Greening Sam and Avery

back at home

After a long weekend in St. Louis we are back at home and settling back in.

The weather down in St. Louis did not exactly cooperate. My poor friend Tracy had to get married in the rain! Literally. She was determined to have the outdoor wedding of her dreams and even though the constant sprinkle was coming down she dealt with it and got married outside anyway. We all got wet but she looked beautiful and the ceremony was perfect. And certainly a wedding I will never forget!

The rain kept on and the boys could not go golfing so instead we took five energetic kids to the St. Louis City Museum. This place is the largest example of upcycleing I have ever seen! The whole place is made out of materials that have been reclaimed from old construction sites, schools, buildings and other places around St. Louis. And the kids can do just about anything; run, climb, create, yell, ride a train, slide, crawl through a maze, explore a hallway of mirrors, and much more!

 

Yup, I did some climbing too!

She got a little too high!

The kids had a blast!

This is certainly a green tourist destination and an awesome place to play with kids! Or grown-ups, they have late night events that include a bar...but you can still do all the fun stuff that the kids can do during the day!!

helping the birds get ready for spring

 The girls and I decided that with spring coming so fast in WI the birds would need to be making new nests to hold their eggs and might need some help. And we want to make sure that they have plenty of places for good homes. So we are helping them out by making a few bird houses for them! 

We started out with an orange juice jug and a quaker oats container. 

After they were thoroughly covered in paint and dried we decorated them with stickers!

I put modge-podge over the stickers and paint to "seal" it from the weather. Not sure this is the best kind of seal for this project but it works pretty well. 

 Once they were all dried we pushed a wood cooking squirer through the bird houses and then filled the bottom of the houses with grasses and other soft natural materials for the birds to use. 

Then Sam picked out where she wanted to hang her house!

Avery was not ready to hang her's up yet so it still sits on my kitchen counter. I will wait a few more days to let her decide where she wants to hang it. 

But now we wait to see if the birds will find the house and use it to lay some eggs. 

How are you getting ready for spring? Are you helping the animals in your yard get ready for spring?

 

let the gardening begin

We are preparing for gardening season! WOOHOO!! That makes me happy just to say that. 

I cannot wait to be digging in the soil, planting seeds and then many months from now helping Sam fill her bucket full of produce and yummy fresh stuff for us to eat. I just love being in the garden with my girls. 

But for now we do some indoor activities to get us ready. 

First we are reading a book we just found at the library. Super silly, but who knew there were so many vegetables!

I put some serious enthusiasm in my voice when I read this book, like I am doing a cheer at a football game, and the girls think it is hilarious. Plus, we have been able to look at all the pictures of things we could grow and talk about what we have room for and which ones we really want to try to grow this year. If you are feeling the need to discover some new veggies in your meals using this book to introduce them to your kids might be a good idea. 

Then Sam got busy making her own garden! Gotta love the Jung Seed catalog (any plant or seed catalog would work). I let her pick out which plants she wanted to put in her garden and where she wanted to put them. Great cutting and glueing work for her. 

And the final product! 

She really loves carrots. 

Are you starting to think about gardening yet? How do you get your kids involved?

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The Nitty Gritty!

This is the second year we have done this project. Last year she picked the food she wanted based only on color and this year she was much more focused on what foods she actually likes to eat. I love seeing the change and growth in her.

This is a project that can easy grow and change with the age of your child. With much older kids you can have them actually look at seed packets to determine how much growing space certain things need. Then they can do the math problems to really figure out the best way to use your garden area to grow the most food. And letting kids have a say in the food you grow is always an awesome idea! Or if you have the space give them a section that they can plan out entirely and then take care of throughout the whole season!

Happy gardening! 

 

toddler nature play

Sick. Does that sum up the last few days for you? Coughing, sneezing, headaches, and just overall awful feeling. But today Sam is back at school and I am starting to feel a little better. So I got out the colorful paper acorns and Avery had a busy morning being a busy little squirrel!

We read The Busy Little Squirrel book first. This is a really cute little board book that is perfect for Avery. There is repitition, colorful pictures, simple animals that she is familiar with and a great simple lesson; squirrels are very busy animals. 

