Sugar Sprites & Other Delights

Last night, while most children were being bathed and sung to and tucked into bed, this is what my children (and husband and I) were doing:

I have not explored a whole lot of areas in Edmonton, but so far my very favorite place to explore in is the Whitemud Creek Ravine. It is absolutely huge. There are well-travelled and maintained trails as well as the less travelled trails (pictured above) that started as animal trails. We explored the ravine for 3 hours, and then we lost the sunlight. It was handy to have a flashlight to make our way out of the ravine. I was impressed that we didn't get lost. Or wet.


On another note, Halloween is fast approaching. My boys LOVE Halloween. They love to dress up (almost daily), and they love trick-or-treating. Yes, we are one of the few Christian families who trick-or-treat or acknowledge Halloween in any way. If you ask my boys what Halloween is about, they will answer "Halloween is all about the candy!!!" And, seriously, it is all about the candy for us. Woot! If you know me, you know I LOVE candy. So don't send me any hate mail about how pagan I am because we knock on doors asking for candy.

We have started a new tradition this year. I just found out about the Sugar Sprites. I didn't know about them until just a few days ago. The Sugar Sprites survive in the summertime by gathering nectar from the flowers (and I suspect they also get into the hummingbird feeders). But come winter, their struggle for survival increases as the months progress. A long time ago they heard that human children gather candy on Halloween night and they started visiting houses of generous and kind children to gather candy for their families to last them the winter. Now, the Sugar Sprites go from house to house looking for candy that is left out for them. They take the designated candy and in it's place leave a small token of thanks - a toy, a book, or even $5.
This year my boys will be collecting candy mainly for the Sugar Sprites. They will select a few pieces of candy to enjoy and give the rest to the sprites. And in return, the Sugar Sprites will show their gratitude with a gift in return. It's win-win.

Spread the word about the Sugar Sprites! They need our help!

Thanksgiving Dinner

While the majority of Canadians were eating turkey and stuffing and all the trimmings in their cozy home surrounded with family and enveloped in love, we were trapsing about in the forest, looking for treasure, exploring the great outdoors, and freezing our hands and feet off. It wasn't intentional, it just sort of happened.

If you look closely, you can see us weaving in and out of the brush.

I guess this is what happens when you live far away from family and the mom of the house (that would be me) doesn't not enjoy cooking or the clean up, nor does she really enjoy eating all that much. The effort put into preparing food is just too much to justify considering the enjoyment from actually eating the food is so low. "Okay....let's eat so we can get on with stuff!!" Don't get me wrong, I eat....a lot....but not for fun.

So, when the time came for me to go and buy and turkey and fixin's, instead of going out like a responsible adult to collect the items needed, I said to my kids, "Hey - would you like to go geocaching?"
They both looked up at me wide-eyed for a second before shouting back "YEAH!!!" I looked at my husband and shrugged.
"So, should we go?"
"I guess..." he shrugged back.

So off we went, into the Mctaggart Sanctuary.

Found a geocache!

We found several caches. 5 in total I think. Or maybe it was just 4. Usually we take the hard way (unintentionally) and end up bushwacking for what seems like miles and miles.

We spotted an old wasps nest and took it down to dissect:

The boys thought it was very interesting...

I love how perfect and symmetrical the hexagons are that bees and wasps make. Did you know that the hexagon shape is the most space preserving and structually solid shape of all time? The inborn knowledge to create these shapes is actually mathematically the best choice that they have. There is no better shape for this purpose.

Hexagons!!!

We geocached until the sun went down. We actually needed the flashlights we brought to find the last geocache.

That is what we did instead of thanksgiving dinner. And I gave thanks the whole time we were out, for all the things that I am thankful for. I also gave thanks that I didn't have to prepare a huge thanksgiving meal to prove that I was thankful.

Happy (Steroid) Harvest!!

Well, it is harvest time.  So begins (well, actually continues) the gruelling labor of plucking plump, ripe, fresh veggies from the ground. Ha!

