We have jumped feet first into summer and are loving every minute of it. The aroma of roasted marshmallos seems to always be in the air. Daring children dip their toes in the river and dig in its soft sandy banks. Their wet clothes get hung on the line only to get sandy and wet again the very next day.
We have set our tent up in the backyard and are enjoying sleeping in the cool night air. The children are astonished by the dance of thousands of fireflies that dot the fields. As they played outside today, the children made up many games while darting in and out of the tent. They found some pillowcases in the tent and quickly pulled them up over their legs, hopping all over the yard giggling and falling over.
My daughter decided it would be fun to make a finish line for a sack race. My oldest son ran to the nearest shade tree to gather up two sticks that had fallen to the ground, while my youngest son was sent on a mission to bring them kite string. The kids gave my husband detailed instructions on how they hoped to construct a finish line. With a little help their vision was complete!
Later in the day the children requested that I plan a scavenger hunt. We decided to make it a nature hunt. I wrote down their suggestions for items they wanted to find, and then drew pictures to accompany the amount and description of each item ::
They took their collecting baskets and eagerly went about collecting each object listed. Happily they dumped out their nature finds and overlaid them onto each corresponding picture, making sure they had the correct amount of each. When they finished matching their finds, I drew a star at the bottom of the page and asked each one of the children to bring back their most special or beautiful treasure. As you can see in the picture…
[A felted river stone, an Iris petal, and a yellow flower that was used as a ‘crayon’ to color in the star. A pea from the garden, a pink peony petal and an Iris.]
They later went on to improvise their own sheets and had many more special moments collecting in nature.
The kids started to fill up their little pool. I was picking flowers alongside them and threw a few petals in the water. They started playing with the petals and pretending the flowers were fish swimming around, so in went more petals and soon whole flowers went into the pool...
We had so much fun collecting the flowers around the yard and wondering if each flower would float or sink. The kids walked along the edge of the pool, imagining they were a mermaid and mermen. They also whispered about the petals being fairies that had come for a visit. They got their nets out to catch little 'fish' and then released them back to their colorful pool. Mama had fun listening to this sweet play and capturing all the beautiful “little fish” that floated her way.
