The Chocolate Kingdom

Louise and I decided to go out and plant the milkweed seeds that we had gathered weeks ago. Then we came back and I wanted to write down where we planted them in our garden journal. But the garden journal is in Catalan and I didn't know how to say milkweed in Catalan. Hey, but that's what the Web is for, no? On we go, googling milkweed. And then we started reading about milkweed, which is of the Asclepia family (or some such). I figured if we could find its Latin name then we could search for it on a Catalan site and find its translation. But first I had to explain about Latin names. We had a pretty awesome discussion about dividing all living creatures into categories based on certain tests. And we looked up the tests for the five kingdoms: monera, protista, fungi, plants, and animals. But Louise was curious about the different animals so we started investigating which animals were part of which phyla and which classes. It was hard for her to understand the concept of each group having its own characteristics, and that there were bigger and bigger groups. Still, it was a good start.

Except that she was getting bored and tired. Actually, when I asked her, it turned out that she was distracted by the thought of her Halloween candy. Which gave me an idea. I got her to go up and get her candy, and then we classified it into the Chocolate and the Gum kingdoms. Then Chocolate got divided up into "chewy", "nuts", and "only chocolate" groups. And then the nuts got divided up into "almonds" and "peanuts". She then got out a piece of paper and drew out her chart, and then wrote the names of the different kind of candy bars under each category. As a treat, we went out to Nolan's (the local convenience store) to get two more pieces to add to the (already pretty depleted) mix. Can't wait for Halloween next year!