Aventure Playground - Nature Study

Wednesday are normally our nature study, at least during the summer.  But it is summer so that means it is time for fun too!  Instead of a hike, or hanging at the beach, we hit Adventure Playground in Huntington Beach instead. Cost of admission is $3/child, adults are free.

If you haven't heard of adventure playground, your missing out.  This isn't your traditional playground.  When I was little I lovingly referred to this as the mud park.  I really do love being able to share my fond childhood places with my own children.  This park is only open during the summer and you'll see in a minute while I called it the mud park.

Adventure Playground is recommended for ages 5-12 and it's pretty right on for the ages.  I did bring Green Bubbles last year but I wouldn't do much younger then 4.  Little Miss stayed home and although Megatron got to come along, he stayed in the ergo the entire time. There's a lot of things that toddlers can get hurt with that older children wouldn't have a problem with.  And if you go, make sure your prepared to get wet and dirty.  Bring an extra set of clothes for your kids, including shoes.  Oh, and speaking of shoes, everyone is required to wear tennis shoes here.  No sandals, flip flops, water shoes, etc. 

 The first area is the fort building area.  They have 4 different tree forts built for the kids to climb up into, one specifically just for older kids! Kids are allowed to check out a hammer and are given 3 nails.  There's no fee for this. If they want more then 3 nails they have to earn them!  Pick up 4 pieces of trash, or two bent nails to earn another nail.  What a brilliant rule!  It keeps the park clean, and discarded nails are less likely to be stepped on.  For older kids they are able to check out a saw as well.  While Green Bubbles isn't old enough for that, he did enjoy hammering things.  The picture above was him making a ramp on the side of the tree house.

 And here he is building his cross, plus sign, 'T' and, a car.  At one point he named it all of these things.  He's still to small to actually hammer the nails himself.  I nailed them most of the way in for him, as carefully as I could with a baby strapped to me, and let him do the rest.  He did hit his thumb once but shook it off.  He's gotten really sensitive to things like that lately so I was very proud of him for not letting it stop him from doing something he really liked. 

There's also a rope bridge the kids can cross over the water.  If they fall it isn't a big deal.  The water is really shallow and, at the deepest sections, only goes to Green Bubbles' hips.  This one was out of order last year so it was his first time crossing it.  He can be overly cautious about things so I was surprised that he not only tried it, but really enjoyed it and did it multiple times this day.

Green Bubbles favorite activity is the mud slide though!  The kids line up and climb some stairs built into a steep hill.  Employees of the park stand at the top with a garden hose and just run water down this tarp slide.  At the bottom is a little muddy water pit that kids dive into.  Some kids make giant splashes and actually go under the water but, as mentioned above, Green Bubbles is pretty cautious.  He goes pretty slowly down this slide and just drops gently into the pool at the bottom.  The slide opens and closes throughout the day and every time they announced it's opening Green Bubbles was one of the first in line.

My favorite is the rafts!  I love watching the kids on the rafts.  It reminds me of Huckleberry Finn.  The kids line up (or adults, but if you put to much weight on a raft it will sink!), and when it's their turn they get to walk into the water to their awaiting raft.  They use those long poles to push themselves around on the pond.  Although Green Bubbles really likes to 'lose' his pole in the water and pretend he is stranded and awaits one of his friends to rescue him. 

Some general tips I've learned:
1) They are serious about the tennis shoes.  I've seen them turn people away!
2) Don't forget clean underwear, and socks if your changing them into another pair of tennis shoes.
3) It opens at 10am and we always get there right at opening.  It gets crowded around lunch time with various summer day camps coming to visit.  A lot of kids without a lot of adult supervision is our que to check out.
4) If you have littles, keep them at home.  There were some 3 year olds here from a day camp that I saw, but they didn't seem to be enjoying themselves at all.  One of them cried the entire time on the raft, they were to afraid to go down the slide, and the building area just wasn't very safe for them.  Give it a year or two.  This park has been here since I was a kid in the 80's at least, it's not going anywhere yet. 

Preschool - Cows

Recently, someone in a homeschool group I belong to asked for recommendations for preschool curriculum.  There were a lot of great suggestions and I loved looking them up.  Most of them either cost a lot of money, or were very structured however.  I knew I wanted to do something with Little Miss this coming year because she was showing interest and already picked up a lot of her ABC's and was starting to count to 10 already, but I didn't want it to be forced or very structured yet since she is still just two years old.

