Lots of play and exploration in the forest and creek behind our house. Soon this will be too high to really be able to play at safely so we’ve been trying to get down here whenever we can.

Riding bikes (I hope I fixed that helmet before she took off! I likely did, as I’m a tad paranoid safety conscious about that kind of thing)

Playing at playgrounds

Playing in the mud in the rain

We were supposed to try out mini golf, and the recording said it was open, but when we got there we were disappointed to find out it was only open on the weekends. However, the driving range was available so we bought a bucket of balls for the girls to try hitting. We only had Kris’ left-handed clubs available for them to use though, which were also too big. Fiona found it boring. Meredith wants to come back when she can try mini golf and use a club the right size and hand.

We did a small square study and discussed living and non-living things. This also tied in nicely with a unit in BFSU.

And of course, lots of playing in our backyard, in the sand box, on the swing set, and on the trampoline.

And a bonus image of Guinevere rolling over. How is she already semi-mobile?

Our first stop was the market in Coombs. Meredith was thrilled with the piano. The note says that the piano is old but that people are welcome to play, so she played “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star”.

We had a delicious lunch outside where we got to watch the goats on the roof, which Coombs is famous for.

Then it was on to the Hamilton Hobby Farm, which is a new petting farm that has just opened this summer for the first time. We had so much fun, and the people were so nice. I think we will definitely be returning. Kris and I were discussing dreams of opening something similar closer to home! There were baby bunnies and chicks to admire and even hold.

A hay ride, which while bumpy the girls seemed to really enjoy.

Pony rides. Meredith has been taking lessons for the summer (when we’ve been home), so she didn’t end up being super thrilled with the pony ride compared to what she does in her lessons.

But it was Fiona’s first time on a pony and she had been asking for this for a while now. She seemed really nervous at first, but as soon as the pony started moving her face broke out in a huge grin and stayed there until the end.

The girls got to go into the pen with the goats and brush them.

And then one of the owners came by with a bucket of feed and they got to hand feed them too.

Other animals we saw were alpacas (which don’t belong to the farm, but were visible during the hay ride), turkeys, more chickens, and ducks. I was enthralled by the Indian Runner ducks and sad that the pictures really don’t do them justice the same way watching them actually walk around does. They walk upright and almost seem like they are missing two little forearms or something. So hard to describe but so neat to watch them.

All in all, it was a really fun day and I think we will definitely be back again next year when they are open again.

There was a playground near where we parked and the girls ran off to play, while Kris and I walked along the nearby trail to see how well our GPS would work. We don’t have a geocaching GPS, just one for the car, but it has walking directions on it and seemed pretty accurate. Until it died. We wandered around without luck in the general vicinity, but eventually decided there were too many trees to just guess. I went back to the van to plug it in while Kris and the older two hung out at the playground. I had to put the keys in the ignition to give the charger power. After a few minutes, I unplugged it again, not expecting it to have much life but also not wanting to sit for too long waiting for it to charge. I locked the doors and shut them just as I remembered the keys were still in the ignition! Oops! We discussed what to do briefly. There weren’t a lot of options since we don’t even have a cell phone to call AMA. Meredith and I went wandering into the forest with the GPS while Fiona played in the sandbox at the playground and Kris used some nearby scrap wood to try and break into our car. Meredith and I still had no luck, and we returned to the van to help and we did manage to get it open again, thankfully.

We decided to try the one across the street to start instead. The clue was a little more obvious and even if our GPS didn’t work well we could see even from where we were that there wouldn’t be a lot of options about where it could be, as there were only two trees in the whole field. Finally we got lucky! Kris lifted Meredith up to peek into the crook of a tree and she was so excited to see a little film canister there.

We opened it up excitedly, not sure what to expect. Inside was a tiny toy and some scraps of paper in a baggie. The girls took the toy and we left some marbles in its place, then signed and dated the paper and carefully put everything back the way we had found it.

The high from that find had the girls excited to try again at the first place. The GPS charge seemed to be fine, so we went back over and this time it led us almost directly to a large tree with a hole between the roots that we hadn’t really noticed prior to this.

Another find! inside were a few more toys and a soaking wet notepad. We were sad to see that on most of the pages the ink had run and was virtually unreadable. We had an extra ziploc with us and put the notepad inside after we signed it, but obviously too late to save the pages that were already soaked.

The next place was a bit of a walk, but led us to a beautiful area that we had never even known existed, an old train station in a small park setting off the main road. We had less luck with this one, though the clues seemed simple and most of the comments implied the cache was easy to find.