This year (our 2nd year of having a teeny tiny urban garden) was our first year of growing zucchini. We harvested quit a few zucchini, to my surprise. Most of them were the size of pickling cucumbers - all but one:

I am not sure to what we owe the size variation.

The little zucchinis ended up in Cris' delectable cookies. The big one that obviously was on steroids ended up being sliced into coins and fried. Toviel and I smothered them in butter and ate it. The rest of the family was not too fond of it, but Toviel and I....we will eat anything that is smothered in butter. It was delish!! And for the next few days I mustered up some new-found energy to do some serious organizing and cleaning. So, I am pretty sure that zucchini was on steroids very good for me.

Fractals - Or Something Like That

The other day I was teaching both my sons some math and we were playing with equilateral triangles. We discussed the properties of equilateral triangles and played with different sizes of them that I had cut out of paper. I came across a side note in my guide saying that we were going to be discussing ten fractals the next lesson.
Frac-what? What the heck are fractals? And why are my 5 and 7 year olds learning about something that I know nothing about?

It turns out that fractals are geometric shapes that can be split into parts, each of which is a smaller size copy of the whole. And a tens fractal merely suggests 10 of the smaller = one of the larger. Well, it is way more complex than that, but for our introduction to fractals it was simple (thank goodness!)

The 3 of us made ten 10-fractals with equilateral triangles. Then we glued those all together to make one big fractal to show how 10 of these triangles with 10 triangles in them equals 100. Then, we were supposed to make 10 of the ten 10-fractals and glue those together to make one monstrous fractal, which shows how ten 10's are 100, and ten 100's are 1000 or that ten ten 10's are 1000. This process is way to monotonous with 2 boys who don't know how to switch off their imaginations to perform the tedious processes of life and 1 ADD mom who is easily distracted and has difficulty staying on task for more than a few minutes. So we just did one of the 100 triangles.

For the 1000 triangle we just used our imaginations, since those run rampant all the time anyways.

A Little Acedemic

Okay...

After that last post it makes it look like all we do is play all day with a few chores mixed in there.

I actually DO teach my kids acedemic stuff.

Last week we learned about linking verbs.
A verb is a word that does an action, shows a state of being, links two words together and something-something-something (I can't even remember).

Anyways, we were concentrating on the "links two words together" last week, and this is what we did:

Cool hey? See how the linking verb links the words together? For those of you less inclined to remember how we parse sentences, the linking verb is on the white link.
I thought it was a cool, hands on idea for reinforcing the concept.

No, it wasn't my idea (Thanks Jessie Wise). But I implemented it pretty well.

What We Do Instead of School

Last week the weather was so nice. Not your typical September weather. I felt bad for all the kids who had just returned to school and had to miss out on part of the sunshine, since we had such a wet and cool summer.

This is what we did the first week that other kids went back to school:

It was something like 35C or 37C out. We had only had 3 or 4 days this summer that were even close to being pool-worthy, so I happily filled the pool up and let the boys spend the afternoon splashing around and keeping cool. I usually add some bubble bath to the water and they enjoy some bubbles while getting clean.

When they were done and eating a 100% juice freezie, I announced that I was going to harvest some of our garden. Elijah protested and asked that I wait until he was done his freezie because he wanted to help.

He loved plucking the beets and carrots out of the ground. He also helped me with the tedious peas-and-beans-picking from start to finish. I was lucky that I was able to employ my mom (who was visiting for a few days) to do the shelling, cutting & washing of the veggies as that is my least favorite part of having a garden.

It was an enjoyable and relaxing end to the summer.
Now...on to fall....

At The Farm

The other day we went to The Ranch.

We played in the hay and straw for a bit....

...then we put Elijah to work.

He is a huge fan of combine harvesters. He is a huge fan of anything that is really huge, actually!

We drove through several fields (passing through one of the gates I managed to smash up our van pretty good...but we won't talk about that)....
We walked to the lake through millions of foxtails.

Toviel found a pretty hawk feather. He suggested we make a writing quill out of it...

...and when I cleaned up the table in the evening, this is what I found. He HAD made a writing quill out it.