A Walk in the Park

Perfect Day for a Walk in a Park

With picture perfect weather today, my daughter and I decided to take a walk in a park.  Our playground was a path through the woods.  We listened to birds, collected soft flower petals from under a magnolia tree, danced with the leaves in the breeze, and stopped to smell the flowers.  It was a treat for our senses.  We played for hours, just the two of us.  It was such a perfect day to enjoy nature!

Hopefully, our wonderful day will inspire you to take a walk in a park with your child too!

Soft Magnolia Petals

Bridge over a Spring Fed Creek

Moss on a Tree

Beautiful Blue Flowers

 

Gardens in the Park

Doing a Little Dance

Found a Large Leaf

Studying Leaves

Putting a Shell in Pocket (From the Crushed Shell Trail)

More of the Spring Fed Creek

Collecting More Shells

Thankful for Vultures

Living with a small woods behind my house, I often see a wide variety of visitors of the furry, feathery, and scaly kind traveling through the yard, so not much surprises me.  But for my daughter, many of these visitors are new to her.  So far, she has been excited about every one we’ve had, and we’ve enjoyed each learning experience they bring.  But today, I was a little concerned about several visitors that were arriving as I returned home from dropping my daughter off at preschool.  Luckily, she wasn’t with me when I first arrived home, because I was worried what I might find in the backyard.  You see, today’s visitors were black vultures (Coragyps atratus).

Black vultures have visited my neighborhood many times as clean-up crews along the roadside; but today, they were circling my house and landing in my backyard trees.  If my daughter had been with me, she might have been uneasy about these enormous flying birds landing behind our house.  After all, they are about two feet in length resting in the trees with wing spans of almost five feet long.  And then there was the probable cause of why vultures were in my backyard.  There must be something dead back there somewhere!  And let’s not forget the conversation that would inspire as well. 

Vulture Taking Off from a Tree as I Tried to Take a Picture.

Since I didn’t have my daughter with me, I decided to investigate.  Unfortunately, as soon as I opened the back door, the vultures took off from my trees to find a more private setting in the woods.  I walked to the back of the yard with hopes of getting a good picture of these interesting birds, but I was out of luck.  Black vultures actually have excellent eye-site and hunt by site; unlike turkey vultures (Cathartes aura), who hunt primarily by smell.  The black vultures easily saw me and one-by-one flew away each time I pointed my camera at them.  

However, as I was walking, I heard the loud buzzing of several large flies.  I stopped in my tracks, thinking the dead animal was just on the other side of the fence.  Then, I was reassured of its location with a not so pleasant aroma drifting in a gentle breeze.  As I followed the sound of the flies, I found the barely recognizable carrion.  It was actually a fish that must have dropped from another bird of prey’s talons while in flight (since the fish couldn’t have gotten there on its own).  I was actually relieved it was a fish and not the usual warm and fuzzy animal I normally see on the side of the road surrounded by vultures.  So there the fish will stay until the clean-up crew comes back for it.  And if my daughter happens to be home when the vultures come back, I can honestly say, “They are just eating fish!”

Death has been a subject I’ve avoided with my child, like most parents do I suppose.  It is natural, but it’s not something I want her to worry about right now (Although she probably knows more than I want her to know since she can hardly watch a Disney movie without someone dying in it.).  As I think about how I will approach the subject of death someday with my daughter, I hope it will be in a natural setting and maybe even with vultures.  After all, they are immediate natural recyclers that demonstrate an important and necessary part of the cycle of life.  I’m thankful to have them!

Memories of Manatees

Fun Manatee Picture Craft

I’m afraid I’m potty training a strong-willed little girl for the time being, so getting out into nature (with little access to potties) frightens me right now.  And I have to add, very few things in nature frighten me!  So instead, my daughter and I have decided to reminisce about some of our previous adventures in nature, primarily visits to see manatees.  

This is the time of year to see them in the wild!  When the weather gets cold, so do the waters where the manatees travel.  They seek refuge in and around warm spring waters near the coasts of Florida during the winter months.  And in recent history, they also find comfort from the cold near power plants, where local, clean water is used to cool sections of the plant.  Then, the warmed water is discharged into canals or rivers that flow out to the manatees’ natural habitat.  Many of these power plants have created manatee sanctuaries, educational centers, and observation decks for viewing these warm water-seeking manatees.  If you are interested in seeing manatees, visit the Save the Manatee Club website, http://www.savethemanatee.org/places.htm for more information on where to see them, both in the wild and in captivity.  Just remember, manatees are protected, and it is against the law to harass them in any way.

