Greening on the go!

So for the last week we have been traveling around visiting family in Illinois and St. Louis. It is not always easy to keep my children's "green" education as a priority while at the same time living our life on the go. But there are a few things that we try to do while we travel (because we car-travel A LOT!) to keep our kids (okay at this point just Sam!) learning and appreciating the outdoors.

While in the car we try to point things out to each other and to Sam. She loves to spot cows and any other farm animals that she knows. Cows are typically the easiest because there will be lots of them that are easy to see from a distance. Chris and I also point out any other wildlife that we see, especially birds. When it is just one animal at a time or we spot it at the last minute we don't always get Sam to see it but as she gets older she will become more and more a part of the wildlife spotting that we do in the car.

It is really hard to keep a two year old happy in the car and to battle the whining we do use a DVD player. But I have found that there are some great DVD out there, even some with my daughters favorite characters, that help to teach her about the environment and entertain her at the same time. Handy Manny has a "green" themed DVD and elmo has several movies about the outdoors and environmental concerns.

So, even though it isn't perfect we still try our best to keep up the education while spending days in the car!

a weed or a beautiful flower?

To a two year old.... it is a beautiful yellow flower that she loves to "hunt"!

To my husbands dismay we have dandelions in our yard, and lots of them! But it is so much fun to go dandelion hunting with Samantha in our backyard. She carries her little bucket around and picks as many as she can. She knows her color yellow now and is learning what the petals and stem of the flower are. Not to mention it is just fun to watch her run up and say "beautiful!" as she plucks off the top.

Even weeds can be a beautiful learning tool!

all about the babies

So not much outdoor activities for a rainy, cold, cloudy day. Especially when both of your little girls are already battling colds! But that doesn't mean the fun and learning stopped today. We went about our regular day, playing games, doing puzzles, reading books and all the other chores that I do throughout the day. But while doing all of those things I focused on one common element with Sam, BABIES! Baby animals that is. As we did her farm puzzles I made a special point of using the correct baby animal names and pointing them out to Samantha.


Sounds simple and it is but there are so many times that I use puppy synonymously with dog. And I know that I don't usually take the time to point out and use duckling, gosling, foal, calf, piglet, eaglet, and many others. So today I made sure that I did.

Sam loves to learn about animals and she soaks up any information that I give her about them so today she had a blast repeating the names after me and matching up the babies with their "parents" in the puzzles and the books. It was a great way to teach her something new and bring a new dimension to things that we do on a regular basis.

A New Path

This is my project, my journey and my adventure with my girls. So, it can change at any time that I want it to or think that it needs to. Like today! I think my concept for this blog is going to change just a little bit (great, I have to re-write the about this blog section!). A pretty smart person that I know suggested that instead of just writing about activities and all the knowledge that I have of what OTHER parents could be doing, I should be pushing myself to actually DO things with my own girls and then document that. "It would be more personal, more for YOU and hit a specific genre of moms too. Moms with young children who might want to follow along your journey of teaching your kids about our earth!", she said.

And I think she is dead on.

I named the blog Greening Sam and Avery for a reason. I want them to grow up GREEN! I want them to know and love the environment the way that I do. I want them to have an appreciation not only for the gloriously beautiful things that most people value like mountains, rivers and oceans but also the nature that you see everyday like robins, pine trees and dandelions. That doesn't just happen on its own. My dad and mom inspired me and I need to pass that on to my girls.

So, what does that mean for this blog. I am going to focus more on what I am doing with MY OWN GIRLS. Right now of course that will be small and simple things but some days I might give you ideas on how to expand those simple things for older kids or how to add more learning into the simple activities. But even on the days that I don't expand it will still be an example for some mom out there some where that might need an idea of something to do with her two year old to inspire them to love nature. And that is amazing.

Every now and then I will still bring out the amazing projects, games and activities that I have buried in my head that will be for older kids. So hopefully moms with older kids will stop by and get some ideas now and then too.

