Nature Walk on the Rail Trail

We took a nature walk on the rail trail Sunday. We saw a pair of mallard ducks, robins,red wing black birds. We heard frogs peeping. And best of all, each of the kids found an old rail spike. They picked up locust pods and tulip tree petals. Little-man worries me he can only walk so far then he squats down. I need to get him checked out at the doctors since our family doctor left we haven't really seen our new doctor but the office has some weekend hours. Now that I don't have the drive to Midland we can find some time to go again. I really enjoy our nature walks and feel like the kids do a lot of learning about the world we live in on our walks.

Earth Day

My work gave out little pine trees today and I couldn't resist bringing one home for the Aaron to plant with the kids. I have several pine trees in the yard but we will squeeze one more in. Aaron wasn't as excited as I hoped he would be about it. I remember planting a blue spruce that McDonald's was giving out for one of the first Earth Days 20 years ago. It is huge and still growing in the yard at our old house.

My coworkers gave me 2 more trees now we are waiting to plant them outside this week. One for each of the littles.

First camping adventures

We went camping with my sister. The kids had so much fun! it is so beautiful for this time of year. Aimee came with us too.

Spring nature study

We took the kids out for a walk and to collect frog eggs. Be brought home a small sample of what we think is frog eggs, several nice rocks, and a baby garter snake. Now tippy-toe wants to "discover 'bout 'nakes" They also got to ride on Aaron's quad. Pitty-pat was too much of a princess girl to really like it. Little-man saw geese and pointed "ook!" he also said "bye-bye" and waved as they rode quad and the rest waited their turns. i've noticed words suddenly have their correct meanings for littleman now. He would say words before but they didn't really have the right meaning.

Nature study tree fungus

We found this neat tree fungus while out for one of our walks today.

Frogs and metamorphosis

Last June we looked for tadpoles for our natural science but we were too late to catch some. This week we bought a special tank at WalMart made by Backyard Safari Outfitters. It has water area and land area for the tadpole-frog. We found some great pictures in DK Eyewitness Natural World.I copied some great printables form KinderPrintables.com I can't wait so we already started this unit study.
The butterfly house is open for another month in midland. I plant to take them as part of our metamorphosis study. I saw a great homemade journal some one made online with each page a different creature that uses metamorphosis. May be too advanced for us but will put it in our nature journal.

Days of Creation poster

We cut pictures out of magazines to make a days of creation poster. I plan to relate all our nature lessons back to our poster.

The Giving Tree

We read The Giving Tree by Sel Siverstein. We did acorn counting sheets. We started Nature journals and collected leaves for the tree pages. Filled the bird feeder for bird observations. We also made pinecone feeders to hang in the pines outside our house. We watched the video "Kids love spanish #2 alphabets and numbers" from the public library. For our field trip this week we took a walk in Aunt Caroline's Woods.