Nature Walk

We have been having some very nice warm weather and luckily we've gone outside to enjoy these beautiful days. We've been studying nature during our science time. Last week we decided to take a nature walk around our place. Em brought the camera and our goal was to find tracks, rocks, leaves, flowers, wildlife on our walk and document them with either pictures or by collecting them.

The girls knew right away this was one of our deer tracks. They come nightly to feed now that most of the vegetation in the canyons has died.

We stopped by the girls rock quarry. This is where they have been excavating for a few months now. Most of the rock is caliche and limestone. But we do find a few other treasures around.

Most of our wildflowers have died, but we have plenty of these around. In fact they make some very cute Christmas angle ornaments. You'll have to check out my post on my Crafty Corner Blog.

Everything we collected they gathered on a tray for labeling. We are going to the library today to check out a wildlife and plant guides to identify all our items. Using our pictures and our collections we will be making a nature book. WB also took the girls to the Botanical Gardens where they took more pictures of flowers and butterflies. We stopped by our favorite park and took pictures of all the different ducks and collected more leaves. They are going to organize their books by area.

We might even do a collection for the different seasons. The activities are endless and the best part is the kids enjoy doing it. Even my 2 year old can identify most of the things we have collected.

How do you study the nature around your area?

Excavation Projects

They say children start learning when in the sand box. Well, I have to agree. Em and Soph tackled the project of cleaning out the sand box yesterday. Let me back up and tell you why this was necessary.

It seems all cats, whether wild or domesticated, like to use sand boxes for a litter box. Hmmm, see I thought only indoor little kitties did that sort of thing. So imagine my horror at finding our sand box the new bathroom for all the wild cats we started feeding this winter. Yes, this seems to be common place because whenever I mention it to someone they just nod and say something like, "Yes, yes, that is why you should cover your sandbox". Okay, I am obviously the only person on the planet that doesn't know such things about cats.

Anyway, the girls got their shovels and wheelbarrow and set to work.

Within five minutes a discovery was found by Soph.

It was a bone!

Em decided they had found some owl pellets. We discussed the probability of owl pellets being found underneath the play set and decided that wouldn't easily be possible. Soph declared it was coming from the cat poop as she excitedly shoveled more sand, poop, and bones.

Upon closer inspection we found that some of the bones were hollow. Hmmm, what animal has hollow bones? Yep, birds. My girls were excited by their dig and findings.

Amazing, what a trip to the sandbox can teach you!