I’m not sure if we were missing something or if it was gone, but we eventually left without finding it, much to the disappointment of the older girls. How neat though that something like this is not only a fun way to get out as a family, but also gives us the opportunity to explore and learn about new things in our area!

One of the booklists I was looking at suggested the book Follow That Map! Since Meredith is still pretty interested in maps, and still talks about the treasure hunts we did last May, I thought it would be a fun one to try. Predictably, she loved it, and we read it a couple more times before she asked if we could make a map of our house again and do another treasure hunt.

We decided to make a compass first. The girls had fun using a magnet to rub a needle up and down, in one direction only. Meredith knows a lot about magnets and their poles already just from playing with them and asking questions, and it was neat to watch her experimenting with the magnet and needle. On one side of the magnet, it wouldn’t stick to the end of the needle, but instead jumped aside to the middle. I hadn’t known this would happen either, and we had a neat discussion about what rubbing the magnet was actually doing to the needle and how the poles might be changing. There are some interesting diagrams here with more information on how it works.

When it came time to float the needle, nothing was really working. Paper sank too quickly, cardboard didn’t spin, we didn’t have any light foam. Fiona eventually came up with the idea of putting the needle in a straw and that worked perfectly! The girls were fascinated to see that no matter which way they turned the needle, it always turned back. So we drew out our map of the bottom of the house and then used our compass to mark north, south, east, and west. Then Meredith left while I hid clues around. I made most of the clues like the ones in the book where the children find a treasure map: “Go 8 steps north” type of thing. But I had one that asked her to find and read a particular book, and the clue fell out of the last page, and a few other clues where she had to figure out what the clue was referring to. She had a blast! And after she figured out the clues, she would exclaim “Clever, Mama!” Or “I loved that one. Funny, Mama!” The treasure at the end was a snack and a few coins in her pirate treasure box.

She had a lot of fun doing this, and later when I ran out for a few groceries she had Kris help her make a treasure hunt for me and wrote out all the clues for it herself. I think this is definitely the sort of activity that will come up over and over.

She added grass and trees and water around the house to give it the look of an island, and up in the top left corner is a pirate ship.

She drew and wrote out some clues to lead Kris to the map. The pictures of the dryer and high chair actually show some items that are in the same room, not the dryer and the high chair themselves.

Then she got on her pirate outfit and her and Kris went on a hunt around the house for the clues, which ended with him finding the map and having to follow it to the red X, where he “dug” for treasure in our toy box.

Later, Kris set up a treasure hunt of sorts for Meredith. Her reindeer puppy was stolen, but able to leave behind a series of clues, each leading to the next one, and she had to solve them in order to catch up to the culprits and rescue her puppy. She had a blast!

We took care of a broody hen and were rewarded today with new baby chicks. (I’ll update with pictures as soon as she decides to show them off to us.)

We attended the local Not-Back-to-School Picnic.

We rode our bikes..

We baked and discussed fractions and played with Cuisenaire rods. Some of Meredith’s favourite things right now. She is constantly asking to “do” fractions. And she makes up these pictures from her head. The left is an abacus and the right one is an apple tree.

We planned and hosted a party at a park.

And visited a nature center.

We found crayfish in the creek behind our house, and rescued a snake and a frog (on two different days) from our cat and chickens.

We wrote letters to friends and family.

And created monsters on our refrigerator.

So in short, we didn’t change a thing.

Last week we went to Spectacle Lake with a few friends. It’s just a small beach mostly used by the families who live in the area. There is a little parking lot and then a short (easy) walk to the beach from there. On the beach itself, there were a couple of picnic tables, but not a whole lot of shade. My (very) pregnant friend who was there did manage to find a little bit of shade to sit in under a bush though.

The kids had fun together digging in the sand, swimming in the cold water, and just running around together.

A little later in the week, we met a few home schooling families at Bamberton Beach, which is a much bigger beach. Though the day started out nice, it got chilly soon after we got there. Luckily, it didn’t seem to bother any of the kids too much.

Again, there was a short walk from the parking lot to get to the beach. There is a grassy area up top, with the beach down below. There is a lot of brush between the two, so it’s hard to actually see the kids playing on the beach while sitting up on the grassy area.

On the side of the beach we were on, there are lots of little streams going down into the ocean. The water in these was a bit warmer and shallower than the ocean itself, so most of the kids stuck to playing in these.

We brought along our little Ikea tent for play and shade. It wasn’t really sunny enough to be needed, but the kids did have fun playing in and around it regardless.

A few of the kids decided to bury treasure and have treasure hunts. Meredith and Fiona’s treasure consisted of mostly rocks and clam shells.

It is so nice to get out and see all the beautiful places nearby!