Nature Walk Bracelets

We went for a fun nature walk today!  I took a piece of tape and wrapped it around each child's arm.  As we walked, we found things to add to our bracelets and make them beautiful.  :)

Julia's was mostly dandelions. 

Lucy chose a variety of things and even got a rock to stay on. 

I love our big beautiful tree! 

sick baby snuggling mom

Esther kept putting things on and taking them back off again. 

one of the bracelets after we cut it off

This was a fun activity that we will probably do again sometime.  Do you have any creative ideas for making nature walks interesting?  Please share!  :)

Feeding the Ducks

We have a great duck pond near us!  The girls were so excited to find baby ducks there Monday.  They came quite close to us and the daddy duck even ate out of Ross' hand.

I recently learned that bread isn't the best food for ducks.  We bought a big bag of cracked corn to use instead.  (Super cheap at the local feed store, $5 for a big bag.)  I keep some in this recycled coffee container in the van so that we always have duck food handy.  The ducks gobbled it right up.

I love being prepared for spur of the moment duck feeding!  :)

It works for me.

Easter Resurrection Garden

I'm not sure where to give credit for this photo.  I first saw it on Facebook, and its all over Pinterest as well.  Its absolutely wonderful!

The girls and I put ours together this evening:

We used a small jam jar for the tomb.  (In the original photo, its a tiny flower pot.)  We planted some grass seed and will use a spray bottle to water it a few times a day.  I'll share another photo once ours sprouts, but wanted to post this now in case any of you are inspired to create your own.

Having this visual reminder of the Easter story in our home is a great way to spark conversation and thought.  I can see this becoming a yearly tradition.  Do you have anything special that you do around Easter time?  Please share!

Book Review: The Nature Connection

The Nature Connection by Clare Walker Leslie is absolutely the best nature study book for children that I have ever come across!  I love the idea of nature study, but am always a bit unsure about how to begin.  Winter usually ends up stopping my plans short anyway.

After paging through The Nature Connection, I am extremely impressed.  The book makes nature study completely doable, with easy assignments and even space to do them in.  It also includes a TON of information (in easy to read bites) about nature, things you might see, sketches and good-to-know tidbits.  I'm amazed at all of the information included.  This book could very well serve as a homeschool science textbook for an entire year.  One of the best parts of the book is that it goes monthly through the year.  The assignments and information are relative to the particular month (even winter!).

I haven't decided if I am going to have Lucy write directly in the book, or in a nature journal.  There is actually a link provided in the book that you can go to and print off extra pages to write on.  At $10 on Amazon, this is a book that every homeschool or nature loving household should own!

Can you tell I'm impressed with this book?  :)  We received it for review, but the opinions are all my own.  :)

Making A Worm Bin

Sometimes Mom gets crazy ideas and decides to run with them.  

I've been reading about worm composting bins for a while now and finally made up my mind to give it a try.  We followed these directions to make our bin, and it was actually fairly simple.  The conversation I had with my father-in-law was pretty funny though: 

Me: "Can I borrow your drill?"

Him:  pause... "You want to borrow my power drill?" 

Me: "Yeah, I'm making a worm bin."

Him:  another pause... "Ok..."

The girls were excited when I told them we were getting some new pets and would have to make them a home.  I figured if nothing else it will be a fun school experiment.  The worms are staying in our garage for now, and if they survive a few months and don't stink too much we'll bring them into the basement for the winter.

We are starting out with just a few worms from someone else's worm bin, so I can't feed them too much yet.  Supposedly they multiply fairly quickly, so we'll see what happens.  Right now I just give them some veggie scraps once a week and be sure their bedding is still damp.

Stay tuned for an update in a couple months!  You can read more about worm bins here if you're interested.

It works for me.  At least I think it does...

Spring Babies

This is a face only a mother could love, don't you think? A family of cardinals made their home in a climbing rose bush just outside a window in our garage. I stood on a bucket in the garage looking out the window to take this photo. Lucy and Julia were able to take a peek and see the eggs before they hatched. Ross even saw the daddy cardinal feeding the babies. I love it when nature allows us a close up view of things like this!

Lucy and I are making a Spring photo book together. We went outside a month or so ago and took photos of green shoots sprouting from the ground, buds on trees, and anything else that reminded us of Spring. I printed the photos and put them in a little book for her. We'll definitely add these and try to get a few more shots as the babies grow!

