Last weekend, we went out to see the salmon run in a local creek. We got there at the tail-end of the run, so the smell of carrion greeted us in the parking lot. I’ve never smelled so much dead stuff. When we got down to the stream, it was clear what was causing the smell.
The dead fish are left in the stream, rotting away. This is important for the ecosystem, because the fish are like compost, introducing nutrients back into the system.
Down in the main trunk of the creek, there were some fish still swimming about. The naturalist standing by to answer our questions said they were “just waiting to die”. There were seagulls circling overhead, and Carbon said he “hoped he’d see a seagull eat out an eyeball”. Yep, boys see nature in a gritty kind of way.
Is it weird that seeing this gave us all a craving […]
Original post by learningumbrella
We all went to nearby Walnut Grove on Monday for a photo shoot. :) It was a beautiful fall day and OK Magazine has a section where they feature a photograph of readers in exotic locations holding a copy of the magazine every week. I know Plum Creek is hardly exotic to us but people come from all over the world to see Laura Ingalls Wilder’s beloved home so I thought they might think it was print-worthy.
Besides, the worst case scenario was that we’d spend a lovely day outside and get some neat pictures.
The kids and I posed on the banks of Plum Creek, holding our OK magazine.
Then the kids raced leaves in the water, dropping them from one side of the bridge and running to see whose leaf won on the other side. They dropped in giant rocks, ran around on the grass and generally played.
Daryl loves to do […]
Original post by Alicia
We all got to meet a lovely little Plains Garter Snake yesterday! Daddy caught him as we were leaving the park in Walnut Grove and he gently held him so all the kids could pet him and take a peek.
A few facts about this little beastie:
The plains garter snake is a medium length Minnesota snake, measuring 14 to 43 inches in length.
It is more docile than the common garter snake.
They breed in the spring and are born alive in late summer or autumn. There are typically 10-70 born in a litter, at 5-8 inches each. Yikes! How would you like to happen upon 70 little newborn snakes, even docile ones?!
They are voracious eaters and will eat just about anything they can find, even carion at times (especially if it is still warm). Preferred munchies: birds’ eggs, toads, mice, earthworms, fish and frogs.
They kill without constriction or venom, so […]
Original post by Alicia
As you will recall from my Monday post, GB and I have been having sort of a rough week. His attitude hasn’t been the best. And he’s been holding back on our curriculum. He didn’t complain outwardly about the curriculum, but he’s had no enthusiasm for it; even for the science and history, which he typically loves. And I’ve felt all week like I was saying, ‘No, no, no’ over and over.
I’m probably a pushover, but on the advice of several of my readers, I decided to give GB a break from the curriculum. We can definitely afford it, we’re about two weeks ahead of schedule. So, today was a “Yes” day. He loves to go traipsing through the State Park down the way, and we have a cut-through path right across the street from us. So today we had a nature day for him, and for me, we did […]
Original post by Robin
I can’t believe we are on week 6 already!!!
The past two weeks did not include a large amount of sit-at-the-table school. During week 4 we all took turns being sick. Then last week we rather spontaneously spent a few days at a cabin which belongs to our friends on Lake Coeur d’Alene–something we had meant to do all summer, but it never fit in. Dh said, “let’s just go for it”–so Tuesday afternoon through Thursday afternoon, we did! The weather was incredibly warm and beautiful. The boys spent lots of time swimming, we played a lot of board games, and we made s’mores over a wood-stove fire. I took the dog for a few looooonnnnng walks, and spent 15 minutes watching the two largest beavers I have ever seen swimming together around an old broken-down dock. It was fun, and definately worth it–since school started we have been so busy, it’s a real challenge […]
Original post by angela
It’s nice to be home for a bit.
Today is shaping up to be a nice lazy day. It’s beautiful weather and Anna has set up a family pedicure stand outside. For 5 cents she’ll paint your toenails! I had her do it outside to keep freshly painted toes from marking up carpets and such, and also to keep the fumes out of the house.
Victoria and Alex started the morning bird watching from the window seat.
The girls got out altered books earlier and made some neat pages in them.