I almost didn't didn't look at Letter of the Week thinking it was what it said it was.  I didn't want a huge focus on just letters and sounds yet.  But I sure am glad I looked because they have a preparatory curriculum that focuses on themes for different weeks.  It includes shapes, colors, numbers, letters, and a fun theme. The first week is cows.  We decided to dive right into right now since we weren't really doing anything for school at the moment and Green Bubbles would benefit from the review.

Week one starts with the theme of cows, something near and dear to my little girl's heart right now.  We jumped on it and made it our own, although we took two weeks to complete it due to the holiday week and our nature study days. We checked out a lot of cow themed books from the library, colored in a large letter A, made square shaped cookies, and are talking about the nursery rhyme Hey Diddle Diddle and read some of the other rhymes from the website.  We made a cow out of squares, our shape of the week.  Although perhaps the favoriate of the kids was playing pretend as if we were cows.  There were many moos from all of us until I ended up being climbed on and turned into a horse!

Here's some pictures of the cows Little Miss and Green Bubbles made from a lot of squares.

Many of the books suggested by the website were not available at our library so I thought I would share a list of the books we were able to check out. (Links are affiliate).

 Little Calf by Kim Lewis - This book is a very simple story perfect for my 2 year old.  It is about a little calf learning to walk, nursing from her mother, and making friends with a little girl.  Little Miss really loved this book and it was her favoraite of the bunch.  The thought of a baby, human or animal, just excits her.  She kept giving the calf kisses on each page.  I really liked that we were able to introduce a new vocabulary word for her too, calf.

When Cows Come Home by David L. Harrison - This is a cute book about cows who play when the farmer is looking away.  Little Miss loved dancing around when I read this book because the cows swayed and twirled.  It's a very silly book with a lot of catchy, rhyming phrases.

Cows Can't Fly - Another silly book with a good message.  A little boy draws a picture of cows flying and when the cows discover it, silly things ensure.  Little Miss didn't like this book as much as Green Bubbles did. 

The Cow That Went OINK - Little Miss loved this silly book about a cow who didn't know how to say moo.  A great book to teach about animal noises and how being different can be a good thing.  It was a great follow up to the game that we played earlier pretending to be cows too!

THE STORY OF FERDINAND by Munro Leaf - If you haven't read this book you need too!  It's a great classic story that I've read to Green Bubbles many times.  While technically this book is about a bull, I still think it counts as our cow theme.  We also already owned this one!

Kiss the Cow! by Phyllis Root - Another silly story about a magic cow and a kiss.  Green Bubbles and Little Miss were both giggling over this book and the thought of kissing a cow.

Happy Anniversary and 4th of July, Disney style.

10 years ago we decided to get married on 4th of July weekend.  10 years, 3 children, and a lot of ups and downs.  To celebrate we left the kids at home, even the baby, and went out to dinner at Napa Rose at Disney's Grand Californian.

 

The biggest present we gave each other was to renew our passes to Disneyland though.  It's been almost an entire year since we've been and we wanted to surprise the kids.  We didn't tell them until we woke them up on the 4th of July and they were so excited! We decided the night before hand to go to Storyteller's Cafe for breakfast.  It's a character breakfast which we knew the kids would love.  Chip and Dale's Critter breakfast was a hit!

The kids got to see a Chip, Dale, the bears from Brother Bear, and the raccoon from Pocahontas, all while eating some great food.  Green Bubble's favorite part was then the bear gave us a Happy Birthday button with America written as the name.  I don't think he quite understood it, but he loved getting a present from a character.  He even took a selfie with my camera while I was at the buffet with his sister.

Here's a few more photos from our breakfast.  It's hard to get good pictures in general of small children, and adding in a character breakfast you can see how great most of the pictures were!

After breakfast we decided to go to Disney's California Adventure since you can enter it through the hotel.  We expected a lot of crowds being the 4th of July but were pleasantly surprised.  We managed to walk on almost every ride we went on that day.  We got to go on Ariel's Ride, King Triton's Carasol, Toy Story Mania, and Disney Jr's Live on Stage.  Daddy took Malcolm to Soaring while I took the littles to go on the Monsters Inc. ride and we got to see Doc McStuffins and Princess Sofia as well while we waited for them to catch up to us.

