Field Trip and Discovery

We woke up today with a lot of excitement because it's Thursday! Every Thursday we meet our homeschool group and play in the forest all afternoon. The kids run around while the adults sit and talk. We often find ourselves sharing homeschool tips/resources etc. Today, however, we had a field trip planned. A few weeks ago I ran into an old friend who we hadn't seen in years. She used to come to our home to teach a Waldorf art class and was also our Tinkergarden teacher. She told me she now works for a forest conservancy organization and that she would love to take our homeschool group of kids on a forest walk to learn a lot of cool things. It was free and super educational so we were in! And I knew our nature loving group of kiddos would love it.

Miss 9 and I started the morning playing banana grams. I'm always looking for activities to expose them to that will help with spelling practice. This one gets pulled out now and again and is a nice short burst of spelling practice.

We then made our way to the forest to meet with our friends. Our group is a bit bigger than this as a couple of families weren't able to make it. All the kiddos started by getting their nature journals ready for the hike.

We started walking with our guides when someone noticed a yellow topped bird. Everyone took a moment to draw it in their nature journal. Our guides helped us remember that it wasn't about the accuracy of the drawing but about the descriptions you write down to yourself to remember the beauty that you saw.

A bit deeper into the forest and we came upon this heart shaped mushroom <3. A long conversation about mushrooms began as a few of the kids love researching mushrooms. We all learned a lot!

After some more hiking we all collected a few nature items as the guides pulled out their ink pads and some paper. The kiddos LOVED making prints with their leaves, flowers, pine cones etc. Their nature journals were starting to fill up.

My phone ended up dying so I don't have any more pictures of the day! But it concluded with us walking towards the beach where we found animal tracks in the sand. We all hypothesized about what animal they were from and how fresh they were. At the end of the path the kids did a 'sit spot' where they sat quietly and journaled being especially mindful of the moment they were in. After the hike the kiddos all played games and ran around joyfully. Another Thursday for the memory books!