Posted by Cindy on May 29, 2008
After about four days of observing the little critters we brought home from the pond, we decided it was best to return them to their rightful home. Why? Well, one one variety of little critters swimming around was mosquito larvae!! No, thank you for them finishing their life cycle in my house!
We also believe we had tadpoles, caddis fly larvae, water louse, some sort of teeny tiny black shelled snails (we saw two mating!) and unidentified microscopic black spots swimming everywhere. That was a lot of critters in one cup full of pond water!
Before heading home, we visited two springs near the pond. The first is a small spring flowing into a creek. The second is a spring that was dammed up many, many years ago as a watering hole for farm animals. Isn’t it pretty? Does anyone know what sort of plant is growing in it?
Oh, and look who we heard, then saw as we headed back toward the truck. If you can’t tell, its a woodpecker!
Posted by Cindy on May 5, 2008
My BFF, Melissa, has sparked a renewed interest in nature study around our house! We’ve always loved nature, but I think living on a farm and seeing or hearing nature everyday has caused us to take for granted the wonderful things going on around us.
But lately, our eyes and ears have been on guard. And to our excitement, God is putting on a wonderful show! (You know, He’ll do that when you take time to listen and watch!!) In the past couple of days, we’ve seen:
Baltimore Orioles
Canada Warblers (probably)
And not seen, but heard (very exciting, indeed!) – the Great Horned Owl
We’re running a tight ship this week to finish up school for the year, but I have big plans for unscripted, untimed, lazy-days-of-summer nature study starting next week! Our nature journals are ready (mine, too) and our pencils and colored pencils are sharpened. We’ll be ready for whatever flies, cries, walks, crawls or slithers our way!
By the way, our next nature club will be focused on pond life. We’re going to have so much fun! I’ll give you a sneak peak at one of the studies we’ll be doing – Jilly Jar Scooping. Thanks, Barb!!
Posted by Cindy on May 4, 2008
As we headed off to the zoo Friday, we were driving along praying for our day, which is our usual custom when we head off for a trip before we’ve had time for Bible and prayer together. One of the kids or I pray aloud as we begin our journey. We hadn’t gone far down the lane when our prayer was focused on praise to God for all the glorious creatures were going to see that day. All of the sudden a brilliant streak of black and orange flew past us and landed on a fence along the road.
I was able to get a picture of husband and wife before they flew away. (Even with 10x zoom, they were a bit hard to get a good picture of – especially how brilliantly orange the male was.) I’m sure Baltimore Orioles have flown around here before, but this was our first meeting with them. What a beautiful sight! We promptly thanked the Lord that He not only provides glorious creatures at the zoo, but right in our own back yard as well!
Posted by Cindy on July 9, 2007
One of my best real-life friends, Melissa, has a great post about birds on her blog. She gives a recipe for homemade suet and a couple of websites about bird watching. Her ideas go along with our bird center perfectly!
Posted by Cindy on July 5, 2007
Here’s the newest summer center at our house – Birds!
The box of books on the right includes nonfiction books about all sorts of birds – everything from birds we see around here to penguins to toucans. I’ve also included some really good children’s literature that have birds as characters – Make Way For Ducklings, Angelo, and The Raft to name a few.
The books laying out are bird identification and drawing guides. These will be used with their nature notebooks as they go bird watching. That just reminded me, I need to set out binoculars. I’ll do a post soon about the nature notebooks. I just love these! (Ignore the toes in the picture!) 
I found the little birdhouses at The Dollar Tree for……….$1.00! I’ve also set out a bird memory game and some bird activity sheets that I found in Considering God’s Creation. Finally, the game in the back on the left is really pushing it to fit into the bird theme. It’s a spelling game with bird pictures on the back of the cards! Ha Ha! Whatever works, right?