Backyard Find

This little guy was in our backyard today! Leia (our chocolate lab) was barking outside and when I went to check on her, I saw this opossum in a tree. The girls were very excited to see him and Ross went outside to get some close up photos and video. I think the opossum was still sleepy because he fell out of the tree and didn't know what to do with himself. I think he's cute!

opossum coloring sheet

opossum facts

more opossum ideas

Week 2 - MFW K

We are using My Father's World Kindergarten as our preschool curriculum. This was week 2. Although I am not going to post everything we did (because most of it came straight from the teacher's manual), I will post some of the highlights. I plan to include any nature activities that I came up with, ideas I found on the internet and added to the week, or things that I made up. If you are using My Father's World (or even if you aren't homeschooling) I hope that this will be a fun peek into our homeschool days and maybe you will find some ideas you'd like to use. Some weeks will have more ideas posted than others, but I'll try to keep up with this!

This week we enjoyed a nature walk. I labeled plastic gallon size bags with a piece of tape that said "God made...". Lucy and Julia both enjoyed walking around collecting things that God made - sticks, small pinecones, grass, dandelions, pine needles, and more.

On Friday we started our Sun unit and cut pieces of yellow yarn (string because it starts with "S") and glued it to a big letter "S" that I drew on paper. The girls both loved snipping the yarn but didn't want to touch the glue to stick it on to the "S". We are just getting started with the Sun unit and I have lots more fun ideas coming up for this one next week.

Along with My Father's World, we are using Handwriting Without Tears. We began this week by just playing with the wooden pieces and placing them on the alphabet mats to create letters. I have the music cd as well so we listened to "The Hokey Pokey" and "Tap Big Lines" and followed the actions with our wooden pieces. This was a fun way to incorporate music into our day.

I posted last week about my weekly summary page and what that includes. Here is Lucy's answer this week to the questions I asked her:

What Lucy learned: "About "S". And, um, about what God made. And our nature walk. Thats not something I learned, but that's something I really liked."

Lucy's favorite part: "Um, all of it. Everything, I guess. My favorite part is all of it, but I think that's all."

This week was also Lucy's first ballet class. She was a bit nervous, but ended up enjoying it!

PS I just added a My Father's World Blog Roll button on the right hand side. Click on it to see a list of other MFW homeschoolers and what year they are on.

Giveaway - Bingo Game from A Toy Garden

Sonya at A Toy Garden would like to give away a Bingo game to one of my readers! I just posted a review of Bug Bingo below - its one of our new favorite games. Here's what you need to do:

- Read the post right below this one, including my review of the Bug Bingo game.

- Visit A Toy Garden and type the word "bingo" in the search box in the upper right hand corner. You will see all of the Bingo games that Sonya carries. (This giveaway does not include the Fundanas that show up in the search, just the Lucy Hammett Bingo games.)

- Come back to this post and leave a comment letting me know which Bingo game you would choose if you win.

- Be sure that you leave an email address or have email enabled in your blogger profile so that I can contact the winner.

The giveaway will close October 15th at midnight. Good luck!

**Giveaway is now closed and a winner has been contacted. Thanks for all of your interest!**

Nature Studies - Beaches and Bugs

I just posted a long list of nature studies resources we enjoy having in our home. A couple of items that we recently received from A Toy Garden deserved their own special mention. As I mentioned in my previous post, I've been searching for things (games, toys, books, etc) to make nature studies interesting and fun for my girls. We've had a blast with each of these two items and give them two thumbs up.

Sonya suggested that we review the Bug Bingo game because the bingo cards have so much information printed on them and the pictures are quite detailed and true. I wasn't sure if the game was going to be over Lucy's head, but it said ages 3- adult, so we decided to give it a try. Lucy and Julia both enjoy finding bugs outside and were very interested in playing this game.

At one point I asked Lucy if she had to go to the bathroom because she was dancing around and wiggling so much. She said no, she was just very excited about the game and trying to see all of the pictures. The game is very simple to play, there are large printed bingo cards, bingo marker chips, and flash cards with the bug pictures and information. One person holds up the flash card and each player checks to see if they have a matching picture on the game card in front of them. I didn't read much of the information on the backs of the cards because Lucy was enjoying just matching the pictures and I didn't want to overwhelm her with too much at once. She was able to play on her own, and even wanted to check Daddy's game card for him when he had to distract Julia from destroying the game. She didn't want to stop once she got five in a row so we kept going until we all had a Bingo and our game cards were filling up.

