I'm So Sorry, Boys...

...but Christmas isn't for two whole months yet!

Yes, you may play outside as long as you like!

Apple Picking at MacPhee's Orchard

This week we did something the boys look forward to every year: apple picking at MacPhee's Orchard. Five of their twenty varieties were ripe, and we chose to pick Spartans and Nova Spies. Sadly, my favourite JonaGolds were not quite ripe yet. I'm not sure yet if we'll manage to come back for them when they're ready... the orchard is about 40 minutes away from our place.

The orchard is a peaceful, quiet place with thousands of small trees. Children can easily pick apples all by themselves. We met several families from our local homeschool co-op there and got to work. SA(7) carefully read the information sheet telling us about all the varieties of apples...their taste, texture, and other defining characteristics. MM(3) pulled the wagon around. As usual, JJ(5) was my most faithful worker.

As we were paying for our apples (only .70/lb!), the boys caught sight of the maple syrup they were also selling. The boys wanted some, but I held them off ...maple syrup is expensive! Finally I decided they could buy some --if they went and bought it themselves (learning experience = added value, to me). 

I gave SA(7) the money, and told JJ(5) to go with him and ask for a small bottle. They started off to the tiny store, but before they got there, JJ came back. "I'm shy, Mama," he said.

"I know," I said. "You just go along with SA. He's not shy."

They got to the little store, but didn't go in. All three of them (by this time MM had decided he wanted to be in on it, too) hung around the door and peeked in. This time SA came back.

"I've never done bought something without you before, and I feel nervous about it," said he.

"Well," I said firmly, "If you boys don't buy it, we're not going to have it."

So they went back again. At the door, they peeked in and looked back at me. "Go on," I encouraged.

They went in. Five seconds later, JJ came tearing out with the maple syrup, and SA came out more slowly with the change.

"Did he give you the correct change?" I asked. 

"Yes," he said.

JJ was dancing with excitement. "He gave me the maple syrup, and he gave SA the money!"

"Did you do it the way I told you?" I asked them.

"Not exactly," said SA, "I didn't ask for a small bottle, I asked for a 500 millilitre bottle, because that's how much the small bottles hold."

So we went home and had apple pancakes and maple syrup for lunch.

Field Trip to Orwell Corner

 Today, we went to Orwell Corner, a local historic village.

A little over 100 years ago in this one-room schoolhouse, science in the early years took the form of nature study. My boys didn't see anything strange or different about that at all. This was a humming-bird nest.

MM(3) dipping candles.

We had a lovely long wagon ride.

There were also animals to see, a blacksmith shop to visit, and a general store with many interesting artifacts.

My favourite part of the experience was seeing SA(7) at the blacksmith shop. He was very interested in everything about it, and it was a joy to see the utter unself-consciousness with which he peppered the blacksmith with questions and exclaimed in wonder at the temperature of the glowing metal. He learned a lot today, and told his papa all about it when he got home tonight. I love natural, spontaneous narration!

Spider Citizen Science

I was listening to the radio a couple of weeks ago and heard that Nature PEI was looking for citizen scientists to collect spiders. Apparently PEI only has 38 known species of spiders, not because that is the real number of species we have, but because no one has ever bothered to count them. Nova Scotia has 437 known species, New Brunswick has 382, so it stands to reason that PEI must have more than 38.

I took three of my boys along to an informative workshop (including a nature walk with some hands-on spider catching practice!), and we've been collecting spiders. 

My favourite so far has been a Black and Yellow Argiope (sorry no picture, but you can see one here) of impressive size. I noticed its web first, an orb web with a zig-zag "zipper" down the center. I watched the web for a while, hoping to see the spider. After some time, I noticed it in the grass below the web and caught it.

Nature PEI has provided us with everything we need to collect the spiders, including a large canvas bug net. The boys love "sweeping" for spiders, shaking grasses and bushes, then bringing them all back to me to capture in our little vials. Of course, they catch many other interesting bugs as well as they do this.

I love citizen science! Have you had opportunities for citizen science? Would you go for spiders?

(19/8/15 Edited to add this picture of another Black and Yellow Argiope that my husband saw and photographed a couple of years ago, also on PEI. This one was much larger than the one I caught, about the size of his thumb, he said. Also, since I published this post, I have discovered that this spider is not one of the 38 known spiders on PEI, so we have made a scientific discovery here, folks! lol.)

Evening Primrose Nature Study Joy!

