Nature’s Classroom

We got back last night after four days at the Farm. My girls haven’t been to the Farm in quite a while. They’ve grown a lot since last summer, and they really blossomed during this trip.

There is really no better learning and play than that which happens in the great outdoors.

The weather was kind of crummy. Rainy and windy and chilly much of the time we were there. But they still got lots of time outside.

The discoveries were plentiful.

We discovered that Lass has a love for fishing.

She’s like her Daddy. She was very determined to catch fish and particular about where she wanted to drop her line. She said, “I want to catch a whale, Daddy. But not a big whale, because that might break our rod. Just a little whale.”

She didn’t catch a whale, but she caught quite a few crappies for her efforts.

After she caught the first one she moved to a new spot and said, “Now I’m gonna catch another big fish.” And she did.

That sure made her Daddy smile.

Miss did some fishing too, but she was much less into it than Lass.

She was more interested in getting dirty. These girls love a good puddle, the muddier the better.

We discovered puddles. And mud.

It’s all just one big puddle for them…

As I mentioned, there was lots of rain during our visit, which meant lots of runoff. While we were taking a Ranger ride around the Farm, we discovered this area where the water was flowing down to a drainage pipe into one of the ponds.

Flowing water + Big puddles + Rocks for jumping = A perfect country “splash pad”

I halfheartedly tried to keep them sort of dry at first, but it just wasn’t going to happen.

Miss experimented with how far she could walk into a big puddle before it got deep enough to flow over the tops of her boots. Once it did, she didn’t care, but it was funny to watch her “testing the waters.”

Both girls were dumping water out of their boots when we were done.

Lass just wanted to roll in the water and repeatedly plunked herself down on her butt in a big puddle. I did draw the line at letting her lie down in it, though she would have if I had let her.

In the photo below she’s checking to see how wet her rear end was.

It was pretty wet.

She didn’t care one bit.

The drainage pipe emptied into the pond. My Father-in-law went to the empty-out end and called back through the pipe to the girls. It took them a few minutes to figure out who or what was calling them through that pipe. They got quite a kick out of it. 

Baby Sis got a taste of the fun on the Farm this trip too.

She still isn’t quite sure that she likes grass, but we’re working on that one. 

More discoveries:

Just before the girls found their “splash pad,” we were looking into the pond for crawdads. My husband caught two tadpoles, in different stages of metamorphosis. One was still fully “tadpole,” with no legs at all. The other was bigger and had his two back legs developed. It was so cool for the girls (and me) to see them like that side by side.

On a treasure hunt earlier in the trip, the girls were riding around the farm in the Ranger with their Dad, grandparents, cousins, and aunts and uncles (I stayed in the house with Sis for that one). They drove near a large area of tall grass and my brother-in-law’s bird dog stopped and stared at it. My brother-in-law said, “Get it!” and the dog ran to the grass, flushing out a huge turkey! Apparently it scared the heck out of everyone in the treasure hunting party. My girls are still talking about that turkey.

They discovered the fun of boat washing.

They are always up for any opportunity to get wet and play with bubbles.

They saw so much and learned so much in just four days.

Lass found a worm on the edge of one of the ponds. She was so proud of that worm.

Also near the pond was an almost fully intact skunk skeleton. It had been totally picked over by vultures, so there was no meat left on it, just a little bit of it’s hide hanging off. My father-in-law picked it up so Lass could look at it. It had the whole skull, spine, ribs, and most of the legs still all perfectly together. Lass has been talking about that ever since. “That skunk stinked my nose!” she says.

There was a killdeer’s nest in the rocks of the driveway. They got to check out the eggs and watch the things the Mama Killdeer did to try to lure us away from her babies.

Miss wanted so badly to catch that Mama Killdeer. She ran and chased that bird endlessly. Like her sister with the fish, she was determined.

She didn’t catch her.

The girls also got to see a very small bird’s nest in a tiny lilac tree. It had two eggs in it, from different birds. My husband and mother-in-law explained to the girls (and to me) that cowbirds lay their eggs in other birds’ nests for other mama birds to take care of them. Who knew?

They got to see and examine lots of bugs, from crickets to butterflies to ticks (ew).

I love the stuff my kids learn when we go outside, especially in the country.

I spend a lot of time preparing the things I teach them in our little home preschool. I comb for books and printable activities for them to do. I search Pinterest for art projects to fit with each theme we do. I laminate, I cut, I glue and velcro and stick magnets on.

But nothing compares, nothing comes even close, to the richness of nature’s classroom for  providing learning and growth for my kids. And for me.