showeredwithgrace

This week's  unplugged project:  Wrinkle

We made paper flowers in anticipation for spring.  First we tried these which were too complicated for Rose Red so I ended up making only two by myself.  They ended up looking more like full blown roses rather than the shapely young roses they were supposed to end up looking like (however, I think we liked the romantic look of our full bloomed roses better)

  

   

 

But prettier still were the ones we made together.  They were very simple ~ just colored tissue cut into two size circles, stacked and pierced through with pipe cleaner which was then twisted into a stem.  Finally we wrinkled the colored tissue into beautiful flowers.

 

   

   

 

 

So cheerful !

 

Happy Valentine's Day

I had a great post for this with lots of pictures to share but lost it so I'm just posting this short post  now on our last trip to our botanical gardens.  We learned about the prickley pear cactus and the cochineal bug that is found on the cacti and harvested for it's red juice which is used in dyes and food coloring (FDA approved). 

We learned that there are many different species of prickley pear with some even growing into trees ~ their green pads actually morphing into a bark!

 

 

   

 

We participated in a fun interactive flipbook about the prickley pear and the cochineal bug, lots of arts and crafts and a nature walk to view the different species and examine the cochineal bugs ~ smashing a few to release their red juices.

 

This book is worth a read.  Lifting out the importance of trees to all creatures and the Earth as a home we share with all creation.  'Once There Was a Tree' by Natalia Romanova.

We were back to our Botanical Garden.  Our subject of interest this time was trees.

 

In particular, the Cottonwood tree.  Found only by the water here in our desert.  The kids enjoyed laying on a blanket and listening to the wind blowing through the Cottonwood trees.  They also had an opportunity to touch pots of dry soil and moist soil to discover the difference. 

We spied some of our native trees showing a bit of autumn gold as well.  This tree below is a Mesquite tree.  Our Palo Verde trees and our Ocotillo were also sporting gold.

The children were sent on a quest to match leaves they were given to leaves of trees in the Garden.

Snack was of course an edible tree!

We made leaf rubbings . . .

Log rings . . .

And fun leaf-glitter trees with paint, eyedroppers, straws, and crushed leaves.

We also saw an adorable puppet show and had many 'tree' books to look through in our book nook.

This book was great! I'll be looking to pick up a copy at the library and will definitely be on the search for more Claire Llewellyn books.

And in conclusion, I'll leave you with this picture of one of the beautiful glass art sculptures now in place in our Botanical Garden.

This blog should really be named 'Discovering Together' because I am continually discovering new things right along with Rose Red!

I've been wishing this Fall season that we had oak trees here in the Sonoran Desert since there are so many great activities and crafts for childern using acorns.  Besides, they seemed much more fun to collect than our variety of desert seeds and pods.  Living in the desert we grow up without many of the charming memories of childhood that one finds in all the children's books such as gathering acorns, jumping in piles of brightly colored leaves, first snow falls, making snowmen, etc., etc..    So you can imagine my delight when Rose Red ran up to me in the park the other day with a fist full of tiny acorns!  Whereever were they from?!  From the trees planted all around the playground it seems.  Now who knew we could grow Southern Live Oak trees in the desert?!

Now these acorns are tiny at best and I'm not sure if they ever get any bigger but they are still acorns nonetheless!  Here is a close up of one of the fallen leaves.

And here is a traditional game I bet you remember playing as a child!

   

Happy November!

On our most recent trip out and about to our Desert Botanical Garden we were introduced to our local Pinacate Beetle  ~ known also as the 'stink bug' and 'clown of the beetle world' for it's funny way of standing on his head when threatened and emitting a stinky spray from it's rear.  This beetle stays active in cooler weather because of their black bodies which act as a solar collector, absorbing 25% more solar radiation than white beetles, warming them on cold days.  Pretty interesting stuff!

   

 

The snack above was a mini bagel (cut side down) with cream cheese, blueberries and a grape for the head and black licorice for the antennae ~ very cute.

My favorite part of the day was when the 'Pinacate Beetle' sock puppet read us a poem about himself ~ chock full of lots of fun facts!  Here he is . . .

