Peach Coglo

Building Their Nest

There has been a lot of bird watching and worrying around these parts.  The morning dove couple seem to be here to stay for at least a few weeks.  The kids are ecstatic about this development.  As Helena says, "I get to abserve them closely!"  I love her way of pronouncing words.

Usually Spring brings rounds and rounds of fairy house building.  There is still some of that, but for now the Helena and Elijah with some unwanted help from Eden are practicing their bird nest building.  They have done this every a little bit every year.  I must say their nest building skills have improved greatly.  Having the dove nest nearby definitely gives them a ready reference point and I can see it's influence on their construction decisions.

      Regarding their subject in the crook of the tree . . . .

 

In what ways is nature influencing what you and your family lately?

Happy Thursday everyone!

 

Inventions

Since we have had some colder winter weather lately, we have all been inside a bit more.  This gives Elijah a lot more opportunity to invent contraptions.  To my delight (and dismay at times), that boy finds more uses for trash than I have ever seen.  He collects and saves bits of this and scraps of that.  I am in desperate search for some efficient yet nice storage systems for him.

This go-round he augmented some broken binoculars.  Of course they weren't always broken.  I think they were a favor from a party he attended about a year ago.  I am glad he has gotten so much use out of them.  They broke, and now Elijah has repaired them and made them into a "stelascope".  I am not sure what a "stelascope" is but it is used under water.

 
Yes I had to move this tub of water off the hardwood floor!  It's a good thing I checked on him.

This is one reason why I like snow days.  The kids are free to explore and create on their own terms and pace.  Elijah is turning out to be kind of an "independent" learner with pretty firm ideas of what he finds useful at school.  This is interesting and scary to me all at once.  I love listening to his theories and seeing what he makes.  It makes me wish for a few more snow days.

Have a great day everyone!

 

 

What a Difference

I am afraid of spiders.  I really try to keep this fear of mine to myself so I won't pass it along to my children.  I mean I really hate even looking at them.  Doran and Eden try to catch them.  It takes every fiber of my being to not abandon them and run screaming in the opposite direction.  Meanwhile, Greg has this tarantula at school (which is where he will stay) that seems to live forever.  It's been years since he got that thing.  The children love it.  They love going to Daddy's work and feeding and watering the spider.  They think it's a bonus if they actually get to see Tarantula catch and eat one of the unfortunate crickets.

Anyway, the other day Elijah came home with this:

 

Auughhhh!!  I don't even like pictures of spider, even drawn ones.  I could barely photograph  and post this.  They truly creep me out-truly.  I am trying not to look at the picture and my child is pushing it into my face and pointing at every single part of this spider.  "Mama look, look."  So in my most steady voice, I praised my baby for how much he learned, his handwriting and labeling skills.  What I really wanted to do was run screaming out of the the room.  Actually I was screaming and running in my head hoping he couldn't see my freaked out state in my frozen smile and glassy eyes.

Then the child pulled some more drawings out of his backpack.  This time they were of different types of webs.  I don't know about you but I hate cobwebs and I especially dislike running into them.   You know the ones.  They are practically invisible in the morning, but they are everywhere.  Running into one of those things sends me into a frenzy - in my head.  Remember mama tries to stay calm around the kids.  Now if I run into one when I am alone, I run around slapping myself and hopping and twirling around like a Whirling Dervish.  Actually not, because their movement is quite graceful and beautiful.  It's more like a crazed woman running around in circles and zig-zags trying to slap cobwebs off of her face and out of her hair.  I think the scene looks more like I have ants in my pants-fire ants.  My neighbors are nice enough to avoid mentioning these displays.

But back to Elijah's poster, after I got over my terror, I realized these children are learning so much more than I did in first grade.  We weren't labeling and learning parts of spiders in first grade.  We certainly weren't learning what different types of webs there are.  I had no idea there were so many until Elijah showed me his poster; I usually just run when I see one.  My spider education was more like, "That's a black widow; don't touch it.  Go find an adult."  We had a lot of black widows in Georgia; they were forever hanging out in garages and such.

So I am happy the kiddos are learning so many new things about the world and I am happy they are learning about spiders from their Dad and at school.  Are there any things you have to pretend to like or at least not be terrified of for the sake of your children?

 

My your day be spider-web free.  Have a good one.

Rock Experiments

You know I didn't mean to be absent yesterday.  I thought I hit the publish button.  Hmm, mama needs a nap!  Sorry about that!  So here is yesterday's post today. 

