Preparation Education

We’re really excited that the Outdoor Hour Challenges right now are about birds. Birding and learning about birds is one of our favorite things around here. In fact, in a few weeks, we’re heading to a bird sanctuary for a few days to see what we can see. Can’t wait!

This weekend we spent some time at Grandpa and Grandma’s house. We ended up staying longer than anticipated and without any books. So we thought, the weather is nice and we need to do something educational, and I’d already looked through the bird challenges on the Outdoor Hour Challenges blog, so I looked through them a little better and we headed out to see if we could find the birds in the challenges. And my husband took out his special toy–his new camera. We were very thrilled to find the two birds from the first challenge that live in our area. (No Cardinals. Boo hoo. I used to live in the Midwest and I love Cardinals. I wish my kids could enjoy them like I used to.) We also found birds in the second and third challenges too, but we’re going to learn a bit more about them before we post.

So here are the birds from the first challenge:

American Robin trying to keep warm in the early morning.

American Robin wondering where he’ll find some more worms. We learned while we were reading about Robins that baby Robins need fourteen feet of worms every day. Talk about a lot of time spent on food preparation!

House Finch just sitting pretty.

Notebook pages that we did on the three birds that we learned about: American Robin, House Finch and Cardinal. These came from Notebooking Pages and Cornell’s coloring book.

I’m so ready for spring and summer. I must have cabin fever. Just two days ago we woke up to snow on the ground. Even the kids were disappointed. I woke the kids up and said, "I have a surprise for you!" JD Boy went to the window and groaned, "Oh no. Not again. I’m tired of that stuff." I asked G’tums if he wanted to go sledding and he looked up at me with a puzzled look and said, "I don’t know." We don’t get much snow where we live. So my kids are usually so excited for snow. They’ll sled on a quarter-inch of the white stuff, but not now. They’d had their fill. Me too. I’m ready for green and for flowers and all the things that make Summer so beautiful where I live.

But today was a totally different story. We were all itching to go outside today and do some exploring to see what we could find. We worked on math and some history for awhile, but outside was calling. I wanted to see if I could find the signs of Spring, like maybe some wild flowers. And when I got out there, lo and behold Spring was there to greet us. I was thrilled with the things we found.

The blackberries are starting to bud.

Moss is turning that living green color. I love it.

Spring is here and I was so excited, but my kids were on their own exploration. We started reading a book this week called: African Savanah (One Small Square). We are really enjooying this book. I highly recommend it for the K-3 age group. Even preschoolers like it–at least mine does. It’s about the habitat of the Serengeti.

Anyway, all of that to say that my kids wanted to pretend we were going exploring in Africa even though I was out searching for signs of Spring and wildflowers. They got outside before me. And when I got out there, they had a Rubbermaid container full of grass and mud and they were stomping it with a stick. When they saw my quizzical look, which meant "Why do you always want to do the messiest projects you can think of?" They said, "We are making fufu!"

I know you’re wondering, "What on earth is fufu?" Well, you see, my husband has gone on two mission trips to the interior of the Democratic Republic of Congo and he always tells about this stuff that the Africans eat called fufu. It’s made out of rehydrating dried cassava with warm water and, according to my husband, it is about the consistency of playdough. This fufu is the main staple where he visited. In fact, I have a picture.

The fufu is the stuff in the center bowl. They dip it into the sauces in the other bowls.

So making fufu is the reason that my kids had concocted such a mess. I guess that sounds a little more creative than what my brother and I always told our mom–we said we were making mud pies. My kids, at least, came up with a name on their own, instead of copying one out of a bedtime story book. And once they finished making their "fufu", they were ready for their excursion to the African Savannah!

So here they are, busy exploring the Savannah:

She’s trying to learn if our grass is the same as what grows in the Savannah.

Guess what! They even found a water hole. Oh, no! Another mess.

But I was still busy, whether I was in Africa or at home in America, trying to prove to myself that it was Spring. I thought that surely I would find some wild flowers blooming. I have seen pictures of them on the Outdoor Hour Nature Blog and I wanted to find some of my own. But hence, I think I live farther north than they do. I did find that some of the shrubs that we have planted are flowering and that the bees have discovered them. I sure hope this means that the wild flowers will show up soon.

My search was nearly in vain. Would you believe it though, I finally found three, yes 3, wild flowers. And they were all the same kind. Here is one of them. I’ll let you identify it.

Well, I’d sure like to find some wild flowers that were a little more exotic than that. I usually call these weeds and yank them out, but since that was all I could find, I left it. Maybe I’d better go to Africa and see if they have some wild flowers for me to see.

We have a little friend who has been visiting us very regularly the last few days. Actually we have two of them. They are Rufus hummingbirds. I think hummingbirds are like flying jewels. They are just so beautiful.

We have the hummingbird feeders right out our french door in the dining room, so while we eat, we are all watching to see who gets to say "I see him!" first.

Here are a couple of pictures my husband snapped of him.

I guess that was a short post, but I still had to share!