I really like that the cards have the information printed on the backs. I did read out loud a few sentences about a some of the bugs and we'll definitely read more of the information as Lucy gets more used to the game and is a bit older. For now I thought it was great that she was just learning the names of the bugs and by matching the pictures she was learning what each one looks like. There are even a few terms like "metamorphosis" included, which is fun.

We all enjoyed playing this game and will be using it often. There are six game cards included, so even Grandma and Grandpa can play when they come over. A Toy Garden also sells Nature Bingo, Ocean Bingo, and more. I think these might be appearing on Christmas wish lists in the near future.

The second item we received for review is the Green Toys Sand Castle set. We already had the tea set by Green Toys and absolutely love it. Green Toys is a wonderful company - their toys are made of recycled plastic milk jugs (a very safe plastic) and are BPA and phthalate free. There is no coating on the toy, so definitely no lead paint here. The toy even comes packaged in recyclable cardboard. The plastic toy itself is very durable and sturdy, I was impressed with the quality.

The set comes with a pail, shovel, rake, and castle mold. The pail has a thick rope handle and is a great size. Lucy had fun scooping water from the lake so that Daddy and Julia could fill the castle mold with wet sand and make castles. The mold worked well and made nicely formed castles. The shovel and rake are both quite sturdy and will hold up to quite a bit of use. We'll use this set at home to work in the garden, collect nature finds on walks, and much more.

I honestly wasn't sure what I would think about the sand castle set since we already own several pail and shovel sets that we use in our sandbox at home. After playing with it though, I'm ready to throw all of the others away and just use this set. Other sand toys crack and the handles snap off and they just aren't as sturdy and nice as this set, not to mention I'm sure the other ones we have are not a safe plastic nor in the slightest bit environmentally conscious. I much prefer my children play with something I know is safe and responsibly made. This is a fun set that I know will last for quite some time.

Visit A Toy Garden to find either of these fun "nature studies" items. Check out the autumn category for a large variety of fun fall items. (A Toy Garden also sells Fundanas, another of our favorite nature studies tools.) Thanks for the great recommendations, Sonya!

Nature Studies

In my homeschool planning for the fall, I'm working on including something called "nature studies". I've come across this while reading about Charlotte Mason and her philosophy. She believed that nature studies and time outdoors is important for children. I readily agree! My husband is wonderful at knowing the names of many different birds and pointing out small animals that he sees while we are out driving or walking around. Lucy is already able to name several birds and Julia loves little bugs and things she finds outside. I'd love for my children to grow up with even more of an appreciation for nature and knowledge about God's wonderful creation. The Bible says that nature reveals God to us, what better way to grow closer to Him than by learning about His creation? (Job 12:7-10, Psalm 19:1-6, Romans 1:19-20) Our Kindergarten curriculum includes notes in the teachers manual encouraging us to go outside and enjoy nature about once a week. I've been gathering resources and brainstorming ideas to make our nature studies time fun and interesting for the girls.

Here are some of the resources we have available in our home and ideas I'm planning to incorporate into our days:

Birds of Michigan Field Guide

Mammals of Michigan Field Guide

Bug Identification Book - We don't have one yet, but will be purchasing one.

Encyclopedia of Animals - This is a great book, full of pictures and lots of information. Lucy loves to pull this book out and flip through it just looking at all of the animals.

Fundanas - See my post here about these super cool nature study tools.

bug boxes, magnifying glasses, nets - The girls got these for their birthdays this summer.

bubbles, chalk, outdoor toys

CLP Nature readers - These are fun little informative nature stories to read aloud. I remember reading them as a child! We have books K and 1 to use this year.

nature collection boxes - I'm planning to use old egg cartons to let the girls make rock collections, leaf collections, etc.

bowl inside for treasures - I want to get a nice wooden bowl to keep on the coffee table or dining room table for treasures that end up following us inside. (big pine cones, extra special rocks, etc.)

