Lately we've been taking a lot of "nature walks" around our neighborhood (keep in mind that I live in the suburbs, so I use the term "nature" loosely). All three kids seem to love these walks, albeit for different reasons. F has started a "nature collection" (she uses a Barbie box) and she likes to look for small pretty flowers, little sticks, and other various things that catch her fancy (I never can tell what her next "find" will be). One of our neighbors has a driveway composed of thousands (millions?) of tiny little stones and P likes to look through these for the perfect stone. She could spend hours doing this (but I won't let her, seeing as it is someone ELSE's driveway). And T just likes to point out anything that looks like a ball or bird. Yes, this is how we spend our days.
Usually I just let the kids do their own thing (and discover their own things) while I meander next to them. But sometimes when they seem tired or fussy I try to come up with projects and games to move things along - like looking for a certain color or trying to notice how the landscape changes with the season (which flowers are in bloom, which are gone, etc.). When I read Frugal Family Fun's color walk idea I thought we could try it out on our nature walk. So I went to Home Depot and found a large number of paint card chips. For each child I put together a set with 8 cards (reds, greens, etc). I put slightly different colors in each set, hoping that the girls would compare and see whose card came closest (in retrospect I should have made all three sets identical as competition of any sort just leads to fighting lately). And I brought along a pen so as to record what we found.
P suggested we invite the neighbors (who are in 1st grade and 4th grade) to walk with us, which seemed like a good idea. P shared her cards with the oldest neighbor and the youngest neighbor took T's cards (not surprisingly, he had no interest in the project). Unfortunately the color walk seemed to bore P, but F LOVED finding things and recording them on her cards. Plus it proved to be a great exercise for F and our 1st grade neighbor in spelling and writing (I kept hearing over and over "how do you spell xx? What about xx?" as they RAN from plant to plant). All in all a fun afternoon. Even T tried to help out, he knows the word yellow now so he just kept pointing to everything and saying "ellow??" hopeful that at least once he would be right.
MONDAY LINKS:
*American Photography's Top Images from last year - stunning.
*La Domestique is the coolest food blog ever. Each week the author features a new seasonal ingredient. She write a thorough introduction on Monday, 10 creative uses of the ingredient on Tuesday, a featured recipe on Wednesday, a "storyboard" on Thursday, and final thoughts and inspirations on Friday (link via The Slow Life).
*"Washed Up is an ongoing project by Mexican-born, New York-based artist Alejandro Durán that addresses the issue of plastic pollution making its way across the ocean and onto the shores of Sian Ka’an, Mexico’s largest federally-protected reserve. Unfortunately, Sian Ka’an is also a repository for the world’s trash, which is carried there by ocean currents from every corner of the globe." (link via Modish)
*A high-school teacher friend told me about this wonderful website, aimed at teaching women and girls about the dangers of advertising. A great (and interesting) resource, especially the gallery of offenders.
*Weird fruits.
*Scott Conarroe's By Rail - wow!
*Dear Photograph features people's old photos in the location now. Gorgeous nostalgia.
T adores our 4th grade neighbor. ADORES!
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