazing! We didn't take any photos unfortunately, but we should have! There were 4 gigantic tanks with ropes coming out of the tops of them. Hundreds of ants were marching back and forth on the ropes with pieces of leaves on their back! They work really hard! There was also a really sad story about an ant that chewed through an electric cable and accidently electrocuted the Queen! After the queen died, none of the ants knew what to do! They started fighting with each other and eventually, the whole colony was wiped out. Literally, thousands of ants! It was in the newspaper!

Afterwards, me, Tilly, Lavinia and Alex played in a really cool playpark! There was a big wooden climbing frame and a sandpit! The sandpit was gigantic and me, Tilly and Lavinia built a sand house in it! We had a bath and everything! Unfortunately, the sand ended up in my boots and even in my leggings!


That's me in the green coat on top of the hill!

After Butterfly World Tilly came back  home with me for another 2 night sleepover!
We went swimming in Bourne Leisure Centre! It was really cool because all of the kids were in school! (that rhymes!)
We swam for 2 hours and afterwards we went for a delicious meal at the Sugar Mill! We played in the toddler area because the outside play area was so boring. There was a really weird mirror and I couldn't stop laughing at my reflection!

Me and Tilly swimming in the Jacuzzi area! 

Me and Tilly waiting for dinner!

Me and Tilly are toddlers now!



The weird mirror!

After the sleepover (it was excellent!) we took Tilly back to her mom at the Eco Hub in Gamlingay! It was Easter crafts! They had a giant bouncy castle which I loved! You could also make your own masks! I made a kind of creepy one. I didn't decorate any eggs because they were cracked! The box they were in was soaking with egg yolk! I ate some chocolate eggs though! There was also an Easter Egg hunt going on! All of the kids had to work together to find all 60 of the hidden plastic eggs! I found 3 of them! It only took a minute or so until they'd all been found. At the end you were given a little bouncy ball and some chocolate! Mmm!
Me, Lavinia, Rosie and Tilly went into the park at the end to play around! It was really fun, but it would've been better if we could actually decide on a game!


BREAKING NEWS!!!! I'm getting two guinea pigs on Sunday! Mom finally gave in and took me to the pet shop to buy a giant cage for them! I've got it all decorated for them coming, I'm just waiting to go to the breeder to pick them up now! SO EXCITED!!!!!!!! EXCITMENT OVERLOAD!!!!!

March Madness! (Part 1)

 

March has been so exciting! Tilly came for two sleepovers and I've just generally been very busy!

During the first sleepover, we did some cool science experiments because mom thought it would be "educational"! We made an awesome exploding volcano out of play-dough we made ourselves! We were testing chemical reactions between vinegar (acid) and bicarbonate of soda (alkaline/base)! The experiment was going really well until we added to much vinegar by accident! Well, it wasn't an accident because mom told us to! It was a very fizzy mess! I had a mini panic attack when Tilly didn't take the funnel away in time and all of the fizzing vinegar shot out of the volcano! I would upload a video, but I'm having a bit of an issue uploading it.

 

Me and Tilly moulding a volcano! We stuck Peppercorns in for effect!

Me and Till made different colour playdough for the Volcano

 

 I also did some experiments on my own. I did Gummy bear osmosis. Osmosis is the movement of particles through a semi-permeable membrane from a weaker to a more concentrated solution.

 

I tested different solutions!

I've already eaten the rest of the gummy bears!

 

I also tested capillary action in plants. Capillary action is the way in which plants transfer water from the soil into the leaves.

 

I used coloured water and celery sticks to show how the water moves up the stem!

 

While I was making the coloured water for the capillary experiment, the blue colouring diffused into the water and it looked really awesome!

 

This is diffusion!

Diffusion is the movement of particles from a more concentrated to a weaker area!

 

I also made bread! It was really cool to beat the dough up! I was experimenting with Yeast, which is a single cell fungus. The yeast feeds off the sugar in the dough mixture and when it's warmed up, it produces bubbles of carbon dioxide gas, which makes the bread rise!

 

Here's the delicious bread buns!

Me beating up the dough! I imagined it was an LA officer! DIE!



Big Bang Fair!

Yesterday I went to the Big Bang Fair in Birmingham! I had to get up very early, and it was a 2 hour journey! When we got there, it was absolutely freezing and I didn't bring my big coat! We had to walk quite a bit until we got to a big warehouse-like building where the fair was.
When we went inside, there were loads of  stalls and exhibits. There was even a stage!

There was so much to look at! These were some of my favourites!


There were two men who had experiments with bubbles! The first one I went to, I had to try to blow a bubble inside a bubble! The guy made a massive bubble then handed me straw and told me to put it in the bubble and blow normally. I was a bit confused and wary, in case I popped the bubble, but I tried anyway. Magically, it worked! I blew a second bubble, but as soon as I tried to blow a third it popped.

Blowing a bubble inside a bubble!

The second bubble guy made a gigantic bubble and caught it in a massive bubble wand. He put it by my face and told me to blow quite softly into it and it would make a bubble inside it. On my first attempt, it didn't work, but on my second attempt I got the hang of it and I was amazing! I blew loads of bubbles in the giant one, and the guy showed me a cool trick! He got me to poke the top of the bubble. I poked where he told me to, and the top of the bubble opened and the other bubbles that were inside flew away! It was so awesome!

My second favourite was a weird optical illusion trick! You put your hand in a box and you can see your hand on a screen. A girl on the opposite side of the box puts a dice far away from your finger. Then she touched my finger and on the screen, it looked like she was pulling it! It felt like my finger was being pulled just because I was watching the screen! It was even more weird when she was pushing it back!


