In the garden...

Sometimes I curse having such a large yard.  We haven't gotten around to much of the landscaping we'd planned when we first bought the house 5 years ago, and often it just looks like a weedy mess.  But it never ceases to provide things to explore, explain and play with.

Geekling talking to a praying mantis we caught and kept for a 'sleep over'.  Any bugs we catch have a maximum one night stay.

Here's a little more about our bug catcher and other bugs we've had visit

Feeling a snail crawling on the skin

 Dancing with a "ribbon leaf" (lemongrass) on the trampoline

Eggs from our very own chickens

Other garden delights include:

• blowing gently on a spider on his web to make him 'dance'
• finding the odd brightly coloured gum leaf in our mostly non-deciduous yard
• picking flowers and leaves and using them in crafts or in the bath
• smelling and tasting herbs and vegies from our vegie patch
• playing fetch with our dog
• weeding and feeding the weeds to the chickens
• watering plants
• painting the fence with water... the list goes on!

Ideas for family friendly garden zones

I came across this link to 9 Ideas for family Friendly Garden Zones on facebook, and it has some great ideas and gives a pretty cheap and simple version of each.  I think this list is fantastic, but would like to add to it with the 'Banging Wall' idea from Chasing Cheerios and of course a vegie and herb patch which I know my toddler loves.

What do your little ones like best in the garden?

Bug catching

As a child I delighted in catching bugs and observing them for a time before releasing them.  I had one of the those cheap plastic bug houses that was standard issue in the 80s.  I'd always planned to get one for Geekling so when I saw this gorgeous wood and mesh one, I had to get it.

Image: http://www.uniquekids.com.au which stocks this catcher.  I got the same one from Bright Bugs

We have had a couple of occupants so far - a lady beetle we housed in there for a day before releasing...

and a very funky caterpillar.  It was green and black striped, fuzzy and had a red head and black feelers.  The red head reminded me of Eric Carle's Very Hungry Caterpillar which is Geekling's favourite book.

 He loved watching his "pet pillar".  When we went to release the silly thing it clung to the mesh and it took 3 days to find its way out.  Or maybe it was enjoying the food too much.

Flowers in the bath

Geekling has only recently begun accepting baths again after about 8 months of being completely petrified of them (all the while loving his swimming lessons).  It's been a full turn around - today he asked for a bath in the afternoon just for fun.

To make it a bit more interesting, I grabbed some leaves and flowers from our herb and vegie patch to add to the bathwater - marigolds, tarragon flowers, carrot leaves and nasturtium leaves.  Geekling is well past the  stage of sticking everything in his mouth, but all of these are edible if he had chose to try them.

He had great fun counting them, naming colours, sticking the flowers in between his toes and then we discovered the nasturtium leaves stuck really well to wet skin...

Melbourne Zoo

Hubby, Geekling and I took a trip to Melbourne over Christmas - New Years.  We visited lots of family and friends, went to our favourite restaurants and souvlaki place and of course went to a few tourist spots like the Queen Vic Markets, The Museum and the Royal Melbourne Zoo.  I have been dreaming of taking Geekling to the zoo since I was still pregnant!  I love Melbourne Zoo, and have so many memories of visiting with my family as a young girl.

Watching the bear

Geekling loved the animals (the ones he could see easily, nocturnal, distant or otherwise hiding animals were not interesting to him) but was not such a fan of the walking between exhibits.  By the end of the day we were all a bit weary of constantly picking him up, putting him down to walk, putting him in the stroller (which we took knowing how much walking would be involved).

Mummy and baby elephants in the feeding pen

I think it was especially valuable for Geekling to see the giraffes and elephants and get some idea of the scale of these large animals, something that isn't as obvious in books or in film.

Geekling loved the giraffe

Chicken pen

Two reasons its been a bit quiet on this blog lately:

1. My laptop is dying

2. We've been spending our weekends building a chicken pen for our chickens.  And here it is!

The frame is made from recycled pool fencing that had been sitting around hubby's parents place for the best part of the last decade.  While it is excellent to be able to use the gate part, I wouldn't recommend it as it is SOOOO heavy.  Or at least I would not recommend situating the new chook pen at the very far uphill corner of the yard.

The frame posts are secured with recycled star pickets donated by our neighbour.  It is covered with chicken wire and recycled corregated iron from the nearby Dakabin Tip Treasure Market.  We ran bricks around the outside to stop the dog (or anything else) digging under it.

The chook house is a dog kennel I purchased recently on ebay for $10.  The lid is on a hinge so lifts for easy access to the eggs (when they start laying) and for cleaning.  The ramp is made from a bit of pine with backyard sticks glued to it.

The chooks seem happy enough with it but they haven't yet worked out how to get up into the chook house which I find odd since I thought they naturally go to the highest point.

Chickens!

Geekling's daycare recently had a hired chicken hatching, and when the chicks reached 2 weeks old they offered them up to parents to take home for free.  We were told that Geekling LOVED the chicks and had been meaning to invest in some chooks for some time so we took 3 home.  And here they are:

We're still deciding on names.  I'm leaning towards "K", "F" and "C" but we might wait to see how many are roosters (which we'll have to get rid of) before we try themed names!

Geekling does indeed love the chickens.  Here he is reading one of his books on chicks with his Daddy.

They're still in a (bigger) box in the house and will stay inside with us for a couple more weeks.  When they are about 6 weeks old they will venture out into the back yard.  In the meantime we are going to fence off part of the yard away from the dog and build a coop :)

Egg carton treasure hunt

One of my favourite ever blog posts from Chasing Cheerios (which inspired ) is one in which each cavity of an egg carton is painted a different colour, then a garden scavenger hunt takes place to find items to match those colours.

(Much like this picture from Family Fun)

I've come across so many more similar posts recently that I had to collate them:

Chasing Cheerios
Dream a Lil Dream
Preschool Lesson Plans
Mommy Press
I am Momma, Hear Me Roar

I just love this idea, and can't wait until Geekling is able to sort by colour.  He is able to match containers with lids, and shapes to solve the Shape-o so hoping to work in this soon, especially as Spring isn't far away :)

Feeding ducks (and swans, and eels, and turtles...)

One of my fondest childhood memories was going to the "Bats and Swans" park in Melbourne in an afternoon, where we'd feed black swans and then head home when the bats came out to play.  We've taken Geekling to feed ducks at Caboolture a few times before, but I cannot describe how embarrassingly excited I was when feeding ducks at North Lakes and some black swans appeared to join the fun!

We were also joined by some turtles and eels...

And of course Geekling couldn't pass up a turn on the swing...

We watched some people sail remote controlled boats...

and practiced climbing stairs...

We went back again this weekend and not only did the swans join us, but they were accompanied by their adorable fluffy cygnets!

Geekling's favourite book "What are you?" shows a cygnet transforming to a swan, and we also have the classic "Ugly Duckling" story, so I made sure to include these in our bedtime reading.