Orphaned Baby Adopted by Female at Sea World Orlando

Before Christmas, my daughter and I had been to the local power plant a few times to see the visiting manatees, and had taken a few trips throughout this past year to our local zoo and a couple of theme parks to see them up-close, in captivity.  We know how big they get (on average, a little less than twice as long as I am tall, about ten feet long).  We’ve seen the scars that nearly every adult manatee bares as a record of their survival from run-ins with boat propellers.  And the wonderfully shaped, paddle of a tail is all a manatee needs to propel itself through the water during its yearly migration.  These are just a few of the things my daughter discovered about manatees this past year. 

With young children, it’s always fun to bring up past events and see what the child remembers.  My daughter and I like to recall our past adventures through stories, where my daughter is the main character.  I’ll start the story by describing the place and what animal we visited.  Then I’ll ask her what happened and what she did or saw at the time.  Today, I asked her about our visits to see manatees.  Sometimes, these stories become a bit fanciful (the animals usually talk to my daughter in these stories), but I always like to layer them with factual information.  Anyway, it’s a great way to keep children remembering their past adventures and ready to create new adventures by building on what they already know.

And it’s always fun to add an activity to supplement the recollection!  We made a manatee picture in a sea grass bed as we relived some of our nature adventures!  Here’s what we did:

Coloring the Manatee Gray

Bending Pipe Cleaners

1. I drew a manatee from a cartoon picture I found on the Internet.  (You don’t have to be an artist.  Manatees are actually one of the easiest animals to draw.) 
2. I cut it out and then gave it to my daughter to color gray. 
3. Use a blue sheet of construction paper (or color white paper blue, as I did) for the background. 
4. I cut several green pipe cleaners in half and my daughter bent each one, just a little.
5. You can have your child color about an inch or two of green grass at the bottom of the background paper.  We had green glitter glue, so I helped my daughter apply that to the bottom of our picture.
6. I helped my daughter glue one end of each pipe cleaner to the grass at the bottom of the picture (you don’t want to glue more than two inches up the pipe cleaner).
7. Then we let it dry.
8. We slid the manatee cut out in between the pipe cleaners and the paper.  Once it was where my daughter wanted it, I glued the manatee cut out to the paper.
9. I added spots of extra glue under some of the pipe cleaners for extra support.
10. We added a few additional colorful glitter glue spots on the blue paper for decoration and let it dry.  Your child may want to add fish or other items to the picture too.

Coloring Sea Grass

Adding Pipe Cleaner Sea Grass

Where Does Milk Come From?

Fun at the Farm!

I grew up in the country with a cow pasture on one side, a horse pasture on the other, and woods behind my family’s property.  In the spring, my mom and I hunted for morel mushrooms in the woods.  During the summer, I spent many days at an old cow pond behind my house eating fresh vegetables that I had just picked from my mom’s garden on the way to the pond.  My favorites were peas and cucumbers, which cooled me off on hot summer days.  In the late summer and early fall, we walked about a mile down the road to pick wild blackberries that grew alongside the road.  Unfortunately, ticks also liked to hang out around the blackberries; so to this day, I have an aversion to blackberries.

Aside from my experience with ticks, I was extremely fortunate to grow up seeing where food comes from first-hand.  But many children, including my child, don’t have the luxury of farm land nearby.  They believe the food we eat comes from the grocery store.  To set my child straight, we’ve visited blueberry and strawberry “u-pick” farms a few times.  We even visited a local hydroponic farm.  And just yesterday, we had the opportunity to take a tour of a local dairy farm. 

All Done Milking

Although modern farming techniques have made milking a cow more of an automated process than it used to be, the tour still reinforced the importance of feeding cows high quality, fresh grass to produce nutrient rich milk.  The farm we visited practices sustainable farming, growing 250 acres of grass to feed their cows, using recycled water and composted manure for soil to reduce fertilizer needs.  The farm prides itself on producing superior quality dairy products by farming healthy, grass-fed cows, with no added growth hormones.

I’m not sure how much my two year old actually learned from this tour (other than, boy did she see a lot of cows), but we will revisit this farm from time to time as she grows older to reinforce ideas of feeding animals natural foods to produce nutrient rich and healthy products, recycling, and sustainable farming.  That’s okay.  This just means that the farm has more to offer than my preschooler needs for now, so we’ll go back again.

Cows Moving In and Out of Milking Stations

My objective yesterday was to show her where milk comes from.  And in that regard, mission accomplished!  She stared, wide-eyed at the milking process and was fascinated to taste the milk made at the farm.  We also had the opportunity to talk about the different kinds of milk and other products made from milk.  We even made butter by shaking heavy cream (the top layer of milk collected from a cow that is rich in fat) in a jar.  Who knew it was that easy?  And we finished our stay with delicious ice cream.

If you have a farm within driving distance that uses sustainable and/or organic practices, it might be a good idea to contact them to see if you (or your child’s play group) can schedule a visit.  After all, we all need food, and it’s important to support and teach our children about good farming practices.  Plus, your children will discover where food really comes from!  And just maybe, they will remember the work that went into creating that product at the grocery store and will be a little more appreciative of the food they eat.