Week 6 of the John Muir Family Award

What a lovely collection of challenges

Meeting a tree was definitely Islas favourite.

Found caterpillar eggs!!!

This sycamore tree was 2.03m circumference

We spent the time at least 2 hours looking at all the trees and getting the bark rubbings done and measuring the width of the trees and learning about circumference. Bark rubbing was great til we had to go on a crayon hunt as they chucked them 🙈

We spent time looking at the invasive species together this week and we had a go at drawing some grey and red squirrels. I had no idea that the grey squirells were caught and removed from some habitats. Our grey squirels are as big as some cats! They have Mutated!

There is a

Week 5 of the John Muir Award

Challenge 1 (nests!)
The first challenge we did this week was brilliant because it took the learning further from a week or

two ago when we found that whopping swans nest at Auchinlea. We had a go at making our first nest. We went on a stick hunt in the park and then came back to make the nest. Bruce boy linked up every puddle at the running track like a giant dot to dot.
Poor birds in the rain I've never thought about their nests getting wet before.

After we had done our nest I asked Isla to run and get a wee bird toy from the house for a photo and she brought a crocodile 😂 mibbes that would keep that pesky neighbourhood cat Coco from pooping in my vegetable patch!!

Today was busy for Challenge 2 Life Cycles and Challenge 3 which was kite making and Challenge 4 which was measuring the height of some trees in the canopy in the woods. Luckily the weather was kinder than before.

Life Cycles- we had looked at the life cycles of frogs already during the John Muir Award but decided to look at bees since they are so important to the world's ecosystem.

Then Bruce used his imagination to make up his own creature-the beepanther! 

Then we went to collect Bruce's home learning pack from school and went straight to count the size of the trees. We used the method where you use a piece of paper and use the 45 degree angle of a folded corner and make it line up with the height of the tree while a wee person stood to mark out a metre on the tree trunk

Our trees were 15m, 17m, 16m and 10m high. We collected some nice very thin sticks while we were out. Bruce stepped in pooh so hooray for responsible dog owners and daft kids. Every day's a school day! If I was rich I'd stick a flag in each one I found you know like the way Google maps puts a pin in things of interest. 

Then we came home and had a kite making session with bags for life that had less life in them and some daisies to decorate.

The kites were a hoot. It was the least windy day of the year 😂

Tail end of week 4- leaf paintings, moth hunting and constellations

I had to start a new blog post cos I couldn't fit all my photos in one place.

LEAF PAINTING

We came back from our walk in the wood and did some leaf painting.

We found sycamore leaves and beech going through today and a purple sycamore leaf. Very curious stuff.

Finally got round to using my IKEA frames I've had since I got them off a colleague who was throwing them out in September 2019. Now to get a hanging kit sorted. It's not the weather for log fires just now, so I'll get away with leaving them there for now. 

After lunch I was just so in need of getting out to clear my head. Currently I've got 15 (started with 26 of the 100 CVC words taped to my floor to try and teach my kids their reading. If they know a word I can rip it off the floor. There's only so much app based learning I can tolerate it can turn them into zombies. But then I am happiest in my garden chilling on my kids trampoline with a duvet and a cuppa once they've gone to bed and completely tech phobic. 

Can't wait til this is all over and can stop this online shopping carry on. 

"Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul."

John Muir

 Andy in his good grace, got a roomba last night. A hoovering robot to make my life easy.....i think. 

Last night I tripped over it and fell like a circus performer as it suddenly changed direction before being met with a shaking head and why did you walk towards it - it was trying to hoover your feet. Fecking technology. He also set it to come on during the night while we were sleeping. 

Oh

My

Goodness I got a fright 😂😅🦄

The kids are also thinking Alexa is their new friend. Wee souls have been talking to her saying cute things but the Alexa doesn't understand them too easily! 

 "Alexa did you have a nice sleep "

"toy sheep added to shopping list" 😂😂👌

Thats their pictures from today framed 😊😍

Week 4 of the John Muir Award

Week 4 (I can't believe it's been 4 weeks)

I can't actually properly remember anything about my life before all this as it was all just fleeting moments from one more thing I had to do at work, one more journey, one more shift, one more walk home, one more trip to collect the kids and cook and look after everything had become a blur. We were running on air. Modern life had become too busy at least for us.

Challenge 1 this week!
What animals would we save if they all disappeared!
Bruce-dogs and cats because they help so many people
Isla-our roborovski hamster (bless her)
Me- deer-we had seen them flocking on a walk before the lockdown it was incredible.
Andy-the bees. Ain't nothing without the bees. We went on a bee spotting walk trying to find bees this weekend after facetiming with our friends who have several bee hives they inherited a few years ago. We learned a lot about bees from them and did the bee identification activity.

This lockdown in a lot of ways has been a way of slowing down to just breathe in my kids. Sure I'm juggling working from home and entertaining them both and trying not to miss my family at this time but the John Muir Award has been a great way to get outside, get a break and look around. I would never genuinely have had time to "discover our wild place" without this so I am grateful.

Challenge 2 was all about finding out about the amphibians and reptiles in Scotland.

Six species of amphibian occur naturally in Scotland, and three common species of reptile are found naturally on land.

Scotland’s native amphibians:

common frog
common toad
natterjack toad
great crested newt
palmate newt
smooth newt

Our native reptiles:

adder
common lizard
slow worm (a type of lizard)

Coll has a colony of sand lizards, introduced to the island some time ago. Several species of marine turtle – also reptiles – have been recorded around the coast. This is definitely going to be a trip for the future for us.

Amphibians and reptiles may be referred to collectively as herptiles.

Herptiles.

What the actual. This is amazing 😂

There's more information about offences relating to the animals above at this link I found interesting

https://www.nature.scot/professional-advice/safeguarding-protected-areas-and-species/protected-species/protected-species-z-guide/protected-species-amphibians-and-reptiles

Bruce and Isla and I worked outside in the garden on common frogs together and learned about the frog life cycle. I am exceptionally proud of them. They're still only young. I quartered a sheet of A4 and they had to put a stage of the life cycle in each quarter.

There's always more frogspawn than frogs at the end though as they make a tasty treat for some beetles at the start of the cycle and indeed some birds.

Frogspawn
Tadpoles
Froglets
Adult frogs

Challenge 3 was all about the idea of Scottish Heritages hunt for the big 5 protected animals in Scotland including otters, red deer, harbour seeks,  golden eagles and red squirrel.

We chose our own 5 animals to spot during this lockdown period and have stuck it to our back door so we can try to find them.
We have chosen
BIRDS

The next part of the challenge was to learn about one of the 5 animals in Scottish Heritages list.

Wee Bruce couldn't believe that there was so much plastic in the water. He said we should clean the ocean and harbours immediately and tell people's mummy's on them. 😂👌🦄 We watched harbour seals on YouTube and saw how playful they were and silly.

Next challenge is Challenge 4 and is about Constellations and Moth hunting
 My own personal greatest fear.

Challenge 5 is making a catapult which the kids will adore looking forward to those.

What a brilliant challenge this was and totally doable for the kids.
 We took along some wood themed cuddles. Baby squirell, hungry caterpillar and the Gruffalos Child to be catapulted.

 After the adventures of the toys in the wood was over, we counted our steps going in one direction to help us plan our map of the wood.  It will take planning I tell you it's some stuff.

Came home and did paintings of leaves we found on our walk