Solar cards, tornados, and spider eggs

My mom found some light-sensitive paper, so we had a blast today making designs with odd objects from around the house. The directions suggested 1-3 minutes in the sun or "until the paper turns almost white." Turns out that in our tropical sun, it was more like 20 seconds. Our first ones were overexposed, but Raccoon is more about process than product, so he didn't care. My favorite was the design he did with rocks and their shadows.

My mom also found a nifty little device that screws on to create a "tornado in a bottle." Since our theme for the week is weather, it was a perfect fit. Raccoon and I tried to do this experiment a few months ago, but taping two bottles together is leaky and the hole was not small enough to produce the desired effect. This little device was so easy and effective, I highly recommend it. All I did was fill one bottle 2/3 full, screw on both bottles, swirl the water a little and voila! Tornado!

We also got to see our local firefighters putting out a blaze in a neighbor's yard.

Painting rocks is Raccoon's newest hobby. We've caught every visible spider in our yard and several of our neighbor's as well, so we're taking a break while we wait for our four egg sacs to hatch. One sac is going on two months and no spiderlings yet. We've also had some good discussion about extinction due to over-hunting, and raising animals in captivity. We currently have four spider pets in jars on our counter. Did you know that they can lay egg sacs months apart, apparently without refertilization? I can find out very little online about spider eggs but we have certainly learned a lot firsthand.