We have found some fun things while out exploring in our neighborhood, including:
a very tiny baby snake
an egg
some magnolia leaves
some pine cones
an armadillo den
loads of grasshoppers, lizards, birds, and other creepy crawlies
flowers
plants
trees
Spanish Moss
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We are looking forward to trying out the Nature Chart Game, the Fall Game, and the Nature Drawing Game. All of them appealed to the boys when I shared them with them.
Then, we found out that according to the Tampa Tribune, who got their information from the Associated Press:
More than 100 national parks (in the USA) that usually charge entrance fees will be offering free admission the weekend of Aug. 14-15. In addition, many national park concessionaires have special offers for the weekend with discounts and coupons for rooms, tours and products.
Parks participating in the free Aug. 14-15 weekend include Grand Canyon in Arizona, Yosemite in California, Rocky Mountain in Colorado, Volcanoes in Hawaii, Acadia in Maine, Glacier in Montana, Badlands in South Dakota, Arches, Bryce and Zion in Utah, Shenandoah in Virginia, Mount Rainier and Olympic in Washington, and Yellowstone, with entrances in Idaho, Montana and Wyoming.
So, if you live in the USA or if you are planning a visit to the USA over this coming weekend, you may want to try to fit going to one of the national parks offering free admission for this upcoming weekend.
Our family has some favorite parks that cost little or no money both here in Florida and in other states.
Here is a list of some of our family favorites:
Fort DeSoto Park
South Carolina State Parks
Hunting Island State Park
Pennsylvania State Parks
We love playing outside, whether we are playing at a nature preserve, park, playground, beach, or pool.
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What does your family like to do outside?
Would love to hear the fun things that your family does outdoors...
Please leave a comment and your email and I will share a few of the activities (free pdf downloads) we do to bring the outdoors back in with us when Big Bro and Little Bro feel like writing about our time spent outside.
We have several themed vocabulary sheets that the boys can use when they want to write about something, including these three that relate to playing outside:
At the Beach, By the River, and At the Park
Please be sure to check out the neat
Kids Discover Nature 30 Day Challenge
...as well as the cool
We Play links over at Childhood 101.
Happy Tuesday!
13 comments:
You found such great things! Even the baby snake, which I hope isn't poisonous or a constrictor! My mom lives in south Florida, so I know what you mean about what's lurking in the backyard. Great tips on the NP too!
My girls love to play outside and we always take toys out of the house to use outside or bring treasures like fircones inside - perhaps to use as cakes in our play kitchen. They really love small world play too - you might like our fairy and dinosaur gardens. http://nurturestore.co.uk/make-a-fairy-garden-2
Love, love, love this post for its information, inspiration and alll! (But not for the fact that I now have MORE I want to look into and do. I am so bad at simplifying as I hear about great things!)
Also glad Mama Nature washed your car for you. If only I could have gotten her to clean the inside of my vehicle I would have been set. Three years worth of road trip crumbs - yuck!
Oh, an armadillo den! We have no such things over here. I'd love to see one of those.
A great challenge idea and you've discovered so many fabulous things :)
So many things to discover outside! We recently went out to investigate our wood pile and found so many different bugs! It kept the kids amused for ages :)
We love to play outside, too. I really like to take the boys to the community garden with me. My toddler is a bit young, but the oldest always likes seeing what's ready for picking.
In the autumn we like to explore the park for the different seed pods we can find.
So sorry it has taken me so long to get here! Overseas guests, a broken car and a rampaging pre-shooler has made for interesting times! :)
The challenge looks like a wonderful idea, and what some great things you found outside (although I hate meeting snakes!) and some great photos :)
We aren't playing outside right now, no sun, no yard, no fun!But when we do get the chance to get back out there I will let you know :)
We love to play and explore outside too.
I made up a scavenger hunt type of activity for my children where we went outside to see if we could find the collection of things I had listed out. Then, once we had all of our outdoor goodies we let our imaginations run wild and used our collected items to create something - for example, a creature, a piece of jewellery, a house, a piece of furniture etc. The link to the blog post where I wrote about this and includes the template that we used to for our outdoor creations scavenger hunt can be found here part way through the post):
http://etadventures.blogspot.com/2010/02/tot-school_27.html
I also made up a nature scavenger hunt relating to new life in our backyard and it can be downloaded from this post (once again it is about half way through this post):
http://etadventures.blogspot.com/2010/01/tot-school.html
We also like to "cook" with "ingredients" (grass, flowers, dirt stones etc) from outside.
Thanks for stopping by waddleeahchaa and thanks for all this great information! :)
Thanks for checking out Go Explore Nature. I always love meeting a fellow nature lover w/ kids! :o) Glad to see you're participating in this challenge - isn't it a great idea?!
Thank you for joining the 30-Day Outdoor Challenge @ Kids Discover Nature. It's so great having others join in the fun!
Hi! Congratulations, you won the Gus Outdoors Lizard Town DVD for joining the 30-Day Outdoor Challenge! Please e-mail me via the "About" tab (look for how to contact me directly) on http://www.kidsdiscovernature.com so I can make arrangements to send it to you! Thanks again, for joining the challenge and enjoy the DVD!
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