Ant Hills

This morning we went to a Nature program at Kings Landing Park. We learned some weather lore (which from the ranger's point of view meant sayings like "April showers bring May flowers" and ancient traditions such as Black Winter and White Summer battling it out). We took a wonderful walk through the park and looked for signs of Spring. Out of four bluebird nest boxes which we visited three had nests and one had eggs! The children each got to see three tiny beautiful blue eggs. The birds were up in the trees scolding us. We also saw a frog sitting at the edge of a pond, a ton of brand-new ant hills, buds on trees, and new baby leaves popping out of those buds. She told us about the May Day festival held at the park each year and apparently there will be visits by the Queen of the May and the Green Man. Also a MayPole, fresh eggs for sale, and all that sort of thing. Inspired, we came home and hung out our Nest Box (which last year was home to wasps but hopefully this year will attract a bird family). This morning we all saw that the tulips in Leah's garden had popped into bloom and our yard is really looking lovely. I'm glad we spent all that time last fall planting bulbs, although it was a bit of a pain in the neck at the time.

I wrote down the name of the book the Ranger was referring to, in case people were interested. She has a great collection of books! This one was The Magickal Year: A Pagan Perspective On the Natural World.

I'm going to be placing an order with Amazon in just a minute... it's been such a long time since I had money to spend on homeschool, but now the child support is coming regularly and I feel less panicked. Here we go:











Rebecca absolutely LOVES the little Salley Mavor board books and the rhymes are simple enough that Natalie can "read" them to her over and over, which she loves as well. In addition, I want to get the set by Jacqueline Mitton (Zoo in the Sky: A Book of Animal Constellations, Once Upon a Starry Night: A Book of Constellations, Zodiac: Celestial Circle of the Sun, Kingdom of the Sun: A Book About the Planets) so we can finally start going out at nights, since it's getting warmer, and learning the stories of the skies.