journals of some sort - This book is great, but mostly applies to older kids. I'd love to follow the concept on a lower level and have the girls try to draw a tree or something simple while outside. I may make nature journals for them at some point or just take clipboards and paper with us when we go out.

nature walks - Both of my girls love to go for a stroller ride or a short walk through the neighborhood. I've not done so yet, but have heard of putting duct tape bracelets on so that they can stick little flowers, leaves, etc to it as we walk. Another idea I want to try is to bring some plastic baggies with us and categorize things that we find - one bag for special leaves, one for sticks, etc.

nature crafts - Making things like leaf rubbings, pine cone bird feeders, or pressing flowers are always fun.

bird feeder - We have a bird feeder right outside our front window, and plan to put up a few more of them this fall. (Also, see my post about our homemade bird book.)

a nice picnic blanket ready to go at any moment

Our curriculum has science/ nature ideas included in the work that will take us outside as well. Whenever it relates to what we are studying (or even if it doesn't!), we plan to take outdoor trips to the zoo, beach, etc. We also have quite a few nice park areas around our house with walking trails to explore. In fact, my husband took the photos in this post this morning.

This is my list for now, I hope some of it inspires you to think about ways to get your little ones outside and enjoying it! Do you have other resources you enjoy using for "nature studies"? Please share!

Fundana Sale!

Caryl of Imports Unlimited is excited that so many of you are interested in her Fundanas and getting outside in nature with your children. She has decided to offer a special sale on my blog! Until the end of October, you can order as many Fundanas as you'd like for only $5.25 each. That is 25% off the regular price, and there is no shipping fee! In order to get this special, you'll have to email Caryl directly at csfox@importsunltd.com. You will need to mention my blog and prepay by check or call in your credit card number, email her for more details about that. This special will not work on their website and therefore cannot be done through paypal. Also, this is for US addresses only.

You can read my review of our Fundanas here. We are definitely planning to order more of these, my girls have really enjoyed them. These would also make great Christmas or birthday gifts, so I'm planning to stock up. The giveaway for a Fundana is still open until Sept 15th - leave a comment on my review post if you'd like to enter that. Thanks Caryl!

Fundana Review and Giveaway

What's a Fundana? A wonderful nature studies tool that we have discovered! Fundanas are games (either bingo or scavenger hunt style) printed on cotton bandanas designed to teach kids about the environment around them in a fun way. They are washable, easy to carry, reusable, and so much fun. We played with the Knee High to Senses Fundana today.

Each of the squares on the Fundana contains a fun activity related to the five senses. "find something smooth", "scratch and sniff a leaf", "smell a flower"...

"make a face like you just tasted something hot"...

...and more! When we completed an activity, we found wood chips or rocks to place on the squares. The activities were all fun, simple things that both of the girls (age 4 and 2) could do. The Fundanas come in either "Knee High"for kids age 3-6 or regular for kids age 7-adult. We also have the Winter Ecology Bingo Fundana and I don't think that it will be too hard for the girls to do even though its not a "Knee High" version. There are many different options to choose from - bugs, trees, birds, stars, beach, etc. I love that they fold up small so that we can take them along on trips to the beach, cottage, or elsewhere. They are also fairly inexpensive.

Our homeschool curriculum (My Father's World) encourages nature studies and we plan to use our Fundanas regularly to help us enjoy being outside and give us fun activities to do together. I haven't used our Winter Fundana yet obviously, but I'm thrilled to have something to help us study nature in the winter. It has kids searching for colors in nature, various plants, animal shelters, and just plain enjoying winter fun (make a snow sculpture, etc).

Caryl has this to say about her Fundanas: "I think getting kids out to understand and interact with nature is ESSENTIAL to becoming thoughtful, caring, responsible adults along with it being alot of fun..." I agree!

Imports Unlimited offers free shipping within the US to retail customers who order off of their website. They are also giving away a Fundana to one reader of my blog. To enter, visit their website and leave a comment on this post letting me know which Fundana you would choose. Please be sure to include your email address (or have email enabled on your blogger profile). The giveaway will remain open until September 15th at midnight. If you're interested in nature studies, stay tuned, I have a couple more posts coming up about the topic. Thanks for stopping by!

**Thanks for all of the interest. This giveaway is now closed. Random.org chose comment #10 and she has been contacted. If you are interested in purchasing a Fundana, check out this post for a great sale!**