To jump-start, and ease into our first week back to school, I decided we should start our week with a nature walk (and today will be the warmest and most pleasant weather of the week!). Plus the nature walk can get pushed aside due to either a 4-day school week (because of other errands and activities) ... or mommy-laziness. ahem.
At any rate, the kids love nature walks, so they were thrilled about this little excursion!
We have a creek behind our house and really enjoy exploring back there. Rock Creek, appropriately named, as you can see.
We enjoyed a good bit of time just playing in the water and discovered layers of ice along the edges.
After a while of extracting sheets of ice and shattering them on the rocks, we continued along the creek bed, and found some cool tracks and animal scat:
Can you see the trail of raccoon tracks that travel along the water's edge?
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Two hours later, we were home and hungry, so the entries into our nature notebooks were put on hold until our bellies were filled and the little guy went down for a nap.
These are seed pods we collected off a shrub of some sort along the rocky creek bed. Obviously dormant for the winter; however, we have seen them many times and so figured today was a good day to identify them!
They are bag pods, or bladder pods. More specifically: sesbania vesicaria (because there are numerous species of bladder pods!)
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And, so. I would say that our back-to-school week is off to a fantastic beginning!
What better way to begin, than with nature?
God writes the gospel not in the Bible alone, but on trees and flowers and clouds and stars.
~author unknown, commonly attributed to Martin Luther
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