I also read a couple of chapters from Story of the World. It was a very interesting bit!
The baby played with watermelon playdough and bouncy balls, Jack made a magnet sphere and I’ve started doing some fall cleaning.
Oh, and I transplanted some geraniums and herbs into a window box for inside. I always bring geraniums inside since they bloom most of the winter […]
Original post by Alicia
Yesterday for part of Jack’s kindergarten we harvested potatoes. As far as Jack was concerned we were digging for treasure though!
The kids really had no idea that I had planted two batches of heirloom potatoes in our neglected perennial garden last summer. It was all piled with dead grass and leaves to hill up around the potatoes, so they’ve been growing away in secret right next to the children’s swingset for months now.
When I gathered Jack, some hand tools and an old pot and headed to the garden, he didn’t know what to expect. I raked away the leaves and grass, dug down a bit, and called him over.
He was so surprised to see our very own potatoes scattered in the dirt right below the surface. He happily raked and dug and searched for treasure with me. He was delighted at how tiny some of the potatoes were (smaller than […]
Original post by Alicia
Gramma and Grampa came over yesterday and took advantage of our park day with the homeschoolers. Our group alternates parks every other week. And this particular park is pretty far for us to get to. It takes us about 40 minutes to get there. But that just goes to show how spread out the homeschoolers are around here.
Anyway, we homeschoolers usually meet around 1:30. And Grampa has been bugging GB and I to go letterboxing again soon. So when I went on the letterboxing site I saw that there were several boxes in this particular park. So I fullfilled my haircutting duties and off we went to the park.
Once we got there I discovered I had made a major boo-boo. I had forgotten to bring the clues to the letterbox. I was SO bummed. But Gramma and Grampa were so enchanted with the park that we decided to just do […]
Original post by Robin
Here’s the text for a speech I gave this week to an Interfaith group concerned with Earth Care.
Unless someone like you
cares a whole awful lot,
nothing is going to get better.
It’s not.
The words of Dr. Seuss, from The Lorax. As much as I love Dr. Seuss and The Lorax, however, this book illustrates a type of environmental education that I want to caution against. Too often, we bring disaster scenarios and images of complete devastation to children who are already disconnected from nature.
How many of you in this room, who I presume are all folks concerned with the environment, can think back to a childhood time when you were outdoors and felt connected with the place you were? Too many children now don’t get those experiences, for a variety of reasons. And then what we bring to their classrooms are curriculums about the rainforest, with images of deforestation and facts about […]
Original post by learningumbrella
Mums blooming in the garden, a cool crisp in the air, and it is Fall.
Original post by learningumbrella
We recently visited the zoo in Seattle, and they have this fun station where you can buy seed sticks and feed the birds.
I have mixed feelings about zoos, but the kids sure like getting to see all of these animals up close. And modern zoos are doing important work with breeding programs and rescuing injured animals. But it feels wrong to read the sign about the endangered animal, all of it’s problems and the loss of habitat, etc., and then point to the animal in a cage, locked up for its whole life. There are bigger problems for wildlife than well-run zoos, but still, it feels a bit weird and morally troubling each time I visit one.
Original post by learningumbrella
After yesterday’s post, I thought I’d lighten up a bit and show you our moon from last night. Isn’t it pretty?
Original post by Robin
We spent the earlier part of this week camping and vacationing on the beautiful shore of Lake Superior. We tent camped at a site that had a good view of Split Rock Lighthouse and a path leading down to the rocky shoreline. We hiked and ate wild raspberries along the paths bordering the trails. We found beautiful Lake Superior agates (a few), Thomsonite stone (we think), and broken pieces of vintage glass that had been “polished” by the rocks and waves on this great lake. We roasted marshmallows, studied the stars, and saw some beautiful sunrises and sunsets. We also heard (and maybe saw?) a loon from afar. We saw a marsh hawk aka northern harrier up close at Hawks Ridge in Duluth and came pretty close to an immature bald eagle. (Did you know that bald eagles don’t have their white heads until they are about 5 years of age?)
