Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Poetry and bugs, with a dash of schooling...

Alex and I are working on poetry right now. Not just writing it, but reading it aloud and well. He is getting pretty good at it. I bought two magnetic table boards for the kids to practice their poetry (or in Cyan's case, reading) on. I left them on the table and in the morning, this is what they woke up to in front of their breakfast:


They were each given the task of creating their own poem. Alex wrote a poem on snow (on paper) and Cyan wrote this:

You may be thinking how terribly rude she was being, but she is on a Penelope kick, so this was actually a compliment and she didn't even know if could have been insulting. (Alex did however... I talked with him about that).

We have been on field trip city lately. We went to the zoo on Friday, and the Nisqually Valley Reserve and the Farm I work for on Saturday. There are too many pictures to try to post them all here, but I will post some of the best.

The zoo was great! We had a good time and even got to see a couple of friends we hadn't seen in forever!

This sweet whale came up to say "hi" right next to us, and it started a chain of events that was pretty funny. Cyan dropped her toy (small blue ball) in the whale tank, and Logan started screaming... not because of the toy falling in (which was rescued very quickly by zoo staff who were wonderful about it!), but because he is scared of whales. Well, actually, anything that has glass between it and him. He was fine with the Lemurs, fine with the Meerkats and Walabies... but whales, polar bear, walrus, and even the otters? Climbed up my arm and screamed every time we got close. I hope it is just a phase as they are some of my very favorites, but it was needless to say, strange to have him so attached to me. Usually I am chasing him. But he wouldn't leave my side.

Then on Saturday morning, we went to Nisqually Valley Bird Refuge. This was a wonderful and educational trip. Did you know that birds are the fewest in our area right at the end of the summer? I had no idea. We must be in the middle of the migration path, so as the birds go South in late Fall, they are here, and as they go North in late spring, they are here, but in the Summer? Not a bird except for native ducks were at the refuge. We didn't even see a hawk. Amazing!

But you know what that really means? Visiting a bird refuge with no birds? BUGS!

This fell out of the sky (literally!) and landed on Alex's arm. Scared the crap out of him until he figured out what it was. lol...

And this one crawled right on to Cyan's finger from the bench she was leaning on. She was watching it as it walked up, and it crawled right on to her. She was thrilled that she 'got' a caterpillar to. :)

And here is yet another catterpillar we saw... I think it is an older version of the one Alex had on his arm, but not sure. They look very similar though. Deffinetly related.

This one is my personal favorite... a wooly bear. I love them!

Whatcha looking at buddy?

Ah-hah! Sweet little thing.

See how many things you see at a bird refuge when the birds are not there? My guess is, that all of these would have been food for said birds if they had actually been around, but since they were not, it made for one cool field trip. It openned up a huge conversation about food chains and food webs. We drew food chains these things were connected in a bit too, but that isn't nearly as interesting pics of cool critters we saw.

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