fun with nature!

The time between nap and dinner is always a kind of mixed up time. There’s nothing really planned and everyone just wakes up and plays outside running and screaming. I love to hear those voices and laughter it makes me so happy. I love to play imagination games with them. Sometimes I just tell everyone to reach up in the sky as high as they can and pick a banana. Everyone brings their invisible bananas to their mouth but I yell “NO! NO! WAIT! You have to peel it first! Of Course!” so they all screech and spit out their banana and peel it before pretending to eat it once again. It’s great. They are entertained for so long as they yell out different fruits for us to prepare. Haha yesterday Don said “I wanna play that game” and raised his hand in the air and back to his mouth! I said “oh yes! That is a fun one isn’t it?! Ok which fruit do you want to eat?” and Don said “CAKE!” haha! So we spent a good while climbing cake trees and spaghetti trees! It was really cute.

With seven aunties and uncles the kids are spoiled in that they can do Auntie Jessica’s hair, play football with Uncle “Saido” or wrestle with Uncle Richie all in one afternoon! Today when everyone was doing their own thing I hear a voice screaming above the rest. Carol had found a cockroach! A huge one! She wanted me to see. All the kids know to call me over when they see a bug because last week I got them all observing some caterpillars for an hour. So I called everyone together and we all huddled around this huge-normous roach. Jerom screams when it takes a microscopic step toward him and I’m restraining Oscar from trying to kill it the whole time. I taught them that all bugs and creatures are Gods creation and they are our friends…I should have been more specific. But I couldn’t go back on my word now even though it was really disgusting. I told them about antennae and we all pretend to be roaches for a split second before they lost interest and want to touch him again. Brenda is who I was worried about! She is fearless with bugs. During Recess at little Rina she likes to catch grasshoppers and throw them at me. Anyways after the roach went to bed in the bushes and we all said goodnight we tried looking for more bugs and interesting things. As soon as I said let’s look for more cool things in our yard, Carol yanks my arm and says “YOU SEE!” and pulls me over to a rotting piece of carrot she found! Haha but then we all started collecting leaves and they did that until bath time. Everyone was bringing me different leaves from the bushes and the cracks in the cement asking for my approval then quickly running off to find another leaf! It was really fun! Also Brenda, of course, brought me a grasshopper and then put it down my shirt!

I love teaching kids about nature. It’s fun because a lot of times no one has ever marveled at nature with them before and when someone gets excited about seeing the moon or a tree with flowers it opens their eyes and they start to look around. I know my favorite thing to do on trail-rides at frontier camp was to point out any plants or bids or spider webs. The kids love it! And it makes an hour long sit on a horse a lot more interesting! Soon everyone would be looking around noticing all the beautiful world God has made for us!

 

Anyway the next day we read a story about the Bearenstein Bears going on a nature walk and then did leaf rubbings with the kiddos.

All the kids circling around this caterpillar instead of washing out the bins!
But that's ok they loved it!

Jerom and Don and our little friend too!

Oscar

Jerom

Don