If you have evening primroses in your backyard and you haven't watched them bloom, you must do it some day! 

I was excited when I saw the Evening Primrose Outdoor Hour Challenge in my inbox last week, because I had just spent some time drawing one in my nature journal the day before. They are fairly plentiful in our back yard, and grow to between four and five feet tall. The boys and I picked some for our teatime flower arrangement, and noticed how fragrant they are.

During the day, we often see tiny insects inside the flower, and bumblebees flying into one, then another, pollinating them. I believe their normal pollination is done at night by moths, though we've never had a chance to see that happen.

From the Handbook of Nature Study, we discovered that evening primroses bloom very quickly in the evening. I went out to watch earlier this week and discovered that the time frame here was between 8:30 and 9:00. Since that's after bedtime for my little boys, watching the flowers open was an observation that had to wait for a special occasion. The boys and I finally went out together yesterday evening. We looked at all the plants and finally settled on one that had several buds that looked like they were about to bloom. Then we settled down to watch and wait. Within about ten minutes, we noticed one of the buds beginning to open. As the petals pushed against the sepals, the sepals suddenly let go one at a time, and curled back towards the stem. After that, the petals continued to unfurl until the flower was completely open. The whole process probably took about five minutes. Meanwhile, another flower had begun to open as well, so we got to watch two of them!

I think this was one of our favourite nature study experiences so far. It was so exciting to be able to watch a flower open before our eyes.

I will be sharing this post with the Outdoor Hour Challenge Blog Carnival.

Impromptu Barn Swallow Nature Study

We have been seeing and hearing swallows occasionally throughout the summer. They fly so quickly, though, that up till now it has been impossible to identify what kind of swallows they are. I had been thinking that they might have been tree swallows because many of them seemed to have white undersides, and I also caught glimpses of blue when they came close enough.

Yesterday and today, though, about fifteen or twenty have been congregating near our house. Every time I stepped outside the door, they seemed to be swooping through the air around my yard. Even whizzing by within ten feet of my head, I still had trouble telling exactly what they were.

Until this morning. Fifteen of these swallows settled nicely in a row on the power line leading right to my front door. For the first time I was able to get a good look without them being in constant motion. 

Photo courtesy of my husband, Stephen. Having the zoomed-in picture really helped with identification.

I grabbed my Handbook of Nature Study. I looked up tree swallows, and was excited to see that it said that tree swallows often congregate in early August before heading south. However, I saw almost immediately that these were not tree swallows, as they had a "collar" which tree swallows do not have. Also, a few of the swallows had more of a rusty-coloured underside. That made me think of barn swallows. But why did so many have white undersides?

I looked up barn swallows at allaboutbirds.org. One of the nice things about this website is that it usually has pictures of male, female, and juvenile birds. In this case, female and juvenile birds both have whiter undersides than the males. I believe the bird in the middle of the picture above is a male, and the other two are females. There were also several less sleek, more fluffy-looking birds, and I think those must have been younger birds. The "typical song" also confirmed the identification. These birds always seem to be twittering.

I am so glad to have finally figured out what type "our" swallows are!

I think the one on the left is a juvenile, with an adult female on the right.

Adventures on P.E.I.: King's Castle Provincial Park

I think I've started a tradition. For my birthday a week ago I once again took the boys out for a day as tourists. We went to Eastern P.E.I., starting at King's Castle Provicial Park, then going on to Cape Bear Lighthouse, and finishing our outing with a swim at Pinette Provincial Park.

King's Castle Provincial Park is one of our very favourite places on P.E.I. It probably has very little cultural or educational value (Though you could get a very decent nature walk in.). However, if you are looking for a place to get outdoors with little children for a day, this is the place to go.

The playground equipment is always what my children gravitate to first. There is a great variety of equipment, much of it obviously old-fashioned, but no less fun for all that! There is a merry-go-round, a very high slide, an airplane teeter-totter, sandboxes, toy cars for the very little children, and so much more.



The second thing they went to explore was a large wooden fort (castle?) with walls to scale, tunnels to crawl through, and ladders to climb. While we watched, a large hare came through a tunnel. A bird singing in a nearby tree turned out to be a dark-eyed junco.



By this time they were getting hot, so we walked down to the beach. Yes, this place has a beach, too! It's not a perfect beach, as the ground is a bit rocky as you get close to the water. But there is also lots of sand, and the boys spent some time with their sand toys before going out to wade in the water.