My third favourite was a really cool engine! First, you got to look at a miniature version of a Turbo Charger, which they put in car engines. An American guy told us what everything did, then he showed us a little quiz where me, mom and dad had to get the right sequence of how the Turbo Charger worked. Dad was so gutted because mom was the best!


There was also a little challenge where you had to put three wires in the right place in a plug. It was so irritating because you need 3 hands to do it! Mom helped me, and when I showed the girl who was helping the other kids she said "Ooh very neat!"! I think she was impressed!

This was boring

More cool stuff:



Testing for sugar in Diabetics

Learning about flight



All this was made from random things like pans, bicycles and toys!

 

Learning about allergies and noses!

Sorry if there's a few mistakes in this, I'm quite ill right now. I've caught yet another cold!

Woodcutting!

Today, I went to Gamlingay Eco Hub! There was a young guy, Patrick, giving us a talk and a little demonstration of wood carving! He had loads of chainsaws, axes, knives and other tools like protective clothes and helmets! He gave the kids some items to look at and pass around, (not anything dangerous, obviously!) and they were really cool! I took  pictures of everything!

Cool spoons!

He carved a spoon out of a big chunk of wood for us, and it was really interesting! It clearly takes a lot of concentration, because he was quite quiet... He showed us a few different techniques to carving with knives and small axes and they all looked very dangerous! Aparrently, he cut himself a lot when he was learning to carve, but he still has all his fingers!

He makes a model first from clay before he begins carving from wood

After his demonstration, we got to see his other spoon carvings, which were really smooth and they had lovely patterns. He also makes really big sculptures for organizations like the RSPB.

How cool is this spoon!

This was the smallest chain-saw nut it was really heavy!

I look crazy!

Afterwards, all of the kids went outside and we all played in the park, which was really fun!

Shepreth Wildlife Park!

 

Yesterday, I went to Shepreth Wildlife park for a home ed trip! There were no school kids, so it was basically empty except for me, Tilly, Lavinia, Rosie, Elise, Taryn and the parents! Apparently, according to mom there were loads of Home-ed kids there but I didn't see them!

Me and Tilly wandered about on our own for a bit and saw loads of animals like the bats that swoop over your head, the raccoon that was foraging about for food and the amazing lynx! A lynx is a wildcat. It's about the size of a medium dog and it has massive, fluffy ears. Their paws are gigantic for catching slippery rabbits.

Sun bathing Tortoise

We also saw red pandas, but they were asleep. They were still cute though as they were cuddling each other in their sleep, probably to keep warm as it was cold.!
We saw llamas, which were adorable! They where perched precariously on a steep hill and they looked very uncomfortable.

Next we had a talk about bugs. The woman who was giving us the talk was really nice, and she was very enthusiastic! She loved bugs and knew all about them. But there were more than bugs in the Bug City room... there was a really weird type of frog! It was albino and reminded me of the Axolotl (google it!)  It looked like it was smiling at me!

Albino (smiling)  frogs

There was also a gecko wandering free. I was a bit freaked out. The keeper said she would show us how the Gecko eats. She stuck her hand straight into a tank full of creepy, jumping locusts and pulled one out. I stepped back in horror! She put the locust near the Gecko. His eyes glared at it and then, fast as lightening, his sticky tongue shot out and dragged the unsuspecting locust into it's gaping mouth. It crunched the locust between it's jaws and then fled away up the wall with half of the locusts body hanging out of it's jaws. It wanted to eat it's meal in private!

The next talk was the Birds Of Prey demonstration. We missed half of it, but it was really cool! The woman was feeding her birds of prey, 1 day old chicks, which they really enjoyed! I was a bit creeped out by that! The poor chicks!
The barn owl was very co-operative and it flew anywhere the woman told it to go! The buzzard was quite badly behaved! It flew away from the woman and rested on the top of its cage and wouldn't come down! For all I know, it might be still there! The woman told us about how she's always a bit wary of bringing the birds out of their cages, because they're right next to the Bunny House and the birds might catch one!

After that, we headed to the Discovery Centre for a talk about British wildlife. I enjoyed it, but I loved it much more when the staff brought out a Polecat! Polecats are a wild version of ferrets. You couldn't pet it because it was wild. I was a bit disappointed, but the polecat did look very difficult to control! It was climbing under the keeper's arms and trying to escape!


Slippery Polecat

They did let you pet the albino skunk, Flower. She was so fluffy and cute! I didn't want to ever stop petting her, but eventually Rosie dragged me away because we were going to be late for the Tiger Talk!


Flower

We did end up missing the Tiger Talk, because we were waiting in the wrong place! There was a sign saying "Tiger Talk" on it, so we thought this was where we should wait, but it was actually on the other side of the tiger enclosure! The woman who was giving the talk was the same one who gave the Bug Talk, and she very kindly started again for us!
She told us how people are cutting down the Rainforests to plant Palm Oil trees. Palm Oil trees don't give any shelter to wildlife, and a lot of animals (tigers included!) are losing their homes. Orang-utans are another example of animals losing their homes. Palm oil is in most things, food and detergents and cosmetics but next time I go shopping, I won't buy anything with Palm Oil in it!

The Tiger didn't look happy it was pacing back and forth

That was the last talk, so we went to the gift shop near the exit. Earlier, me and Tilly had filled out a quiz. If you got all of the answers correct, you won a little lizard toy! We got all of the answers correct and we both got a little lizard each. Lavinia had forgotten to pick up a quiz sheet, and since I have so many things like that, I gave her my lizard. I wasn't that bothered though, because I bought a really cute little fluffy llama toy! I'll put a picture on later!


After the gift shop, we all went home. I really enjoyed going to Shepreth, and I can't wait to go again!