The end of Summer

Summer is well and truly over now and the leaves are starting to show their Autumn colours, so I thought I would share some of our summertime activities with you. We have been on all our usual adventures in nature as you may have seen in the 30 days wild project we joined in June, also trips to the Dinosaur adventure park and a theme park.

We have explored new places and had adventures on a prehistoric walk through ancient areas of woodland. We have also spent time exploring the countryside and the thrill of playing in fields of long grass.

The children gave themselves Summer challenges, my son's was a reading challenge to read the entire series of Harry potter books including the extra short books. This is a big challenge for him as he prefers to read fact books and encyclopedias so me and my husband joined him on this challenge to give him extra support... everyone finished this challenge in less than the three months given. He has now gone back to reading about Japanese mythology and his dinosaur research.

My youngest daughter had different challenges, she wanted to teach herself to weave bracelets, make wind chimes, hula hoop and juggle... all of which she accomplished with ease and has now moved on to learning musical instruments.

We have also spent a lot of time at our local swimming pool, the children had so much fun and can all swim a number of different strokes and have hugely increased their water confidence skills.

Both children attended two activity club courses looking at different animals and their care which they found quite interesting. We also took advantage of the Heritage free open days and went to three museums.

The children love exploring museums, my grandmother used to take me around the strangers hall museum when I was a little girl and it is lovely that it is still there for my children to experience. This year we even played old games in the museum gardens.

We managed to find a newt, something the children had been looking to see in the wild which was quite exciting for them.

We have had a few new additions to our family too, after spending time with the reptiles on the animal care courses that the children completed we decided to add a snake to our family, my son already has a leopard gecko, which is fascinating, so learning about snakes would be just as interesting and something my husband has been wanting to do for quite a while.

This is a photo of our beautiful new Royal python when he first arrived, only a few months old. The other new arrivals are chickens, as you know we lost two of our older girls earlier in the year and were only left with one chicken. The remaining elderly chicken, Dotty, was very lonely so we decided to increase the flock.

It took Dot a little while to accept the new chickens, but after a week or so it all settled down. Dot is on the far right of the above photo, the black and white chicken is called Sylvie and the two reds are called Evie and Ginny.

That covers a few of our summer highlights, adventures and challenges... Preparing for winter has taken hold here and the last of the allotment harvests have been collected and preserving food is in full swing.

30 Days wild - day 24

Today we went for a woodland walk in one of our local woods, it also happens to be our wedding anniversary so it was a lovely day to spend with nature. I will write the usual wedding anniversary craft post as soon as the 30 days wild project has finished, in fact I have a number of nature craft posts planned.

As you can see the stinging nettles were out in force, tucked in between we found some hedge woundwort which looked really quite beautiful, as you can see below.

We found a number of interesting bugs but not all the photographs came out very clearly... below is an orange ladybird on a sycamore tree.

We spent quite a lot of time under a hole in an oak tree, we could hear baby birds in the hole and we stood back, hid and waited for the parent to return but it must have heard or seen us and didn't return while we were there. After listening to bird song on the internet and comparing the baby birdsong, we are almost certain it was a woodpecker.

We know these woods quite well and we have seen woodpeckers nesting here before, I have taken a photograph of another tree which has been well used by the woodpeckers.

Half way round the woods there is a clearing and we usually stop for a picnic or snack, there are often wild flowers around and butterflies, it's really quite lovely.
Today we saw a raggity red admiral and some beautiful red campion flowers every where we looked.

30 Days Wild - day 12

After yesterdays big pond dipping adventure today is a much quieter woodland walk and a spot of hill rolling.

This wood is on the site of some old chalk mines and there is usually a lot of chalk on the ground, we collected a couple of pieces to do some patio drawings and for a science experiment examining the effects of acid rain.

We saw many twisty trees and some which had been cut down and left to decay creating lots of natural habitats for insects and decomposers. Many Alfred's cakes fungi were growing all over the trees.

 Hill rolling was fun, although you did have to avoid the rabbit holes and droppings.

Not Back To School Day

As a home educating family we like to celebrate 'not back to school day' with a special activity, as do most other families. This is usually a picnic out in nature or something similar, but yesterday due to the damp weather we went out to explore one of our local woodland areas instead.  Once we arrived the day commenced with a hill rolling race, always a lot of fun... so I'm told.

We spent lots of time identifying different types of trees which included a walnut tree and other types of plants and fungi and we found a natural chalk out crop. The woods were very noisy as it was rather windy which added a spooky atmosphere, one tree actually sounded exactly like a creaky old door opening. Rather puzzlingly deep in the centre we found one small spot where there was no sound at all.

Do you think  the entrance looks kind of spooky?...a bit like a tunnel. When the children had finished exploring and playing in the trees we decided to pick some apples from this tree before returning home.

This is the tree that provided us with enough apple jam and pie fillings to last all winter last year. There are many more apples this year and they are twice the size, we collected 10 kilos which is about 20lbs and the tree still had so many apples on that you wouldn't have known we had picked any at all. The children helped to collect apples in between more hill rolling, we also collected a few elderberries... I have plans for some elderberry syrup this year, so will need to pick more.

Some of the foraged apples are so big that it is very hard to hold them effectively while trying to peel them. So far we have made another batch of apple jam and prepared several bags of apple pie filling which have been frozen for winter. The children would like to make some fruit leathers, a natural form of fruit sweets so this will be put on the list of things to make. Overall everyone had a lovely 'not back to school day' enjoying the freedom to explore nature.

off to the woods

   On Friday, we visited the woods, thinking it would be cooler in the shade of all those tall, leafy trees. We went to the woodland that was closest to the spot where we had previously found the baby grass snakes, dead in the road. My son was hoping to spot some more in the undergrowth alive this time, so that he could watch their natural movements and take photographs, but it was not to be.

   

    It was quite eerie as it was a new wood to us and quite dense in places. My son was convinced that we would become lost forever... continuously going round in circles, but we managed to find our way home again. We spotted many creatures and traces that they had been there before us with the binoculars and magnifying glass. As you can see my daughter has the philosophy, "examine ALL things closely"

     We saw these strange looking black and yellow caterpillars on the ragwort in a sunny clearing, which appeared to jump if we got too close to them. They are the larva of the cinnabar moth which we spotted nearby too.

     My son just loved running up and down the hills, and didn't mind too much that we didn't find any snakes this time. Maybe next time...

     All todays photographs were taken by my husband (found here) on location in the dark, scary woods!