She took him off her hand for this part of the show where she was demonstrating how the mice held the Pinacate when they wanted to eat one up.  Rear down so they wouldn't encounter his stinky spray and then eating just the head and thorax of the beetle, leaving the abdomen behind.  Pretty smart mice, don't you think?

A beetle booklist:

Beetle Bop by Denise Fleming

Beetle Boy by Lawrence David

The Boll Weevil Ball by Kelly Murphy

The Buggliest Bug by Carol Diggory Shields

The Very Clumsy Click Beetle by Eric Carle

The Beetle Alphabet Book by Jerry Pallotta

Bugs are Insects by Anne Rockwell

Bugs, Beetles, and Butterflies by Harriet Ziefert

The Beautiful Beetle Book by Sue Unstead

Beetles: The Most Common Insects by Sara Swan Miller

Mr. Beetle by Satoshi Tada

Bettle Bedlam by Vlasta Van Kampen

Life has been less than quiet here at Quiet Hollow.  Finding a moment or a thought to blog a post has been hard to come by!  We are having a great time with many exciting things.  We've finally begun our fall Botanical Garden class which is wonderful.  Our first week looked at the Monarch butterfly through stories, crafts, snack, and wonderful activity centers.  Best of all though was the trip to the butterfly pavillion!

peering through a magnifying glass

This week's class was all about seeds.  This was great fun as our nature walks have been all about seeds (and animal homes) lately.  We planted seeds, discovered seeds and their plants throughout the garden, snacked on seeds (this was lots of fun! skewered fruit and veggies all filled with seeds ~ cherry tomatoes, cucumbers, watermelon, kiwi, strawberries, etc., etc.).  There were books and learning centers and storytime with the feltboard.

We continue on with our monthly breakfast at the zoo with the animals.  Last month we visited the amphibians and learned about our frog friends and saw many different types of frogs, toads, some salamanders and newts!

Our nature walks continue but the camera never seems to make it with us for one reason or another but we have been discovering many animal homes and seeds, seeds, seeds and coming to know our desert foilage a bit.  We are very aware of fall this year and notice signs of it everywhere (even in our desert climate!).

After our Big Red Hen study we tried to move onto something else but Rose Red keeps pulling us into Cinderella instead (which she is passionate about just as she was with the Little Red Hen).  I'm following her lead instead ~ but sticking to my guns about avoiding the Disney~fied Cinderella and reading her an older version of the story where we can pick up on the virtues Cinderella exhibits of kindness, humility, gentleness and forgiveness.  All of which are in sore need over here ~ so perhaps we have been properly lead!

Our alphabet studies continue but not with any true enthusiasm due to mommy's distractions.  We have an alphabet shelf which we keep the weekly (or so) letter (tactile letter, letter puzzle, picture books of  the alphabet; Metropolitan Museum of Art and a Waldorf.   I have yet to incorporate our chalk letters (for walking the shape of each letter) or some of the other things I had in mind ~ but soon, soon, soon.

There is more we are doing ~ patterning, counting, music, etc. as our whims dictate ~ and of course we are reading, reading, reading.  The library is our great friend.  Nature and the seasons, our animal friends, counting, and more are all coming alive for us through our books!

Back to mommy's distractions ~ we are moving again!  This time we purchased a home of our own.  We hope to move in by Thanksgiving.  My dh's company just had their grand opening this past week so he has been busier than ever even into the evenings and weekends lately.  Between revonating the new house and getting his company up and running and boy scouts with our nephew and bible study at the church the poor guy has not come up for air in several months.  Oh ~ and his father has moved in with us as of September (I think temporarily).  He is sleeping in the loft.  All fun and crazy stuff.

Hope all is well with all of you!   

   

Today's nature walk brought home baskets of pods - Mesquite tree pods !

We've been reading how The Little Red Hen gathered wheat and ground it into flour to make bread . . .

so the kids toasted and ground up Mesquite seeds into a sweet and nutty flour and made cookies!

And they were yummy!

When it came time to clean up our godson Romeo was not so inclined and kept announcing that he was the Dog (from the Little Red Hen) !  All the kids attended the Little Red Hen puppet show together so they had great fun with this.  A good day.

Rose Red and I will be taking a class together at our Desert Botanical Garden this fall.  If you haven't yet checked out what your local Botanical Garden offers for kids it might be fun to see!