Then Avery started hunting for her own acorns.

Little squirrels do sometimes stop to eat an acorn!

I love when we can combine a book and pretend play! Such a great learning combination for Avery. 

How have you expanded on books lately?

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The Nitty Gritty!

We did this a little while ago with both girls. Go here to see it the first time. So, yes this is a repeat but it is nice to do things again when Sam is not around. And we just found this book so that was a great addition to the activity.  

For an outdoor element consider going for a hike looking for squirrel leaf nests or tree cavity nests. If you still have snow you could also look for snow tracks from busy squirrels. 

animals in winter - birds fluffing their feathers

I am scrambling today trying to get our whole family ready to head out of town for an environmental education conference. This is the first time that my family will be coming with me for a "work" conference and I am very nervous but also really excited. I have two workshops to present, three meetings to run and a ton of other stuff to do, not to mention being mom and wife! I will be sharing pictures and stories of what we did and how it went when we get back on Monday!

So, while I am packing and prepping for my sessions the girls got to pretend to be birds trying to survive the cold temps in winter.

First we talked about how birds have feathers and to make them even warmer in the winter they shake their bodies to fluff up their feathers. The fluffing traps air between the feathers and keeps them more insulated. This is one reason why some birds (cardinals and chickadees) look bigger in the winter. They haven't put on extra weight, just extra air!!

I started with water balloons. But instead of filling them with water I filled them with air.

The I explained to the girls that to fluff up their feathers they had to try and see how many balloons they could squeeze underneath their shirts.

Eventually they started trying to stick the balloons under their pants, sleeves and even socks! They were determined to be warm birds through the winter!

They had a blast and I got some great work done. Plus, some learning happened, which is always a plus!

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The Nitty Gritty!

For more activities on animals preparing for and surviving winter check out these posts -

squirrels and bears

learning about hibernation through pretend play

Which is exactly what we did!

We started by talking about where bears go when it gets cold and what they might use to make their hibernation spot more comfortable.

The girls thought their princess tent filled with pillows and blankets would make the perfect bear cave.

But the tent was not as dark as they thought a cave would be. So more blankets were needed!

Then they settled in to hibernate like bears do!

Sam quickly decided that bears must get very bored while they hibernate and she decided it would be better if they had books! Hibernating quickly turned into very comfortable reading time! HA!

But this pretend play got us to have great conversations about why some animals hibernate and others don't. And what it must be like to hibernate.

Love when pretend play can directly lead to learning some great lessons about the animals around us.

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The Nitty Gritty!

We set this all up in the morning and the timing worked out perfect that when they were tired of pretending to be bears it was lunch time. This gave me the perfect opportunity to talk about how hungry animals must be when they finally wake up for spring. The girls had fun pretending it was finally spring and they could eat again! I think it also led them to eat a bigger lunch!!

We learned about squirrels in winter here.

teaching animal needs with a matching game

I made these cards for the girls as a way to start teaching them about what animals need. We pull an animal card and then try to pull the cards that go along with what that animal eats and where they live. All animals (at least the ones we are learning about right now) get their water in the same ways, rain, puddles, ponds, streams, etc. so we have water cards that look the same but there is one for each animal. There really isn't a winner to the game, just more flipping of cards and trying to match up which animals the needs go to.

It took me sometime to print, cut out and glue the cards but they will last a while this way and the girls seem to really be enjoying them.

I could see a game like this being a great preschool or kindergarden activity. And it can be created for local animals making it specific to any area! Love that.

It is great when I can use games like this to teach them about the natural world around them!

animals in winter - squirrels

Do you ever have those ideas that hit you in the middle of the night and wake you up?

Well, right before the madness of the holidays hit I had this idea to use indoor/outdoor play and games to teach the girls about the habits of animals in winter. I have several fun ideas to test out and we started with squirrels.

I found some coloring images of acorns on the web and printed out 16 acorns. Sam was given the job of coloring them and cutting them out. At first she was hesitant and didn't really care about the project but then I told her that we were going to be using the acorns to pretend to be squirrels and play a game. She sat in one spot until all 16 acorns were colored and cut out!

