Enjoying being outdoors again!

After last weeks winter storm that brought 31cms of snow and canceled all our classes and plans, we were glad to be outdoors again! A is very glad to be back out on hr quad bike and has been enjoying all the puddles left by the melting snow!!!!

Egghead updates!!!!

Here are our eggheads now that they are grown and ready to be 'trimmed'!!!!!

Remember all you need is cress seeds, cotton wool, water and an empty egg shell!

Laptop time...

A is doing really well on the computer right now. She is still enjoying webkinz but is enjoying a game called pony love right now.

I love the picture above where her brother is helping her with a game :)

Our butterflies arrived!

Today we went to collect our butterfly larvae - we are going to study life cycles this Spring - not just butterflies but the bees in our very own beehive (you can see those on our bee blog via our profile if you like). We ordered a butterfly lifecycle kit and today was the day we went to collect them!!

The larvae are the teeny tiniest caterpillars we have ever seen!!!! They came with food for us to feed them. We will photograph their journey from caterpillar to chrysalis to butterfly and post it here for you to enjoy :)

Our butterflies are Painted Ladies :)

Springtime Lamb masks......

Yesterday we made lamb masks for a play we were making up about a nursery rhyme. They were just simple masks with cotton wool on paper plates but the children had fun making them :)

Eggheads!!

Next week we are going in to S's class to grow 'eggheads' with them all...so we started our own 'eggheads' at home yesterday. You empty an egg shell. Draw a face on one side. Place some wet cotton wool inside and then sprinkle some cress seeds on the cotton wool.

we just checked on our seeds this morning and they are already sprouting!!! :) The children are thrilled :) In a few days the sprouts will push up our of the egg shell like 'hair' for the 'eggheads' and you can cut the 'hair' :) The 'hair' tasts yummy in sandwiches or sprinkled in salads :)

(please note the yellow on the eggshell is NOT yolk - the only eggs I had were the empty shells left over from Easter coloring so I had to wash off the paint and reuse the shells lol....so they were still a little yellow in places lol)!!

Thank you letter

This is a picture and letter that A did for us to send to the Raptor Shelter to thank them for the tour we went on during Spring Break.

Enjoying Springlike temperatures!

It was a glorious weekend temperature-wise. Sunday it hit almost 25c!!! We were outside all weekend long, tidying up the acreage, weeding the flowerbeds and just enjoying the fire pit and yard toys! We even had a bbq and made the first s'mores of the year on the fire pit :) YUMMY!!!!

Our pot bellied pig Charlie

Enjoying the hot weather.

Mud puddles

A enjoying the big puddles on her quad bike this weekend!

Drama Queen!

A started drama classes today - she loved every minute of it - its a fun kind of class for 6 - 8 year olds....lots of games and improvisation. She has a script to learn for a play they are putting on for family at the end of the semester. They played a pirate ship game that she really enjoyed too!

All in all I think she loved every single second!

Making Books

www.makingbooks.com/

I thought I'd share this useful link...you can sign up for a monthly newsletter on this page too and she also has a great blog. The newsletter includes an idea for a book to make with your child - thery sometimes include ways to make books with twigs or brown bags...all kinds of things! Fn ways to get children making books, writing stories, creating stories, keeping journals......just MAKING!!!!! :)

We like it anyway....

Our week....

We have been out every day this week and haven't done much 'school work' really....but I'm sure a lot of learning took place! Certainly a lot of menu reading took place as we ate out every day!!! Lunch at Smittys on Monday with Jennifer and Soleil. A always chooses her own meals now and orders for herself so I leave her to it!

Tuesday S started his new preschool class in the afternoon, so A got to choose an activity for two hours. I suggested bowling or going to a new bead store to make a necklace - she chose the garden centre to choose a plant! She chose the most gorgeous Gerber Daisy in a salmon pink colour! We had coffee and cake by the fish pond and A also helped me choose some bee friendly Perennial flower seeds.

Wednesday we went out for lunch with Val and then went to the thrift store with Chris for a costume for his play Pinocchio...it's a pantomime so he is playing Mrs Gipetto.

Thursday my friend Tess came over for the day and we took a walk with our cameras. A also drew a picture of the owls we saw at the Raptor Centre (I will photograph it and add this) and wrote a thank you letter to the centre to send to the centre. It's the first chance we have had really.

