Monday, July 2, 2012

We're going to Mars

Long ago, I was taking my three kids grocery shopping. It is never an exciting thing for the kids to do, especially when it is a large shopping trip. I do try and make trips to the grocery store as exciting as possible.. the kids get their own "list" or we choose a colour we are going to search for.. but no matter what, it is hard to keep still. So, on this particular trip I had promised the kids we would do something fun, afterwards. I floundered what we would do, I didn't have very much money and it was getting late, so not many places were open. I wanted to do something to burn their energy off.. so I took them to a park that is behind one of our rec centers. It has a lovely large grassed area with a lot of beautiful oak trees. There is a huge hill to roll down and a woodchip path you can follow through a forested area. The kids kept asking where we were going, and I told them, to mars.. more to shut them up than to be funny. There is a backyardigans show that is about that.. Anyway they were amused and ever since we have called that particular spot, Mars.
Today we went to Mars again.. they needed to run. And boy did they run.. up and down the big hill. As there were running there were sparrows swooping where ever they ran. It was interesting to watch how fast the flew along the ground. We figured it was probably because as they were playing, bugs would be stirred up from the grass. Sparrows of course eat bugs. They followed the kids all over and then the kids tried following them!
We went for a bit of a walk and I tried to get the kids to slow down and look around. We talked about camaflouge and how creatures hide.. Once they started looking, we found so many interesting things. A baby bunny, a beautiful big moth with amazing patterns and an "eye" on it's wings, a garter snake (much to their delight I yelped and dropped what I was carrying as it slithered almost under my foot!) We found a lot of different birds and interesting grasses, berries and moss.
Our little energy burning trip to Mars turned into a fun, much talked about.. experience. We came home and the girls drew some pictures to remember their day.