But that won't be the main focus. I am going to focus on MY girls!

Twig frames

Not everyone likes to be outside in nature but there are ways that you can still get your kids to interact with the natural world from the comfort of the kitchen! I did this activity at camp a few years ago with young art camp kids and they loved it. We did a pretty simple version (which I will describe how to do below) and had them put pictures from camp in it to take home. At the time I thought I was being super creative for coming up with this craft but apparently it is a pretty common project! You can find it written up in Nature Art Box by Laura C. Martin.

What you will need -

• plain picture frame with wide, smooth edges (when I did this we just used cardboard cut out in the shape of picture frames)
• plenty of DEAD twigs or sticks, you don't want to use green or live ones (don't have to be the same kinds or sizes)
• garden clippers or strong scissors
• craft glue or hot glue gun
• any other natural objects you might like for decorations (small stones, dried flowers, pine cones, or dried mosses)

How to make the picture frames -
Lay out the picture frame and let your child/ren start putting sticks on the sides in a design that they like. Once they like where the sticks are simply cut off any extra length that they don't want and then glue the sticks in place. The more covered the frame is with sticks the better. Once the glue from the sticks is dry then they can start using the other natural items to decorate the frame.

These frames can turn out pretty cute and are a good way to use up some of the dead things your kids love to collect and bring into the house!

Just get them involved!

My girls, Sam (2 years old) and Avery (four months old), are too little for most of the activities, games and lessons that I will talk about on here but there are certainly plenty of things that I am already doing with them to make sure that they love being outside and have an appreciation for the natural world.
Right now, in our new house, I am focusing on making sure that Sam is involved with yard work and has some ownership in the plants, flowers and yard. When I go out to weed she comes with me and "helps". Yesterday she was a big help in filling my pots and doing all the plantings that I wanted to get done. Even though this can make the choirs last twice as long it is great exposure for her and she also learns a lot while she works with me. With older kids I would suggest making outside time like this also learning time; you can talk about the parts of the plants, look for bugs in the dirt and discuss what plants need to survive (just a few of many possible topics!). It is all about just letting them get dirty and experience the outdoors.
This is perfect season to get your kids interested in what happens outside with the plants. So take just a little bit of time and money and let them pick out a flower from the store that can be all their own. Help them plant it and then teach them how to take care of it. Then leave me comments and let me know how it went!!

Invent an Animal

So it is cloudy and rainy here so I thought today would be a great day for an inside, crafty kind of activity. I think a version of this activity can be found in the Project Learning Tree Activity Guide, but I am not positive about that. I taught this to several classes of fifth graders back in college and it was a huge hit, messy, but a lot of fun!

This one can be super simple for little ones or can be a great learning tool for older kids (the fifth grade type age). With older kids I give them some guidelines for what their animal has to be able to do, examples would be fly, live in the water, eat ants, climb trees, dig holes, eat fish, run really fast, etc. Then give them a ton of different supplies starting with clay or playdough for the body usually is the easiest and then they can add things like pipe cleaners, tooth picks, feathers, beads, Q-tips, string, cotton balls or whatever else you might have laying around the house. Using all the materials they have to try and create a NEW animal that can do the things you told them. You can combine lots of different characteristics or just do one at a time.

The learning part of this activity is teaching them about adaptations. Animals (and even plants!) have things called adaptations which are something that an animal has (something physical on their body like a long neck) or something that an animal does (like flying) that helps them to survive in their habitat. The activity encourages the kids to examine what kind of adaptations it takes to be able to move certain ways, eat certain things or live in certain conditions.

If you are doing this with younger kids I would skip the guidelines part all together and just let them experiment with inventing their own animal with all the supplies. As they are building you can ask them questions to get their imagination going about where their new animal might live, how it moves, what it eats, what might eat it, etc. This way they are still learning and creating just in a simpler fashion.

My two year old is not quite ready for this activity yet or I would have tested it out and taken some pictures. I promise very soon to do describe an activity on here that I can SHOW you all!!