After resting for a while in a porch swing overlooking the water (there are numerous wonderful porch swings throughout the park), we decided to check if there were any geocaches in the area. There were, and we spent quite a while trying to find them. We never did, but we did discover some neat little hidden corners of the park. Our favourite was a little play lighthouse. My boys are not really into imaginative play (in the sense that they don't tend to play-act stories or situations on their own). Children who do enjoy play-acting would probably really enjoy the fairy tale characters scattered throughout the park, together with little buildings for playing the three little pigs, for example. These characters are getting a little shabby...they seem to be relics of a by-gone era. I believe someone told me that many years ago the park was called "Fairy-land."

In the middle of our geocache hunting, we decided we needed some ice cream. The ice cream at King's Castle is not to be missed, as they practically give it away. The boys' single-scoop cones were only 50 cents each! I splurged and got a double scoop cone for a dollar (since it was my birthday and all...).

The surprising thing (I thought, anyway) is that we had the park completely to ourselves. There were only two other boys who walked over from a nearby campground who stayed for a short while. Other than that, only the mosquitoes kept us company. There were plenty of them, anyway! When we'd had enough of the mosquitoes, we decided to go on to new adventures.

We visited Cape Bear lighthouse and climbed to the top (very scary when you're carrying an almost two-year-old!). Then we began to make our way back, stopping at Pinette Provincial Park for a swim. That particular park did not seem to be maintained...the grass was not cut and the washrooms were not open. Still, we had a lovely swim, and lots of fun skipping rocks.

Adventures on PEI: Taking the Ferry

Even when you live in a place as amazing as Prince Edward Island, it is possible to take the place you live for granted. I have found that I need to be intentional about exploring new places with my young children. I am making it a goal this summer to go out at least once every two weeks and visit some of the local attractions, both old favourites and new-to-us discoveries.

When I was about twelve years old, in the days before the Confederation Bridge connected PEI to the mainland, my family came on vacation from Ontario to PEI. The ferry was the only way you could get here back then. But I hadn't taken the ferry since.

Someone from our local homeschool group arranged a (free!) tour on the ferry at Wood Islands this week. This ferry connects PEI to Pictou, Nova Scotia. The trip takes about 75 minutes each way. If you were to drive on with a car, the trip would cost you $69 (about $20 more than taking the bridge to New Brunswick). But the regular price for walking on is only $18, with children 12 and under free. Not bad for an afternoon of fun.

Before we boarded, the boys were excited to watch the front of the ferry open up to let the trucks and cars out.

Then we got on and waited for our tour to begin. Meanwhile, the ferry began to move.


As soon as the ferry was well underway, our guide took us up to the bridge. SA was fascinated with all the screens and instruments, and I was pleased to see that he wasn't afraid to ask questions. JJ was the most excited to sit in the captain's chair, and MM just loved the windows right at his level that allowed him to see the water below.

After about an hour, we went down to the deck. We were nearing Nova Scotia.


The front of the boat opened up again. We stayed on the ferry and didn't set foot in Nova Scotia. There wasn't much we could have seen on foot, I think. Some other day, if we have more time, we may try getting off and taking a later ferry home...perhaps there are some geocaches to find on the other side...or maybe a nice place for a picnic? While we waited to leave again, we got in line at Cows and got some ice cream. We were lucky. It was the first day of the season that they were open on the ferry!

On the way back to PEI, we spent more time on the deck. At some point I decided I wanted to switch to the other deck (the one facing PEI), and when we went inside to walk there, the boys discovered toys! Not what we came for, but for them, it was all part of a fun experience.

I got them outside on deck again in time to see PEI as we approached.


All together, the trip took about three hours. We all had a lovely time, and hope to do it again some day!

Spring Nature Study: Getting Ready for Gardening

Our nature study has seemed a little unfocused so far this term. My plan was to switch our focus from birds to garden plants. However, starting sometime at the beginning of April, new birds began to come to our feeder. First the song sparrows, then the red-winged blackbirds came. Robins appeared. Starlings decreased, and common grackles increased. Yesterday and today the chipping sparrows have been visiting the feeder. I think that we will always be interested in birds now that we have focused on them for a season. I wonder if every focus we choose will be like that?

Winter hung on for a very long time this year. About 6 centimeters of snow fell on Monday, though it did not accumulate on the ground. The grass is finally getting green, but I noticed there is still snow on the ground in the woods. I always find that the switch from winter to summer is very late and quick on P.E.I., and I have to make the most of the brief spring to get things done in the garden.