Before we started playing we talked about squirrels; what they eat (acorns primarily), where they live (nests and hollowed out holes in trees), how they find their food (using their nose to sniff out the nuts), and how they get ready for the cold winter months (collecting and hiding as many acorns as they can before snow falls).

Then I hide all of the acorns around several rooms in our house and told the girls to turn themselves into squirrels to find as many acorns as they can.

They really got into using their noses to find the acorns!

After the girls had hunted for the acorns a bit I added a new twist and became a fox that was hunting them! I slowly crawled around the rooms that they were looking for acrons in, scaring them and pretending to try and catch them. They loved this part. Sam even went so far as to decide that their princess tent was their tree house that they should store their acorns in and hide in until the fox was gone. I stalked them at the "bottom" of the tree house for a while and then told them the fox was giving up and moving on.

This was a great way to talk about habits of squirrels and for the girls to get a chance to see what it would be like to be a squirrel. We learned, we played, we laughed and had a great time!

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The Nitty Gritty!

This could very easily be advanced for older kids into an outdoor game. I learned a similar type game as a graduate assistant at the Central Wisconsin Environmental Station. Something more waterproof and indestructible, like poker chips, could be used as the acorns. With a playing area designated simply spread out the acorns and let the squirrels head out to gather their food. Large cups or similar container can be used as "stomachs" for collecting. After a short amount of time send a larger predator out to start hunting the squirrels. If a squirrel gets caught s/he has to give all their acorns to the larger predator (you can let the squirrel go back to colleting or have them sit down to be dead). Stop after a few minutes and see who has food in their stomach. Talk about what it was like to collect acrons with no predators chasing you versus collecting once the larger predator came out.

With older students this game can also be used to discuss bio-accumulation, food chains, food webs and energy transfer. 

color to show your support for kids getting outside

If you are a fan of my Facebook page you may have seen me promoting the WI Children's Outdoor Bill of Rights. You may also see that I have a button on my sidebar showing that I'm A Supporter! (Feel free to grab that button to show you are a supporter too!)

There is a press conference coming up on January 5th that will bring parents, teachers, non-formal educators and students in contact with their legislatures to show just how passionate we are about getting the Outdoor Bill of Rights passed.

One thing that we are encouraging children to do is create a piece of artwork to bring with them to the press conference to give to their legislature. The art should show what they love to do outdoors and/or explain what they love about the outdoors. For the children that are too young to create their own picture I have created some coloring pictures that go along with the Bill of Rights.

 https://docs.google.com/document/d/1liqQ1XLsw0UvmmUmCEWWOi4eTw6m6xqFCJXop-y3LaY/edit 

Feel free to download, print, share with others and use these pages in anyway that you would like. AND even if you can't come to the press conference but would like your child to get a chance to have their voice heard feel free to email me (or comment) and I will send you my mailing address so you can send the pictures to me!

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The Nitty Gritty!

We would love to have as many people at the press conference as we can. Showing all the legislatures just how important we all think this is is critical to a vote taking place on this sometime soon.

For all the updates and information about the WI Children's Outdoor Bill of Rights sign on to support at EE in WI.  

holiday events that are green friendly

The Holiday Train Express exhibit at the Olbrich Botanical Garden may not be the most natural event for my girls to attend to, BUT by attending events at the garden we are helping to support the other programs that they have.

Our family Christmas celebrations have started so we took the whole family to the train exhibit.

Along with the trains they had some really neat handmade bird houses on display.

After the train exhibit we headed to the conservatory. They have a rainforest products exhibit set up in the conservatory and Sam had fun going through the trails looking for all the products and plants that went with them.

They had "scavenger" hunt type cards that were available for people to walk around with, which of course Sam loved.

It was a great way to celebrate the Holiday, burn off some energy for the girls and show our family a great little treasure in our town.

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The Nitty Gritty!
If you are in the Madison area and have not been to the Olbrich Botanical Garden you should absolutely check it out.

Here are some other exhibits and programs that we have seen at the garden.

Butterfly Exhibit

Spring Flower Show

Toddler Story Time Programs