Posts Tagged ‘nature’
Nature walk part deux!
Posted on: May 28, 2010
- In: misc fun | nature | Unshooling
- 3 Comments
On our nature walk we also found bugs/insects:
And some unusual plants:
Something that looks like tall asparagus. And I didn’t bother checking the name of the one on the right but I know that it is a water plant and it was found in a moist ditch.
One of these days I will have to look up all of these plants and add them to our nature journal.
Art
Posted on: February 27, 2010
- In: art | crafts | nature
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This is my painting from yesterday:
These are the boys’ clay projects:
They are unfinished of course. We will paint them tomorrow.
This one is mine:
And yesterday I let Trey take pictures with my digital camera.
This one I just had to share:
He caught his little sister and brother curled up in the corner cupboard in the kitchen eating brown sugar straight out of the container. Look at Anna’s little face. That sugar is plastered all over her. Ha ha ha.
Earth sciences
Posted on: February 20, 2010
- In: books | nature | Space | Unshooling
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This has been our favorite thing to learn about these days. Kevin is fascinated with the solar system (an interest that the kids tweaked in him) so he has been reading book after book about planets and he is even talking about the local astronomy chapter so that he can learn more about telescopes and star gazing. I am just loving this new development.
I, on the other hand, am finding myself more interested in weather. So I have been reading more about tornadoes, volcanoes etc.
I bought a book today that gives a basic, pictorial description of various clouds etc. and tells you what they mean. For example, a wispy cloud means good weather is on the way. A heavy, “fluffy” one means moisture and means rain. A tall one with an anvil type head means a thunderstorm. Neat heh?
Here is our little tornado experiment for the day:
It’s pretty hard to see. I added some watercolour paint to try to make it more realistic (Ha!) and while it did look really cool it was hard to photograph.
It was a good segway into talking about wind currents and low pressure systems.
I love unschooling!
I can’t wait to start getting to our nature walks in the spring. We have guides for clouds, birds, trees, plants, bugs, tracks and mammals. We’ll have so much fun!
Some sun in our dreary winter.
Posted on: January 11, 2010
In celebration of the beautiful weather today I decided to crawl out of my house. I drove my husband back to work after his lunch break and then did groceries with the kids.
The kids were asking for all kinds of fruit today and I couldn’t say no to nutrition so we came home with six different kinds of fruit and we still had some at home. (Well, even more since avocados and tomatoes are technically fruits)
Fruit never goes bad at my house though so I am not worried.
But we picked up two new fruits (some blood oranges and a starfruit) and some good oldies; bananas, frozen strawberries, mandarins (really good ones) and pears.
No one really cared for the starfruit save for Anna. It is a pretty addition to any salad though. I think that must be real reason for it’s popularity.
The other thing my grocery store had that I couldn’t resist was some lovely daffodil bulbs. Trey helped me transplant them into a slightly large pot and we will likely plant them on the farm when the spring really comes.
What a cheery flower. Just a pure ray of sunshine. I love little things like that.
Winter is still here for a while but I can’t help myself. Any little flower or whatever is extra cheery for me right now. Can’t wait for spring!
And the boys really miss the playground and walks.
And on the way home I heard Colbie Caillat’s song “Lucky” and I loved it. I had been on the fence about getting her newest album but I am off now. I am going to tell my husband I want it…today! Ha ha ha.
Winter and “resolutions”
Posted on: January 3, 2010
I hate winter but I feel like my kids aren’t really getting the full extent of the winter experience. Mostly because I hate winter and it’s been so frigid this winter so I try to stay in whenever I can.
So I looked at the suggestions in the I Love Dirtbook and found this peanut-butter-bird-seed-pine-cone-craft-thing. I have seen these before and last year we did a variation of one. But you forget right?
So I thought, “Perfect!” Indoors-y and outdoors-y. My kind of activity.
Here are two or our three pine cone bird feeders:
Everyone talks about resolutions these days. I don’t really have resolutions. I’d say I have goals but they are technically the same.
I guess my resolutions/goals for 2010 are the same as they have been every day of 2009. To work at being a less irritable, more supportive mother. To be more compassionate, less distracted and more cooperative.
I have come a long way from where I was but I still see a long way to go.
Another goal is to lose weight. I haven’t lost an ounce since Anna was born 13 months ago and I am starting to get depressed.
And, this ties in with the previous one, I want to devote myself to a whole foods vegan diet. We have been sort of doing this for a while but when I went back to work we started cheating big time. Now it’s time to start baking my own bread and eating more vegetables again.
And the last one is related to our finances. We aren’t in want of anything yet we spend money on items that take up valuable space. I am hoping that 2010 will be the year we learn self-control over our finances. Stick to our budget (what good is a budget you don’t adhere to?) and pay off our credits. We don’t have lots of debt but we don’t earn that much income overall so…
We are expecting so many changes this year. My husband is almost half way through his application process for becoming a police officer. When he gets that all wrapped up he will be leaving me for six whole months. So that will be a big change. When he is done his six months of training we will be moving to another part of Canada and we will be starting over from scratch. New house, new friends, new grocery stores etc.