And the best part?  We were home by 12:30pm with plenty of time for meals and naps before seeing the fireworks in our own neighborhood away from the crowds.  Since we have the passes we can go back whenver we want and not have to feel guilty for spending so much money to only go for a few hours.  In fact, Little Miss even asked to go back again today and I think we just might!

Nature Study - North Beach

 This week we went to North Beach in San Clemente.  This one is a drive for us but totally worth it.  There's a small playground, the beach, an awesome pier and, of course, the beach! This wasn't supposed to be a water day though although whenever water is near the kids always end up in it.  We were hiking from North Beach to the pier and back again. And since it's summer, not a lot of nature 'study' was going on, but a whole lot of fun.

Some of the girls enjoying the water while waiting for more friends to come.

Little Miss found a huge feather and carried it almost the entire way by herself. 

Who can resist a little baby cuteness?

Little Miss collecting rocks on the beach.

The kids love this wooden bridge.

Making friends.

Trains!

 I don't have very many pictures of my oldest or youngest on this day.  My oldest was constantly running ahead and I stayed near the toddler, especially being near trains and water.  And the youngest was in the ergo most of our trip.  Everyone had a lot of fun though.

Summer colds

Summer is a great time to be outside and just play.  We put school on hold on the summer here but still try and fit in 'school' like activities every once in awhile.  But no text books or lesson plans here. At least not at this stage of life.  But even some of the fun activates aren't happening right now.  My two youngest both have colds so we've been staying home the last week and playing in our backyard a lot.  I bought an inflatable kiddie pool and the older two are having a lot of fun playing with that.  And then coloring with chalk on the wet concrete afterwards.

I hope everyone else is enjoying their summer!

Summer Nature Study - Muth

Just in case you didn't know, summer is hot.  And depending on where you live, it's very hot.  And when it is hot it is hard to get outside.  I know a lot of people who stop nature study in the summer but my family goes stir crazy when we don't get outside. Water is always the key for us when it's hot!
For summer nature study centers around water and/or a lot of shade.  We have some beach days planned and other  just fun days focusing more on water and less on nature.  This week the weather wasn't very hot though so I decided to pounce on one last hike before it was just to hot to think about going on trails with small children.
We went to Muth Interpretive Center in Newport Beach.  It was our first visit ever to this particular nature center and I can't believe we haven't been here before.  It was one of the nicest and kid friendly nature centers we have ever been! We started off waiting on the roof of the nature center. Yes, the roof.

The kids loved looking over the edge.  Just below where we were standing was a butterfly garden with a path that meandered all around.  We only saw a few little white butterflies fluttering around at the time.

They also had a large binocular set on top of the building.  It was completely free and the kids loved taking turns looking through it.  My son proudly proclaimed that he found a beautiful flower while using them.  It was almost as exciting as watching all the planes taking off from John Wayne airport flying over our heads at the time.  The littles were especially excited about the planes. 

 Once our entire group arrived we went on our hike.  We walked right past the nature center but didn't go in yet wanting to save it for the very end when the day was hotter.

 The kids loved the little ridge they could climb and looked down into the water.

 Across the stream in the mud we could see a lot of different animal tracks. 

 There were bat boxes close to the trail the kids got to see as well.

 And who doesn't love to cross bridges!

 We got to see bass heading back out into the ocean and even a bat ray swimming underneath us.  There were a few sea birds as well but they were pretty far away.  The kids were especially loud on our trip so we didn't see a huge amount of wildlife.

But they did find a lot of fun rocks to climb on.  Green Bubbles called this his rock biome.  Even when we are away from the computer, minecraft is never far from his mind. 

 We made our way to the nature center after our hike and the kids loved it.  They had a lot of cool things to explore including this 'mud tunnel' with a lot of touch activities. 

 Live animals like snakes, spiders, lizards, turtles, and frogs.

 A kids room full of books, puppets, coloring area.

 A lot of puzzles!

And a really big tree.

The kids are already asking to go back and explore new trails.  We can't wait to visit the Muth again.