We […]
Original post by themindfulhomeschool
This month’s theme at Laugh Learn Love is 5 Senses and I decided to try to put together some fun stuff to do with the kids around it today. I decided to tie the activities together around the ocean and came up with some fun activities.
Taste: I found this page about the different ways that whales eat and printed out this bit to go over with the kids. It had a cute activity idea that I changed in order to make it into a more authentic experience — and to work in the taste element.
I cut and pasted this bit on a blank page and printed it out for the girls to read and we discussed it.
Toothed whales and dolphins use their teeth to catch their prey. Their teeth aren’t used for chewing —these whales swallow their food whole. Examples of toothed whales include killer whales, beluga whales, […]
Original post by Alicia
The kids and I have been having a ton of fun outside lately. We went on a nature bike on Friday morning and spent the rest of the day making bird baths from terra cotta pots. On our bike ride into the woods, we saw all kinds of cool stuff. We saw a huge wasp nest along the bike path, then later ran into the woods to check out the “kids’ fort” and scared away at least one antlered deer. It ran out of the wooded area when W went charging into the tall grasses by the creek. W also found a very pretty blue and black and white striped feather.
When we came home I started pulling out our assorted collection of terra cotta pots so that the kids could make bird baths. We saw this idea first on PBS’s Donna’s Day show. It is a lot of fun, doesn’t cost […]
Original post by themindfulhomeschool
Here’s the craft we came up with for Unplug Your Kids‘ Insect theme (see here for all our resources). It was quite fun!
I printed out some of the basic insect info first, along with the handout about how different types of legs, mouths and such did different jobs. We talked about what all insects had and things like exoskeletons and such.
We all cut out insect parts– long legs from sticky paper, big ovals and circles for heads and thoraxes and abdomens, little mouths of different shapes and even quilled paper tongues for the butterfly type tongue!
Then I gave each child a glue stick and they went to town. They knew their insects needed to have one head, one thorax, one abdomen, two compound eyes (we used funny foam ones though!), antennae (generally), wings (optional but generally four) and a mouth. They mixed, matched and created their own designer insect. They […]
Original post by Alicia
One of our monarchs emerged from her chrysalis this morning. (Victoria thought from the size of the markings she was a female so I’ll take her word for it!) After she’d hung for a while to let her wings dry we thought she was ready to fly free. Victoria, Alex and I took her out to let her go.
She hung around on Victoria’s hand for a while before finally flying to the swingset. Victoria thought she’d like perching on a rose better so she held her finger out and the butterfly grabbed on and went to the rose. She was having trouble hanging on so Victoria (ever the overprotective mother!) moved her to the black eyed susans, where she happily stayed until she finally flew away.
Alex was enthralled, though he quickly become more enthralled in a water puddle he found. :) Isn’t she beautiful?
Original post by Alicia
This week’s theme at Unplug Your Kids is Insect. We’re getting ready to start a craft I made up and I needed some basic information for the kids to go along with it. I found these great sites and thought others might like them.
This 4 page PDF file from the Denver Museum of Nature and Science is made up for preschool and kindergarten teachers but older elementary kids would love a lot of it too. It includes crafts, bug games, basic information (pretty detailed!) and more.
Here’s a lesson plan with handouts about insects for older kids. The handout is fabulous! I love the idea of having kids draw insects for specific lives like “An insect that eats other insects that live on the top of flowers.”
Here’s a preschool lesson plan for making bugs from playdough and natural materials.
And here’s a nice basic page that tells about what body parts insects […]
Original post by Alicia
Last evening DH and Hypatia were hanging out in the front yard, and she was trying to ID all of his native plants out there. She calls Kinnikinnick “nicky nick”, but she can point it out. He asked her where the lupine were, and she went and pointed to one. He pointed out the deer fern, and then she went and examined a sword fern. She wasn’t sure, so she asked him: “ear earn?”, so then he explained it was a fern, but a different kind, a sword fern. She seemed really excited about that, and jumped back and forth between them chanting “ear earn” and “ord earn”.
I watched this unfold from the porch, and it was an awfully cute moment between them.
