Exploring at the Wildlife Sanctuary and Painting

On Wednesday we had our class at the Mass Audubon Ipswich River Wildlife Sanctuary. We skipped our class at Drumlin Farm this week since Hazel claimed to feel like she was going to throw up on our way there, however half an hour later she wanted lunch. I'm not really sure what happened, but she seems fine now. Anyway, at the Ipswich River Sanctuary we jumped in puddles and chased the other 3-year olds. Oh, and Hazel made a friend and held hands with her on part of our walk. I took a picture of them, but did not get the mother's permission to post it on line, so I won't. After a short walk we went back to the vernal pool to see if we could see some frogs this time. And we did!! We saw two different ones. The first one pictured above was pretty brave with all the kids around. Then one of them got a bit too close and he jumped in the water, but he stayed where we could see him with his eyes out of the water the entire time.

A little ways down we saw a big bull frog. He had different coloring than the first and was sitting on a log (again until someone got a bit too close).

While checking out the second frog, we saw a fast moving turkey (many of the kids missed it by the pool) and one of the kids found a slug. He even stuck his eyes out for us!

Then it was time to go back to the Nature House for our craft. On our way back through the field we saw the turkey again.

Then for our craft we made bird nests out of air-drying clay and grass. Then the instructor gave us a bird for it.

Then we ran some errands and came home. After lunch we finished our fairy garden and did some painting.

We have been reading the book Brown at the Zoo by Christianne C. Jones. It starts by talking about the colors--primary and secondary and that brown is a tertiary color. It then talks about how you can make it. The book goes through all the things that are brown at the zoo. It is in a series of books about colors. We decided to try to make brown in the different color combinations with Hazel's paints. Basically you can mix the three primary colors or you can mix any two colors that are opposite each other on the color wheel (red and green, yellow and purple, or orange and blue). We tried to make different shades by mixing the different colors. Some combinations worked better than others, but it may be the proportions we (Hazel) used.

Then she wanted to do some more paintings from The Color of Us. So we mixed yellow, white, black, and red in different proportions to explore the colors we would get. I let Hazel have a bit more control with the mixing this time.

Then we started over with some new mixtures and got this.

Then Hazel wanted to paint with blue. She said these were blueberries, but I thought it could also be pictures from The Dot by Peter Reynolds. We kept saying we were going to make some dot paintings, but never quite got to them.

Then she asked to use watercolors and she came up with the following. I think she had blueberries on the mind!

Just a reminder that Sharing Saturday will start tonight and you can visit the wonderful posts shared last week still, and Happy Family Times will end tomorrow, so go link up. And I'm still hosting a link party for Mother's Day gift ideas.


This is where I link up...

Fairy Garden 2012

Come to the side of our house, and you will be greeted by a lovely planter of flowers, but if you look closely you may see a little more.

 You may see the fairy house and pond and if you are really lucky you may see our little fairy, Elizabeth, (Hazel is naming just about everyone Elizabeth these days) dipping her feet in the pond to cool off or tending to her garden.

Last Friday I posted about The Magic Onions Fairy Garden Contest. Over the weekend, Hazel and I planted and started working on her garden. I love this idea of bringing some of the fantasy world to live. It gets her planning and thinking even more than she already is with her imagination.

First, we went to the store to pick out some flowers for the garden. She wanted a red geranium, some orange marigolds and various pink and purple petunias. We also bought a large pot to plant them in and start our fairy garden.

We filled the pot with dirt. and then found some sticks to make a fairy house and we used a piece of bark for the roof. We also used an old cupcake liner container to be a pond by the house.  then we planted the flowers where Hazel wanted. Then she added some rocks to be a path. We also added a small fairy that is meant to decorate a flower pot (she has a hook to hang from the edge on her back).

Hazel decided it needed some acorns and pine cones. We put the acorns around the pond. At this point Hazel got distracted and didn't really finish. She talked about pine cones and shells. So we waited a few days and finally added them.

We decorated with the shells and pine cones and we also used some shells as seats by the pond and in the flowers.

Now we will share at The Magic Onions to enter the contest. I hope you will join us in entering.

This is where I link up...

Baking Muffins & Growing Magic Beans Part 1

This weekend Hazel and I baked some banana muffins and we planted magic beans. First our muffin recipe. I adapted this recipe from Jessica Seinfeld's Deceptively Delicious. As last week, I am trying to include more nuts, whole grains, fruit and vegetables in our diets.

