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.

Happy Winter Solstice

3 o'Clock Shadow

Nature doesn’t recognize all of the holidays and celebrations that happen at this time of year, but it does notice the winter solstice.  On Sunday, December 21, nature will experience the shortest day of the year and the longest night in the Northern Hemisphere.  It sounds like a sad time for those of us, like me, who enjoy the daylight hours and the ability to get out and enjoy nature.  I have to remind myself that the next day will be a little longer.  So even though the 21^st is a little short, I can still celebrate nature.  Your children can too!

Something fun to do on the day of the winter solstice is to mark your child’s shadow at noon.  Because the sun is at its lowest point in the sky on the winter solstice (due to the tilt in the Earth’s axis), shadows are their longest on this day at 12:00pm in the Northern Hemisphere.  What you can do is find a sunny spot in your yard and place a nice, flat stone on the ground.  Have your child stand on the stone and mark where his or her shadow ends with a stake, stick, garden decoration, etc. (something that you can leave in the ground for months).  It will be a fun place in your yard for your child to visit when playing outside to check where and how long his or her shadow is throughout the year.  If you have a nice garden area for this activity and want to leave it up year-round, you will want to redo the activity every winter solstice as your child grows.  You can make it a tradition to help your child celebrate nature!  And it’s one more way to help children notice the natural changes/cycles of the world around them.

I’d also like to advocate that you do something for nature this winter solstice!  At my daughter’s age, we simply filled our bird feeders, hugged a few trees, and explored our yard looking for signs of winter.  We’re taking small steps for now as my daughter begins to think of ways she can help wildlife at this time of year.  What will you and your children do for nature this weekend? 

Wishing Stars

Homemade Stars

I remember the first time I saw a meteor shower.  I was a few years older than my daughter is now.  At the time, I didn’t know anything about meteor showers.  I just thought of stars as something mysterious that listened to and granted the most heart-felt wishes.  As poem goes, “I wish I may, I wish I might, have the wish I wish tonight.”   When I was young, I made many wishes on the first star I saw at night (which I now realize was most likely the planet, Venus).  I also knew to wish upon falling stars, but had never seen one until an end of summer slumber party at a friend’s house many years ago (during a meteor shower). 

Of course during sleepovers, children don’t really sleep; so a few of my friends and I were looking out a window very early in the morning when we saw the first one.  We couldn’t believe our eyes!  We knew falling stars were rare, but within a minute, we saw another one, and another one, and…  We spent the next several hours surveying the night sky.  We saw so many falling stars, we lost track of how many.  We ran out of wishes to wish!  It seemed like a truly magical night.  I just knew I was going to get my greatest wish (I had wished for a horse!)!  I learned years later that the slumber party must have been on the night of the Perseid meteor shower in August. 

My daughter is too young to stay awake and watch a meteor shower, but if you are interested and have a child a little older than mine, one of the more prolific meteor showers of the year will be best viewed this Saturday evening around 9:00 or 10:00pm.  The Geminid meteor shower (named because it radiates from the Gemini constellation) should produce around 120 meteors an hour falling from the sky.  It is the best meteor shower for younger children since most showers are best viewed after midnight, while this one is best viewed before midnight.  I can’t wait to enjoy this magical evening with my daughter in another year or two.  After all, I did get my wish a few years after my first experience with “falling stars.” 

While I don’t want to keep my daughter up too late, I can still help encourage her excitement and wonder for stars by telling stories about the constellations.  And now that it gets dark so early, we can spend some time outside telling tales and looking at the stars before her bedtime.  You can too!  To start, find the Gemini constellation (where the meteor shower will appear to originate) by first locating the Orion constellation.  Orion is the constellation with the brightest star in the night sky.  It will be in the East.  You’ll recognize it by the three bright stars that make up Orion’s belt.  Just west of Orion and a little closer to the horizon is the Gemini constellation.  It’s easy to identify by the two bright stars that represent the heads of the twins.  These twins are known as Castor and Pollux from Greek mythology.  They were very close brothers who were known to help sailors find their way across the seas, and according to myth, they even saved shipwrecked sailors. 

Explain to your child that a long time ago, people noticed patterns in the stars that didn’t change (whereas the moon and planets move through an orbit, changing their positions throughout the night).  These patterns were named from the stories they told.  Ask your child if he or she can see shapes in the stars too.  They don’t have to conform to known constellations.  Just let your child use his or her imagination.