We are very excited about these changes but there will be lots of adjustments. I will likely be celebrating Christmas/winter solstice in a totally new place this year. And I have no idea where. Ha ha ha.
I am looking forward to the adventure though.
Pictures of farm plants and bugs.
Posted on: June 16, 2009
I will be honest. I haven’t had time to identify these so I am just throwing the pictures in here. Feel free to identify anything you wish too. I don’t know when I will get around to it.
The one here > is a baby grasshopper.
I am pretty sure that this one is canola.
On the farm…
Posted on: June 16, 2009
We spent the weekend on my in-laws farm. It was terrific weather and we spent as much of it outdoors as we could. It was great for the kids to climb on hay bails and look for spiders and run through the tall (semi-tall, it is pretty dry right now) grass. They got to ride in the tractor with grandpa while he fed the cows and the got to throw dirt and rocks and just be boys. They also had a total of three baths because they were getting filthy within minutes of being outdoors.
It was quite the treat for my dogs too. They ran and ran and visited the cows and rolled in the grass and slept. They are pretty pooped out now.
And even my wee Anna benefited from all of this. She had lots of fresh air and sunshine. Little tanned babies are so darn cute. I have always thought that people are way too neurotic about babies and sun. If babies could get sun they wouldn’t need Vitamin D drops. And yes, their skin is more sensitive, so use common sense. 
I don’t take my baby out in direct sunlight when the sun is at it’s hottest. But I let her have sunlight right on her head and everything after two or three in the afternoon and before noon. I don’t care what the baby books say, it’s good for her. Everyone needs sunshine, even the wee ones.
She also got to play with grass. It wasn’t her first introduction to grass but this is the longest it has been for her and she was pretty happy to taste it and pull on it with her chubby fingers.
My husband is feeling tennis withdrawal because he made me play dirt tennis on his parent’s driveway. Ha ha ha. Oh, my Kevin.
On the Sunday afternoon my father-in-law separated one of his cows from the herd because she was in labour. I had hopes that my sons could watch a calf being born (from a reasonable distance) but things didn’t come to fruition by the time we had to go home.
But overall, we all benefited from the fresh air and it was great to get out of the house.
Lots to share.
Posted on: April 7, 2009
- In: crafts | nature | Unshooling
- 1 Comment
This morning we have devoted our craft time to spring!
Here are our budding tree paintings and our Spring wall:
And it is shaping up to be a wonderful day today as well. I just wish we had more places to explore. I guess the neighbourhood will have to do until Kevin can take us to more exciting locales.
I have some OK news on the potty training front. I have managed to bribe Trey into not pooping and peeing in his pants. Ugh! I hate doing this but I am pretty desperate for clean pants right now.
The really exciting thing is that I have gotten Joel interested in potty training now. With any luck I may be only changing one bum soon.
I also haven’t updated my blog with my alphabet in a while because I kind of thought that readers just didn’t care that much. Anyways, here are the new additions:
And for Rochelle, my nature book is pretty simple. I just take pictures of the animals, plants etc. that we see throughout our walks and then print pics of them, paste them into a book and add the descriptions.
Like this:
Wow!
Posted on: April 6, 2009
- In: crafts | nature
- 2 Comments
What nice weather we have. I am seeing gophers and geese and I have even seen a butterfly! I think we are done with this winter at last.
Today was so nice. We all went for a walk. You could actually see water dripping off of snow chunks. Anyways, the kids played at the small playground in my neighbourhood and then we went for a walk around the neighbourhood. We have a pond a couple of blocks over and the boys watched the geese that congregate near it.
Then we quickly went home to get some bread and went back to feed the geese. They seemed pretty grateful since their regular food supply is in rather short abundance right now.
OK, I know that everyone has seen seagulls but I am adding these to my family nature journal.
Here are today’s addition to our nature table.
The little pine cones look like they come from a black spruce but it is such a young tree that I can’t tell for sure.
The biggest cone is from a Lodgepole Pine.
The bark is from a birch. I would guess a Paper Birch but I can’t tell for sure right now.
I am so thrilled that the weather is getting so much nicer that I don’t even mind the fact that it is so wet and muddy out there.
Last night Trey tried his hand at embroidery.
I played around a little bit on it before he went to it.
A nature walk…brrr!
Posted on: March 31, 2009
I had promised the kids a nature walk since the temperature was acceptable but the sun never showed and the wind was cold.
They were really excited so we bundled up and headed outdoors for some rock collecting. I was thrilled to see some signs of spring. This winter has seemed to be never-ending and I know there are others who feel this way too.
I really like this picture. The boys look like they are skipping in unison but in reality they are just running and I caught them at just the right moment.
As you can see we have plenty of snow left. Winter is my least favorite of all the seasons by a long shot. I hate being cold.
And, like I mentioned in my last post (probably the one that got deleted) we finally have space to set up a small nature table since Hammy passed on.
Here are some pics of the nature table.
You can see that there isn’t much on it right now as we just put it up. I am hoping for a really good nature walk where we can collect more pine cones. I am also looking forward to learning how to make some felted bowls for these little treasures.
That clay bowl is the one I made back a long time ago. I hadn’t posted pics before because I hadn’t glazed it yet but oh well…maybe another day.
Adventures in Unschooling 
