Creative-Mommy

There has been some controversy lately regarding Earth Day but regardless to its purposes or origins, I would like to help my girls learn respect. Part of that respect is cleaning up after yourself and taking care of the place where you live. In light of that goal, we spent the last two days taking what we call Alley Walks. Generally the idea is just to see what "treasures" you can find in the alleys and to walk somewhere safer than the middle of the road. This week however, we left the house armed with a trash bag. Now, just let me say, my husband works for the city here, and they do a pretty good job of keeping our alleys clean. That being said, we picked up more than a trash bag of garbage from our house to the next block.

Most of this trash was made up of things like bottles, boxes, etc that people didn't quite get into their trashcans. The rest of it was made up of things I can only assume were dropped by walkers or out the windows of the vehicles that use the alleys. My girls were quite willing to pick up other people's trash, enjoying the reward of a job well done. Now, if I can just get that work ethic to carry over into their room cleaning.

My point is that no matter what, we have to live here where we are. Why not make that space as pleasant as possible by cleaning up after ourselves? Love, light and blessings to you all.

It's hard to believe it has been the better part of a year since I posted on here. There is a lot of change in our lives, but we are still doing what we do best- learning and having fun and learning to be the best we can be. My girls have flown through this year with amazing aplomb. For those of you on Facebook you can see the last couple of units we did on there. We have done rainforests which was completely AWESOME and farms, which was pretty spiffy too. I am not going to repost all the pictures here, but suffice it to say, there were some pretty fun things we did. With spring back on us, my girls were "ant"-sy to get back into the wonderful world of insects. With so many teaching possibilities how could I deny them?

This year we are raising 6 mealworm- hopefully from larva to beetle. They are getting fatter and longer as the days go by. (I will get some pics up today or tomorrow). It has been actually really neat to watch them, and we have lab books documenting behavior and life cycle. We also have some crickets for observation. But I have to say, the mealworms are far more entertaining to the girls.

We are learning about working together and being kind. Who better to teach that lesson than Amelia the Kind Ant. Each day I am taking one thing that someone did as a kindness and recognizing it on our DOOR OF KINDNESS. It has been fun to watch Elizabeth and Rachel documenting each others kind acts as well.

Yesterday we talked about making good choices and using good judgment. Even at 6 and 4 and 2 the girls can recognize good choices. That must mean we are doing something right.

Today, the weather was absolutely gorgeous so we headed outside to make our own crazy bug creations with chalk on the driveway. We discussed the features that make an insect an insect: 6 legs, 3 body segments, and the girls were responsible for making sure that regardless of whatever else their bugs had, they had those characteristics. It was an extension activity from earlier in the week when we identified mini-beasts as insects or non-insects.

If the weather holds, I have an insect walk planned for later in the week. So far everyone is excited to be learning about bugs again, and with the help from some new resources, we are expanding on this theme in fun and new ways.

Thank you all for bearing with me the last year, and keep checking back. :) We are back in the saddle again.