Since I like to combine hands-on activities with nature education, my daughter and I made our own constellations.  It’s easy!  Find a small lamp with a lamp shade.  Take a few pieces of black construction paper and wrap it around the lamp shade.  Tape as many pieces of paper together as you need to cover the shade.  Then, take the paper off the lamp and untape one side.  Flatten the paper out on a table and let your child make stars in groups or clusters using a white crayon.  Your child can make them into patterns or outlines of objects.  The nice thing is, it doesn’t have to be perfect!  After your child is done, place the paper on a towel and use a push pin to make holes where each star is located.  After you are done, tape the paper around the lamp again and turn out all the lights in the room except for the lamp.  Then, let your child name the constellations.  It’s that easy! 

Enjoy the light show, whether it’s from inside or outside your house!

Step 1:  Cover Lamp Shade with
Black Construction Paper
 

Step 2:  Color Stars

 

Step 3:  After using a Push Pin to Poke through Stars,
Tape Paper over Lamp Shade

For the Love of Owls

Cute owl craft!

From a very young age, my daughter has had a special love for owls.  She is drawn to toy owls, stuffed animal owls, books about owls, owls on clothing, you name it!  She loves owls.  She even has a bike helmet with owls on it and an owl night light.  Maybe it’s because of their big eyes or their sweet round faces and fluffy feathers.  But most likely, it’s because of our neighborhood barred owl (Strix varia) family. 

One of our neighborhood owls likes to sit on the pine tree outside my daughter’s bedroom window in the late evening where it makes its well known call, “Who cooks for you, who cooks for you all.”  After a night of calls, my daughter wakes excited about the owl that visited her window.  One morning, when we were leaving early to go somewhere, we got a chance to see my daughter’s window visitor resting on another tree in our front yard.  (Barred owls are one of the few owls that may be seen during the day.)  That sighting and the occasional window visit have made owls an important animal in my daughter’s life.

For a few months now, the owls have been quiet in our neighborhood; but just last night, my daughter received a visit from one of them, hooting right outside her window.  And I’m guessing it’s just the first visit of many this month.  In December, barred owls (and great horned owls, Bubo virginianus) begin their courtship behaviors, meaning we can expect a lot of vocalizing.  And we are excited for our late night serenades from our neighborhood barred owls!

If you are lucky enough to hear either the barred owl or the great horned owl, you probably won’t hear the other species.  Great horned owls are predators of the barred owl, so if a barred owl hears a nearby great horned owl, the barred owl will seek another area to call home.  Once these owls move into a territory, they generally stay in that area for the rest of their lives.  And yes, they do mate for life.  So if you are lucky enough to hear a pair of owls in your neighborhood, they really are your neighborhood owls.  (They tend to live where there are large trees near fresh water.)  Get to know your neighborhood owls and enjoy them as my family does.

To help celebrate the season and to decorate our house, my daughter and I made pinecone owls.  They are a cute, decorative craft that you and your child can complete in an hour or two block of time for older children, or over a couple of days for preschoolers (after some prep work for you the night before).  Here’s what you’ll need:

·       6 – 12 pine cones

·       Cotton balls

·       Clothing dye in your choice of owl-color

·       Craft feathers to match owl-color

·       Googly eyes

·       Pipe cleaners for beaks

·       Glue

·       Toothpicks

I died cotton balls a tan to light brown color a day or two before so that they could dry thoroughly, bought some pinecones, and gathered my crafting supplies (craft glue, googly eyes, a tan pipe cleaner, toothpicks, and brown feathers).  We stretched out and pulled apart the cotton balls into small, fluffy tufts and then stuffed them between the pine cone scales.  Using a toothpick, we were able to stuff the pine cone full of cotton leaving only the tips of each cone scale visible.  This took some time and patience (something that can be difficult for young children), so we took a few days to do it.  Once her owl was stuffed, my daughter picked out eyes and feathers (for the wings).  I cut about an inch of pipe cleaner and bent it into a “V” shape (for the mouth) and helped my daughter glue all of the pieces on each owl (see photos).

Although it took a few days, we now have our very own family of pine cone owls to sit amongst our holiday decorations.  And they look nicer than the usual construction paper / paper plate crafts made in school.  With patience and time, this is a fun craft for preschool through elementary age children.  And it’s a great way to pay homage to the real owls in your neighborhood while encouraging the innate love of nature in your child!

Stuffing cotton in a pine cone.

Using a toothpick to stuff the pine cone.

Gluing the eyes.

Adding feathers.

Pine cone owl family.

Having a conversation with the new owls.  (The owl with the attached
string will be an ornament for our Christmas tree.)