Friday we were supposed to go the science centre but I wasn't feeling well so we cancelled and met Val in town instead and took a walk around Broadmoor Lake then we went to the mall for lunch and had ice cream afterwards :)

A has done quite a bit of drawing and colouring this week, some crafts, and spent some time on the computer. We also bought a Leapster from a lady on LP with 8 games so A played on that last night!

A has sent some Emails to her Dad and has added to her blog. She's watered her plants and done her chores. The weather has been good so there has been plenty of outside time which is ALWAYS a good thing :)

And her reading has come on in leaps and bounds!! This s not always a good thing as I find her reading over my shoulder when I don't always want her to (lol)

I find her spelling in her emails is really great now!!!! she rarely asks me how to spell words these days - although the words she chooses are still fairly easy words.

A starts drama on Monday. She is excited about that.

Things we saw and touched!

This is the table of goodies we passed around, saw, touched and generally learned about....including pickled feet, pellets and feathers.....

Saw-Whet Owl

These are teeny tiny owls!!! 18 - 23cm tall!!!!!! Like little pocket owls!!!! Quite common in this area!!! Isn't it just the cutest thing? Such a sweet face :)

Great Horned Owl...

This is the Great Horned Owl that they have outside.....

Magnificent Golden Eagle!

Love Birds of a different kind!

These two birds are Hawks......one is a Ferruginous Hawk and the other is a Red-Tailed Hawk....one male, one female. The lady at the centre thinks they are becoming 'romantic'.......although they are not the same kind of Hawk, it has been known for them to mate together...so maybe!!!

Raptor Centre Visit!!

This afternoon we were invited to the Raptor Centre www.raptorshelter.org/
for a tour of the shelter. It was such a wonderful afternoon! When we got there we met Karl, the guy who runs the centre, and then we went inside the centre. We watched a slide show all about owls and birds of prey of Alberta and got to ask questions and hear all kinds of facts about them.

Jennifer I thought of you because every so often a joke picture of a Turkey Vulture would pop up and he would tell us a fact about them like that they scare off predators by vomiting in fromt of them :) I like turkey vultures more and more :) I think they are COOL!!!!!

I finally got ask an expert about the bird of prey we have on our land - last year in the Summer we had a bid that visited us every night. Around 3am it would sit on our roof and then fly around our land from post to post and it would screech. It iisn't a screech owl becaus screech owls don't screech. So we had no idea what it was! No one seemed to know! So I asked Karl! Turns out we are actually lcuky enough to have the Provincial bird living on our land! It is a baby Great Horned Owl! The beautiful owl you can see in the pictures below is the owl that lives on our land and it nests here because the owl that screeches is actually the baby - they only screech until they are 6 months old!!!! The Raptor centre actually has one that is 6 years old and because it never learned from an adult NOT to screech, it still does it!!!!

So the owl that we have flying around our place now is the adult version - I love it because it teases our dogs! It will call out to them for ages in a teasing manner and drives them crazy :) You can hear it sitting out there...maybe on the workshop roof......taunting them with it's call :)

After the slide show we met up with another guy and went outside to see the outside birds including the Great Horned Owl and the Golden Eagle.

Then we went upstairs into the building and met with a wonderful lady who showed us all kinds of interesting things...from jars of pickled feet from birds who had had their feet electricuted from sitting on the electrical wires and having their wings touch another........to pellets with WHOLE skulls in them......to bandaged wings, to nasal gastric tubes and machines to measureblood levels to see how hungry an owl is..........

They even have a real baby incubator in there used for owls.

We then went in to see more birds who are in recovery stages inside. A tiny Saw-Whet owl (we are putting bird boxes on our land for these) and the most STUNNING Great Gray Owl! It looked like an old Professor!

We had the most wonderful afternoon! The voluntary staff there are amazing and really know their stuff! The birds are stunning...poor little things were probably terrified, but are so beautiful. We really are very lucky to live in a part of the world where these creatures live wild and free for the most part....and there are places like the Raptor centre that nurse them better. They say that many of the birds are there because they are hit by cars - the birds fly into the road to get near roadkill or get mice etc and get swiped by cars :(

Thank you Raptor Centre :) What a great place!!!!

Lots more pictures to come!!!

Great Horned Owl