I feel like my weeks have been getting busier and busier! I wish there were about four extra hours in the day just to clean up! Our play this week has been gearing towards spring. Give me a couple mild days and I am in full spring mode! My daughter and I went on a nature hike last weekend in 32 degree weather! We had been planning on it for a couple weeks and I had been hoping for another mild day. THAT didn't happen, but regardless my daughter was determined to go to the Ray Harrall Nature Center to look for birds with our binoculars. We saw little finches high in the trees and male and female cardinals along the ground. The hike was short but we had fun! Every time we go on a walk or hike we take a small plastic bag to pick up trash we find along the way. It is a great opportunity to teach our kiddos that it is important to keep our parks clean! I always tell her that it doesn't matter that the trash is not ours, because we care more about a healthy earth and clean park!
I feel so grateful to have the Ray Harrall Nature Center just a two minute drive away from our house and I look forward to all the activities they have planned for spring and summer! Look up and see if your community has something like this because it is like a free educational program that you get to be a part of! Let me know in the comments if you found anything interesting around you!
Because most of the week was cold, we did a lot of indoor activities. I recently purchased some wonderful STEM activities for our family off of amazon. We purchased the Osmo genius kit and Botley the coding robot.
You can find those at these links:
OSMO (also at target and amazon)
I got it on amazon used for thirty dollars less than new and it had never been used! There was some wrapping paper scraps taped to it so I think someone bought it for a kiddo for christmas and they didn't like it so FYI!
Botley (this can be found in a variety of stores)
Our five year old LOVES, and I mean LOVES them! We have recently changed our rules on Ipad use. She can no longer watch videos unless we approve each one. The only way we approve them is if it is educational ie: she asks, "I wonder how candy is made?" and I search for a video explaining how candy is made and she can watch it. She can also only play educational games so no Roblox! So I thought this OSMO kit would be great to give her something to play on the Ipad that is also tactile and she is learning to add, spell, and some geometry concepts with the tangram.
I plan on coming up with STEM lessons to use with her and I will dedicate a whole post to how you could teach using Botley!
I also want to share with you a couple projects we started this week to work on throughout the weather change as it gets warmer and we get outside more. We are creating and outdoor chandelier to hang on our porch. If your child is anything like mine, they come home with pockets full of treasures they find out and about. Rocks, acorns, leaves, etc. Well I wanted to make something beautiful out of all of the things we bring home. We are going to create an art piece with all of them! I collected pine cones awhile back and used four of those for our base! (I hot glued sequins onto each ledge of the pine cone too because.... sequins.) As we bring more home we will get to add a variety of things. I will update as we add more!
Thank you all for taking the time to hang out with me for a few minutes today. I will be posting a St. Patrick's Day crafts and activities post in the near future. Please if there is anything you want to ask or any comments you want to leave do so below! have a wonderful rest of the month!
Allison