Ingredients:
1/2 cup sugar (brown or white)
1/2 cup almond butter
2 medium carrots pureed (you may want to add a bit of water to puree them raw or you can cook them)
2 medium very ripe bananas mashed (Hazel is my masher!)
1/2 cup unsweetened applesauce
1 egg
1/2 cup flax seed meal
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 cup rolled oats
1/2 cup of ground walnuts and almonds (I ground mine in the blender more to hide the walnuts from Hazel)
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg

Preheat the oven to 350 and spray a muffin pan with a cooking spray (do not use paper liners or the muffins will stick to them).

Mix sugar, almond butter, carrots, bananas, egg and applesauce in large bowl.

Mix the remainder of the ingredients in a smaller bowl.

Add dry ingredients to liquid ingredients and mix well. Then scoop into muffin pan. This is the first time Hazel successfully helped scoop them. I can see her improving each time we bake together and with age!

Bake for 20-25 minutes (the recipe said 15-20 but I found mine took closer to 25 and still were a bit moist). Then cool on a rack and eat warm or cool. Yield 12 muffins.

Now on to our magic beans!! For the first part of this project (the part I'm sharing here) I got the idea from StrongStart which was featured on Sharing Saturday #14. Over the weekend we planted some magic beans. I had to go out and buy more jelly beans because my dear husband got into the magic beans that I set aside without realizing they were for a project.

Magic Beans Planted (Left: Magic beans = jelly beans) (Right: I will share another time)

So I put some garden dirt into an egg container and we planted one of each color of jelly beans. I added the two later after I bought more magic beans. Then we put them by the window. In a couple of days we had this:

Hazel decided we were growing candles at this point. We drew in her garden journal. I drew a picture and wrote candles and then she added to it. I had labeled the page Magic Beans and added the date. Later in the day we had:

I put a jelly bean on each lollipop stick for this phase. At this point Hazel guessed lollipops, which of course is what we are growing. The next morning she woke up to this:

If you try this, make sure you wet the soil and pack it around the sticks to get the lollipops to stand. She was so excited this morning. She wanted to pick all of them and have one after lunch each day and we had to call Daddy at work to tell him about it.

Checking out her lollipops that she grew!

Overall this was a fun gardening activity to try especially with the cold wet weather we are having and having our yard sprayed for ticks so we can't go on the grass for 3 days. This definitely entertained her for a few days.

Oh, and I bought a copy of Jack and the Beanstalk today which I'm going to read to her soon. Hope all is well with you!!


This is where I link up...

Happy Family Times #7

 

Kelly at Happy Whimsical Hearts and I run a link party to share your family times every Tuesday. Please link up below and visit Happy Whimsical Hearts to read about her quality family time!

This weekend we spent most of our family time outside. On Saturday we got the pleasure of feeding the ducks. They actually came up to the driveway next to our garage and we fed them there.

Hazel was of course very excited but we kept her pretty calm and quiet so we could watch them from only a few feet away.

My taking pictures is actually what scared them away. Off they flew to the brook, but we went to do other things away from the back yard and they came right back. I got another picture from around the corner of the garage.

Then after they left this time they hung out in the brook near our bird feeders. We do think they have a nest back in the corner where the brook turns.

After feeding the ducks, Daddy and Hazel rebuilt the fairy house since something had knocked it down a bit.

And I found them relaxing on the patio as well.

Sunday after church, we did some gardening. Hazel and I planted the impatiens while Daddy dug a new garden for me to plant some hollyhocks and gladiolas. We are hoping to grow a natural fence along the driveway a bit for more privacy with them.

A few of our impatiens

Our new garden

Then we played on the swingsets. Hazel was having a blast. We have been working on pumping on the swings, but it has not stuck yet. So we took turns pushing her. Then of course she wanted to play zoo train with me and made me ask her if we were there yet a hundred times.

Then we ended our outside time by watering everything we planted and cleaning up. Hazel of course wanted to help with the watering.

Now it is your turn to share how your family has spent some quality time lately.

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The Colors of Us--Exploring all the browns of the world

Just a quick reminder that Sharing Saturday and Homemade Mother's Day Gift link parties are still open. Please come linkup with your child-oriented crafts and activities and your great Mother's Day ideas! And of course visit to check out all the wonderful ideas already shared!!

This week I'm going to share some multicultural story books Hazel and I have discovered and liked thus far. With one of them we have tried  a painting activity, so I will share that with you as well. Some musical resources for this book would be DARIA's song Beautiful Rainbow World (on her Beautiful Rainbow World CD and her I Have a Dream CD) and Kevin So's song Individual (on his Individual CD and Along the Way CD). (I will share more about Kevin So's music at a later date, but Individual goes along with this book, so I'm sharing it here.)