Here are my tomato plants. My brother-in-law started too many, and passed some on to me. I repotted them in larger pots this week because it will still be three weeks before they can be planted outdoors. I have been putting them outdoors in a sheltered area for a few hours every nice day to begin to harden them off. The temperatures (since our snowy Monday) have been around twelve degrees Celcius.

My project this week has been to make a new lasagna bed. It's called lasagna because of the layers of compost used to make it. Some people call it sheet composting. It will be ready to plant in next year. I used layers of old straw, leaves and twigs from the yard, and kitchen compost that has been accumulating in my green bin since last year. The boys really enjoyed this project, especially pushing the wheelbarrow and helping me stack bricks to frame the bed. (I'm not terribly happy with what I've done...the bricks keep falling down! I'll either have to cement them together, or think of something else.)

I have two "square foot garden" boxes from previous years. The far one in the corner is filled with "Mel's Mix," soil made up of 1/3 compost, 1/3 peat moss, 1/3 vermiculite. After doing that several years ago, I decided that mixing my own soil was a ridiculous expense when regular soil and compost are virtually free. The near box is filled with compost made with the "lasagna" method I mentioned above. (I have found that the box filled with homemade compost tends to have better produce, but since I've never planted the same crops in each, I can't be certain.) Both have been planted with kale, spinach, onions, peas, and lettuce, which are all cold-weather crops. I'm not sure I didn't start a little too early with them, with snow falling this week. If they don't work out, I can always replant. The boys love helping me plant. They also run around finding worms, ants, sowbugs, and other interesting creatures. 

The cardboard between the beds is there to discourage weeds. I would like to put something --wood chips? stones? --on top of the cardboard so the walkways look nicer, but we'll see if I can get something like that for free. On the positive side, the cardboard is great to kneel on as I'm working.

What about you? What stage is your garden at in your part of the world? How do you share gardening with your children?

Field Trip to a P.E.I. Sugar House

A week ago, the boys and I went on a field trip with our local homeschool co-op to Woodlands Maple Syrup in Woodville Mills, PEI. We had been trying to go for a couple of weeks, but somehow between rain and other circumstances, we ended up going on the very last day of the maple syrup season (a season that only lasts a few weeks, depending on weather.).

Woodlands Maple Syrup sugar house

Our guide began our tour by taking us outside to an old maple tree of over 150 years old. (Most of their trees are not this large.) We all got to taste the sap from the tree. It tasted like sweet water, with a slight plant-like aftertaste.



He drew our attention to the tiny holes in the bark, made by sapsuckers (a type of woodpeckers). He speculated that First Nations people first discovered the sweetness of maple sap because of the insects that were attracted to the sap that came from these holes.

Even MM was interested, and he loved the taste of the sap!

With three children to keep an eye on in the crowd, I didn't hear everything our guide said, but I looked the process up later in my Handbook of Nature Study.

"The starch which is changed to sugar in the sap of early spring was made the previous season and stored within the tree. ...During the latter part of winter, the stored starch disappears, being converted into tree-food in the sap, and then begins that wonderful surging up and down of the sap tide. ...The ideal sugar weather consists of warm days and freezing nights. This change of temperature between day and night acts as a pump." (Handbook of Nature Study, p.630)

Next, our guide gave us all a taste of maple syrup in our little cups. My boys did not enjoy this as much...they found it too sweet to drink straight!

He explained to us that the first maple syrup of the season is very light-coloured, and it gets darker as the season progresses. He didn't explain why, but my trusty Handbook of Nature Study explained that  "During the first part of a typical sugar season, more sap comes from above down than from below up; toward the end of the season, during poor sap days, there is more sap coming up from below than down from above."

At Woodlands Maple Syrup, they use the time-honoured tap and bucket system, and go around with their tractor and collect the sap from all their buckets into a larger holding tank. From the holding tank, a hose carries the sap to their wood-fired evaporator inside the sugar house.

Inside the sugar house

The evaporator has three compartments. The first one is the largest. It is wide and shallow. Once enough water has evaporated, the sap goes into the second, then is finished in the third compartment. When the right temperature is reached, the tap is opened and the syrup is strained into a collection container. From there, it is taken and tested to make sure it meets the Canadian standards for concentration. It can take forty litres of sap to make one litre of syrup!

We bought a half-litre bottle of maple syrup, and had it on our whole wheat pancakes for supper that evening.

I will be sharing this post with Nature Study Monday at Fisher Academy International for their May link-up.