Let’s Take a Walk Together

The days of summer are slowly coming to an end, though the temperatures here this week have felt very warm! Let’s take a walk in nature together and see what fun things we can find. I call this “finding joy in nature and in the simple free things in life”. If you have a camera or a cell phone with a camera, take some pictures of the interesting things you find. Kids love to take pictures of special things. 🙂 I’ll show you some of the cool things I found on my walks in nature lately.

It can be fun to see how many different colors of wild flowers or weed flowers you can find. Here is a light blue flower that grows along the roadside where we live.

You can also make a note of what size the flowers are that you see. For instance, these little yellow flowers are very small.

While the yellow flowers on this plant are quite large.

Here we have a little feather that I almost missed seeing, but look how pretty and soft it is!

This is a dandelion whose days of being yellow are gone and all that’s left are the seeds. But look how pretty and perfect it looks! Some people call these “wish flowers” because they pick the flower, make a wish and then blow all the seeds and their wishes into the air.

These tiny, tiny pink flowers are on a weed, but they are so delicate and pretty!

We even found a little friend hopping through the grass!

We added another color of flower to our list when we found this purple weed!

And who do we have here? Why hello, there, little caterpillar! You can make up a story about where the caterpillar came from and where he is heading now. Why is he running so quickly through the grass? 🙂

These flowers were also growing along the roadside but they look very much like the Black-eyed Susans that are growing in my flowerbed.

Keep an eye out for butterflies! We have lots of these little ones flying around our house. I think this might be a Great Spangled Fritillary butterfly. So pretty!

You never know when you might spot a man raking hay… 😉

Taking a walk in nature can be so refreshing and calming and gets you away from screen time and gives you quality time together. You can take it a step further and print out your pictures and make a scrapbook together. I hope you’ll take a few minutes out of your busy last-of-summer days and enjoy some time outside. 🙂

An Adorable Update for You

Hello, again! Just wanted to share a very adorable update with you that I think you might enjoy seeing! Earlier this week for Earth Day I posted some pictures from our nature walk. One of those pictures was this Robin’s nest with 4 eggs in it.

I checked on the nest yesterday and guess what?! Yes, the eggs have hatched! 🙂

Look at those tiny baby birds! Awww, it makes my heart soft and mushy just looking at their cuteness! 🙂 Just wanted to share them with you to brighten your day!

Happy Earth Day 2021!

Do you celebrate Earth Day? I hope that each of us is doing our part to protect Mother Earth every day! Here’s a fun activity to do with your kids to help them learn to appreciate the earth a little better. Take a walk together with your camera and see how many interesting things you can find in nature to photograph. Look especially for flowers that are just growing wild. Here are a few things I found on my walk:

A dainty little purple flower…

A bush blooming with beautiful pink flowers…

Tiny, tiny purple flowers growing in the grass…

New growth on a tree…

A beautiful bunch of dandelions…

Tiny white flowers also growing in the grass…

Pinkish-purple flowers, growing up on stalks, even in stones…

New growth starting on a large pine tree…

Buds coming out on another tree…

Teeny, tiny bird feather…

A beautiful blue sky with the newly budding tree…

There are so many beautiful things outside that we walk past every day without noticing. My hope for this Earth Day is for each of us to take a little time and truly look around and see some of the amazing things our wonderful earth offers us. Enjoy! 🙂

Monarch Caterpillars Going Into Their Chrysalis

Hi there! Last week we ended our blog post about our Monarch caterpillars when they were starting to J-hang. They attach themselves firmly to the top of the cage or stick they are hanging from and then they hang like the letter J.

This week let’s talk about what happens when they go from J-hanging into their chrysalis. Here is a picture of 3 caterpillars in the different stages of going into a chrysalis.

The caterpillars hang in the letter J form for a day or so and then something amazing starts happening. They straighten their bodies out just a little and if you watch very carefully at just the right time, you can see little ripples moving up across their body. They are getting ready to shed their outside layer of “skin”. The “skin” will start to split open down by their head. They are hanging upside down so their head is at the bottom.

The split will get bigger and bigger and you will see more and more of the light green part appear.

Notice how the “skin” is getting all wrinkled up at the top.

Then finally, the bunch of old “skin” they don’t need anymore falls off.

They will wiggle around inside for a little bit and they will get shorter and shorter.

The outside of the chrysalis begins to look smooth.

Here is a chrysalis that is finished that we found outside.

Did you notice the gold colored dots and the gold ring around the chrysalis? Isn’t it beautiful?! The caterpillar is inside the chrysalis now and will be there for around 1 to 2 weeks. You won’t see much happening for a while but a wonderful, amazing transformation is taking place inside! Be sure to come back next week when we’ll talk about the process that happens next! That’s when the new butterfly emerges from the chrysalis! 🙂