A Day at the Lake

We spent a few hours at the lake today with some new friends. On the drive to the lake, E saw some trees that had been cut down. She started talking about how cutting down the trees hurts the animals and destroys their homes. We had a great conversation about logging, ecosystems, forest fires, and sustainability. We talked about how even if cutting down the trees doesn't directly ruin an animal's home, it can still affect it. I used the example of ground squirrels eating nuts from the trees. Cutting down the trees doesn't ruin the ground squirrel's home, but it does reduce it's food source. Then when the squirrels have to go somewhere else to find food, the snakes have less food, and so on.

I reminded the girls that we have lots of things in our house made from wood, so it's a good thing there is some logging. I told them that some loggers do clear cutting, but other loggers only cut some of the trees and plant new ones in their place, and that the practice is called sustainability. They thought that was a pretty good idea.

Then we drove by an area that had been destroyed by a fire years ago. Some of the grass and bushes have grown back, but the trees are still blackened skeletons.

Then E asked me if there was a job that a person could do where they helped animals that were hurt by fires or logging. I told her about wildlife rescues. She said she might like to do that when she grows up rather than be a dancer. I reminded her about Smokey the Bear, since we were driving right through that area burned by fire, and how the firefighters had taken him to a wild life rescue. I also reminded her about our visit to the horse rescue last summer (or the summer before?). I told her that the lady who owns it helps horses when their owners can't care for them anymore or if their owners are hurting them and the police take the horses away.

On the way back home, E asked me about the area burned by the fire again and how long ago the fire was. I said I didn't know what year it had happened, but that if I was remembering correctly that when she was one year old, we had driven that road and we saw that fire damage. So she figured out that since she is seven now and we saw it like that when she was one, that it had been at least six years since that fire.

While we were at the lake, the girls caught a couple of half dead, tiny fish.  We brought them home and they disected them, as much as is possible with something the size of my thumbnail.  They looked at their gills, fins, eyes, and tried to find the heart, stomach and intestines.  That led to talking about human bladders, gallbladders, intestines and colons.    

From allaboutbirds.org

They also pulled up a few different varieties of sea (lake?) weed.  By the time we got it home, it was dried out and I couldn't figure out what it is, but we had fun for a few minutes looking at different types of fresh water submerged plants online.  

E wanted to catch some birds at the lake, so she put out some watermelon rinds to see if they would eat them. Ten or so birds immediately flocked to the rinds. It was a great treat for them! I was trying to remember the name of the birds, which are very common around here.  My friend said they were black birds, which sounded right, but I thought they had another/a longer name.  It turns out they are Brewer's Black Birds.  They have iridescent feathers that the girls love to collect.  We spent some time this evening learning about their nests and what they eat. 

Our Miserable Failure on Learn Nothing Day

Today was Learn Nothing Day.  

Naturally we failed at today's objective, but of course that just proves the point. ;)  

This morning:

E made a new friend and got her phone number. She started drawing bees which is a new addition to the recent skill of drawing pictures that look like more than abstract art.

L was introduced to the word "trick riding," at the park while she stood on the back of the bouncy horse thing.

So, nothing too extraordinary, but of course there are all those connections being made in the pathways of the brain that I can't see to report.

A picture E took of some flowers outside the newspaper office today.  The girls have been taking lots of pictures and videos the last few days.  

 

This afternoon:

Yesterday, dd1 discovered that she could make this whistle thing she has sound like a variety of birds. Except, we didn't really know exactly how enough birds sound to try to mimic them. So, this afternoon, I found this bird website for the girls. They got to see and hear owls, eagles, blue birds, doves, and more. We were at my mom's house and she mostly helped them with the site. They talked about birds that are nocturnal, what owls eat and eagles eat, and they got to hear some stories about eagles and owls with which grandma had close encounters.

We also watched a video at my mom's house of a guy singing Leaning on the Everlasting Arms the way it might have been sung if it had been written in the '40s, '50s, '60, '70s, '80s, and '90s. It's funny, and the girls got to hear the variety of music styles from the different time periods.

Baby Z coloring

Some other things we did today from which there was learning or at least connections in the brain being made:

We rhymed words
They looked at books
They ate strawberries from grandma's garden and helped her water it
They played pretend games with each other and kids at the park
We played with the dog
They watched a movie


Learn Nothing Day is not just for kids either! I failed miserably as well though.

I learned there are Blue Birds of Paradise in Australia, that sometimes middle age white guys *can* rap (kind of... watch the video), that strawberry plants produce more during their second year and beyond than the first year, and I'm sure many other things that were just so effortlessly processed by my brain that I can't even recall them but the information or skill is now stored for later.

Birds and Thank You Notes

A few recent natural learning moments:

Birds
A few days ago, as E and I were snuggling in bed after having just woken up, she said, "Mom, are eagles nocturnal like owls?"  She was suddenly, for no apparent reason, interested in eagles and owls and asked me a ton of questions.  So we looked them up.  We read that eagles are raptors and hunt for their food, as opposed to scavengers who find dead things.  I told her how the Bald Eagle is a symbol of America.  On a website about owls, she recognized the Barn Owl and the Snowy Owl from the movie Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'hoole.  We looked for a website that might have a game or something for kids to learn about birds.  Unfortunately, all we could find is one that used information about birds to teach spelling and reading.  She played on it for a few minutes and L enjoyed the puzzles on the site, but it wasn't really what we were looking for.  If anyone knows about a site for kids about birds, please share it!

From owlpages.com

Thank You Notes

Yesterday, we wrote thank you notes to family members and friends who had given us Hanukkah gifts.   E wrote the names on the fronts, wrote "thank you" and signed her name.  L decorated with pictures and glitter.  I wrote the words on a different piece of paper and E copied them.  By the third one, she wrote "thank" from memory, without looking at what I wrote and she was very excited about that.