Original post by learningumbrella
I told Kieron about the 100 Species Challenge and he liked the idea of it. I have been wanting to take the children on more regular nature walks so I thought this might be a good focus. Paddy was excited about “hunting for animals” so yesterday was our first venture. I hesitate to put the banner on the blog because I hate to commit to things until I have a sense whether I will actually follow through ;-).
I took lots of pictures yesterday, but they turned out over-exposed. But I liked this early sign of autumn:
and Paddy the Hero heading down through our meadow towards the bus stop. We are fortunate because even though we only have 2 acres, we are bounded by the community trail, so there is something like a long narrow preserve below […]
Original post by willa
…that we’ve done, seen, learned recently:
1. The Penny Experiment
We put 10 dirty pennies in 10 cups of various liquids and left them for 2 days. We talked about acidity and how Coke is supposed to eat the rust off of things because of how acidic it is. We had cups of things like homemade pickle brine, salt water, mustard, baking soda and water, baking soda and vinegar, soapy water and plain water. Then we cleaned them off and decided which liquids cleaned best. The winners were mustard, brine, Diet Coke and milk (which was a big surprise to the kids). The only one to get really dirtier was the plain water one, which got nearly black. Salt water also got worse. The rest all got at least a little bit cleaner.
The Diet Coke one evaporated and the middle of the penny ended up out of the liquid. The penny ended […]
Original post by Alicia
We’re back from Victoria’s first annual camping party. It was such fun!
The trip didn’t go off without any hitches. My car died on the highway about 5 miles before we got to the park. Luckily we had taken two vehicles since we were bringing two little girls, so Daryl was able to come back and help out. He took most of the kids and I stayed with the car. One of Anna and Victoria’s friends stayed back to keep me and baby Alex company. We watched horses and butterflies for a very long time!
My fantastic friend Jeanne came out and helped us tow our car back to the nearest town (she happened to grow up nearby) and helped us find a trustworthy mechanic. Everybody seemed to be leaning towards a broken fuel pump, which is unfortunately spendy. We left it with Rick and hoped for the best. Then we loaded […]
Original post by Alicia
Saturday was very hot for this region (100 degrees and I thought I would be sick, but I’m a wimp with heat), so we went out to the cabin for the afternoon. The tide was out, and the water of the Puget Sound was actually a bit warm in the shallows, so we waded and sort of splashed about. It was beautiful, and perfect for a summer day.
But there were these weird biting bugs that looked like swimming potato bugs, and their bites hurt. There’s a good picture here. They didn’t seem to leave a mark or anything, although DH did experiment and leave one on his leg to see what would happen, and the bug held on long enough to leave a bloody little crater bite. They seemd to latch on and just chew away until we brushed them off. I’ve never seen this before there, and none of […]
Original post by learningumbrella
We just got back from a short family vacation to a nearby city to take part in an annual free campout that combines flint-knapping, a historic rendesvous and other cool stuff.
Fifteen fun things we did and cool things we learned…
We bought handfuls of beautiful polished agates, fossils, crystals and other gorgeous rocks.
We listened to a folk singer sing songs like “Grandma’s Feather Bed” and “Leave a Trail of Love.”
Victoria and Anna learned how to use a bullwhip and found out that they were using it fast enough to break the sound barrier– which is 752 mph in South Dakota (where the family was from), and that it varies as you get higher above sea level since the air is thinner and lighter. The family was a homeschool family and I told them I could tell. :) They were fantastic kids and neat parents.
Jack and Victoria learned how to […]
Original post by Alicia
Magical Mud Pies: 10 fun, free things to do outside today…
1. Cut an old sheet into large wings, have the kids color it with markers, and pin or stitch it to an old shirt. Have the kids run around as butterflies.
2. Designate a corner of the yard as theirs and let them dig it up, hose it down and joyfully play in the dirt. Set up a wading pool or hose as a clean up station before they get to the back door.
3. Pick dandelions and make crowns, jewelry or collages on the grass. Take apart the flowers to see the developing seeds inside. If you find some already seeding, try drawing a single airy seed.
4. Grab an ID book and go looking for birds, bugs, trees or whatever strikes your fancy. Keep a journal of the ones you spot and […]
Original post by Alicia
« Previous Entries