The Farmer is also a collector.  He collects many things from plants to pencils.  We first noticed this trait when his room started filling with rocks.  Elijah finds rocks anywhere and everywhere-constantly.  His hobby inspired me to buy him some rock books.  This book has been invaluable and fun.  Besides having a lot of rock info, it also contains a host of projects and experiments.

Elijah has been asking to try some of the experiments for the longest time.  I have a nice reservoir of guilt because we haven't been able to get to them.  He has awesome ideas, but something always seems to get in the way of their execution, especially if it involves or requires his parents to get it done.  Finally I figured out that we needed to schedule Elijah's (and anyone else's) projects.  Now things run much more smoothly.  If he wants to do something, we go to his calendar together and write it down.

This is how Elijah came to perform his rock candy experiment.  I thought that was pretty sly of the book's authors to slip a candy making recipe into their book.  He was so excited.  I didn't get a picture of the gleam in his eye while he was working on this project.  I'll make sure to get some shots when he pulls his rock candy out of the jar-that is if he can get it out.  Look at this.

 

 
Sorry for the fuzzy picture, but I think you can see all of those crystals.  I am not so sure we'll be able to pull the candy out of that narrow-mouth jar.  There is a paper clip buried under all of that sugar.

 

Greg helped Elijah attach the paper clip to the cooking twine.  He then tied the twine to the popsicle stick.  Elijah gets to see the crystals form over the course of days.  At first they tried using my favorite wooden cooking spatula until I convinced them of the wisdom of using something else.

 
It's actually kind of pretty.  This solution reminds me of ginger ale which I adore.  However, I can't look at it too long because I feel like my teeth will fall out just by looking at all of that recrystallized sugar. 

Telescoping

Children love to explore the natural world around them.  It energizes them, calms them, and sparks their curiosity.  In my house, everybody is better off when the children have had lots of time outside to be free and loud, run off energy, and take their sweet time being kids.  They usually spend a lot of time looking down at the ground or in trees and bushes.  Lately, though, Helena and Elijah have been focusing more on the sky.  Frequently, they ask questions about the sun, the moon, and the stars.  During one of these sessions, Elijah asked "what makes waves".  That sparked an idea; we could check out the moon.  Greg remembered the "toy" telescope he had bought some years ago at Big Lots.  Doran was probably two or three, so that gives you some idea about how long it had been in storage.

Greg got the telescope out of the basement.  The children were beside themselves.  They were going to see the moon and some stars just like they saw at the planetarium, or so we thought.  There was much wrangling, unscrewing, adjusting and shifting of equipment.  In the end they saw some roof shingles way up close, a stop sign at the end of the street and some leaves.  They got a little peek at the moon.  Elijah was not impressed.  Alas, the moon was too low, the trees were too high and the telescope's magnification too weak.  I was disappointed for all of them,  but they still talked about waves and how far away the moon is from home.  I think what they enjoyed most about the whole endeavor was hanging out with their dad and climbing all over him as he tried to keep the telescope from falling apart. 

Trying out the telescope just before dark . . . .  

See that tiny white speck?  That's what we were trying to see at nightfall.  Unfortunately, by that time, the moon was behind some trees and our poor little telescope just didn't have the magnification power we needed.  It was fun trying though.

 

So until we can get a powerful, less shaky telescope, it's back to the planetarium.  We're also starting to read this, at least the non-scary, age-appropriate parts. That should help us feel closer to the stars.  :-)

Mystic Aquarium

Over the weekend, we took a jaunt to one of our favorite places - Mystic Aquarium.  It's a small aquarium, but that works well for our band of six.  The exhibits change with some frequency and the aquarium itself seems to be expanding little by little.  The children are always fascinated with the animals and have many questions about how they make it through life.  I have to fight my first instinct which is to answer all of the questions for them.   If left alone with their thoughts a bit, the kids often come up with the right answer, something close to it, or an awesome alternative that makes up for its lack of accuracy with an abundance of creativity and imagination. 

Do you see that frog hiding on the lily pad?  I try to mask my repulsion for these little creatures.  I find that if I approach them the way the children do I have a new appreciation for how amazing frogs are - at least for the five minutes or ten minutes we observe them.

 

 

I think these may be rescued sea lions.  The aquarium rescues a lot of marine life.  We're so happy they are here for the animals who end up needing help due to some sort of human behavior. 

 

 

 
These penguins came from South Africa.

 

 

 

Doesn't she have an amazing glow?

 

Here comes the Beluga whale.

 

And there she goes.

 

 

Have a great day!