"Adults should realize that the most valuable thing children can learn is what they discover themselves about the world they live in. Once they experience first-hand the wonder of nature, they will want to make nature observation a life-long habit."
Charlotte Mason

We had the greatest day today! Our new friend Quinn came for a visit today, she'll be starting here full-time on September 8th. She is an awesome girl- so full of life, and so perfect for our nature curriculum-she's quite the little nature queen! I love it!
Early this morning we packed a picnic lunch and loaded up the stroller for a LONG walk to Cooke Park. The walk was very nice the weather was perfect and it was shaded on the bike path quite a bit of the way. The last 1/2 of the walk was kind of through the woods and along the stream so that was really fun for the children and us- a change of scenery is always nice!
After playing at the park and having our picnic we began the long walk home but got side tracked when we found a little beachy area near the shallow stream. We went to check it out and noticed tons of minnows swimming around and some really cool water spiders! Well that did us in, and we quickly dumped out everything we had in plastic containers so that we could try to catch some of the cool things we found. We spent the next hour walking through the stream checking out all kinds of awesome creatures! Jayme, Kennedy, Kroix and Arhan loved searching for stuff in the water and exploring all the little corners of the stream. It was so fun! Quinn loved getting wet and then getting all sandy I often looked at her and saw her "swimming" in the sand- covered from head to toe!- Zara followed right behind, they had a blast together and enjoyed being the big 3 year old girl friends. They were really cute! Milan and Ronan were more hesitant but got into it after a little while.
We caught a huge crayfish and a baby crayfish, saw all kinds of different kinds of insects and minnows and found a huge clam shell and the broken pincher arm of a crayfish. Ryan saw some turtles but was unable to catch them. We also saw a bald eagle flying over our heads! It was so exciting!!!!!
We came back to school and had a snack of lemonade and grapes before laying down for a short rest