M and K cannot function without lots of exercise outside. Getting them outside enough is a big challenge; because how can I cook, tidy up, wash laundry, and do sit down school outside? The weather is less of a challenge; they have good coats and can usually find hats and mittens. Working around nap time and now the early sunset is another problem. We stop kitchen table school at 11 most mornings and go to the play ground.
I’ve been realizing lately that I also need to get them into natural spaces too, as Annie was thinking, and the Circe institute lectures mentioned. So, Today, tataratare! We got outside in nature.
We walked a few more blocks than usual and went to the Larsen Purchase of the Attleboro Land Trust. M and B grabbed their long neglected nature notebooks (long neglected because Mom has not taken them along on walks in a very long time), some colored pencils, and a field guide to New England wildlife (it’s even got sharks in it).
K walked most of the way there, I carried her home on my shoulders, which are now a bit stiff, so that must count as weight training. The boys ran past the waterfall, paused to watch a mallard swim to the falls, then fly down over the rough bits. This used to be the beginning of a lock leading to turbines in the basement of the mill building DH works in. Then the boys ran ahead to the sandy point on the mechanics pond. Two swans swam up, probably looking for bread. I cautioned the boys not to get too close (I got a really impressive bruise off a swan bite once, for not forking over my sandwich I think. It chased me up a picnic table. Yes, where you imagine the bruise to be is where it was…) They got to watch the swans feed, drink by scooping water into their bills then tipping their heads back, and see the silvery color of the juvanile’s bill.
K began to want her dinner, so I started her home, while B finished his drawings. They caught up with us pretty quickly though, K didn’t want to walk very much. I was playing the "Oh look, there is a Canada goose dropping, there is a goose track in the sand, there is a lawn mower…" K played along and said what could have been truck, or duck, I’m not too sure which right now, either could fit.
I need to do this more often: the boys loved it, I didn’t make them draw or write, and they did both, they looked up swans and ducks and geese in the book, and didn’t want to come home, even though they were hungry.
They did drop very strong hints that as long as they had the backpack with them, some unlined drawing paper would be welcome, and some cookies and water.
Gotcha boys, anything to get cheerful voluntary note taking!