A Field Day

Last Thursday I found myself alone with eight children (I was watching four of my friend's kids) who all wanted to do an activity. We've been learning about mountain men, pioneers, and explorers and one of my friend's kids had been studying botany sooooo.... We made field journals. I didn't have any deerskin or bark to cover them with so we used some course fabric, chipboard, and paper. Here is Krystal with her field journal.

After making the journals, I pulled out my leaf identification samples and taught the kids a little about how to identify certain plants that are indigenous to our area. Then it was off to the outdoors for some exploring. Here is Clarissa sketching one of our new cherry trees.

This is the spot where we learned about poison ivy (we have plenty of live samples in our front yard). Jared drew a very nice picture of it for future reference and hopefully the kids will remember what it is and not to touch it. We also found about 10 to 12 different kinds of trees including a sugar maple tree in our front yard.

On our hike back to the house, Clarissa found an Eastern Tent Catapillar, which of course she had to bring inside to our butterfly house.

Finally, I couldn't resist this picture of Amber's discovery of the rare and endangered (don't we wish) Dandelion.

Singing in the Rain

If there's one thing I've learned about Virginia, it's that it really does rain a lot in the Spring. One evening we had one of those warm Spring rains that came on suddenly, but this time there was no thunder so we let the kids stay out in the rain. Needless to say, they loved it and here are the pictures to prove it. Jared was actually jumping up and down in this picture.

Clarissa let her free spirit out as she sang and danced.

Krystal, ever the prudent one, decided that an umbrella was a better option, but that didn't stop her from getting all wet somehow.

Notice that I was taking the picture of Amber from up on the porch so that I wouldn't get wet myself. However, I did let loose a couple days later when at a friend's house for a bonfire it started to rain and I just stayed out to enjoy the rain for a while, until the thunder came.

A solution to our mouse problem

Our cat may not be very good at keeping the mouse population down at our house, but these snakes will be. For a couple weeks the kids have been telling me that there is a snake living under their playset. Every time I'd go down to see it, it would've crawled back under the playset. Finally one day Krystal told me that there were two snakes down there. Sure enough there were two Black Ratsnakes. I caught them both and let all the kids touch them, but I wouldn't let them hold them because the snakes were not being very calm. One of them kept shaking his tail and spreading a musk all over me (it smelled pretty bad). The other one kept hissing. As I walked away from the playset, they got even more agitated, but as I walked back they calmed down a little. I determined from their behavior that they must be a male and female either caught in the act of mating or protecting their eggs. After a couple pictures, we let them go back under the playset. According to the internet and if my inclinations are correct, we should be seeing some baby snakes sometime around July.

Clarissa is a girl after my own heart. She wanted so badly to hold one of the snakes (the one that didn't smell), but I would only let her touch it and drape it's tail over her shoulder or arm.

Happy Cinco de Mayo!

Since we normally get together with friends for "Preschool" on Tuesdays, today seemed like the perfect day to have a Cinco de Mayo fiesta. So after piano lessons and storytime at the library, we headed home for some south of the border fun. Kid friendly mexican food meant nachos were on the menu. Here are Jared and Connor. The girls wanted to wear their Mexico dresses so Jared decided to get dressed up too. He enjoys any excuse for a costume.

Krystal, Delaney, Cailin, and Clarissa eagerly await the yummy lunch.

Once everyone had their fill of nachos, they colored bags for their pinata candy while I read them some spanish stories. Here's Krystal in her pretty Mexico dress.

Jared made this sun pinata. The girls and I helped with the paper mache, but he did the decorating himself.

Amber up to bat. Krystal giving it a hit. I was so busy taking pictures of the kids that I forgot to put the blindfold on, which was fine with the younger kids until Clarissa came up and whacked the pinata so hard that it fell off the hook. Oh well, they all enjoyed the candy and prizes in the end.

Here are Clarissa and Cailin making their maracas out of toilet paper rolls, tissue paper, beans and rice.

While the boys were running around, we took a picture of the girls with their dresses and maracas.

This is the dress that we bought for Clarissa when she was a baby the first time we went to Mexico. It's been through all three of the girls and this is probably it's last fiesta. Amber wears it well.

We finished our party with Tres Leches cake, it was muy bueno!