Fairy Doors Found in a new Forest

The weather is beautiful here and I’ve been out walking searching for fairy doors.  When I presented about Making Fairy Lane this past January, several of the participants mentioned that there are now fairy doors in another woods here in the Valley.

I’ve looked once before, where I thought they might be, but only found two.  Well today I walked farther and found them. 
       
     
    
It is such a delight to walk around a tree and see a spot of colour.  Each is unique and lovely to look at.  I wonder who put them there and what inspired them to do so?

I’m still working with our City’s Park Department in re-establishing Fairy Lane.  We are getting closer.  The city is creating two signs to go at either end of the Lane that will list guidelines for adding doors and a bit of explanation of why Fairy Lane exists.

If you want to know where these doors can be found just send me an email.

Planting Spuds 2015

We’re leading up to our Spring Break which is our signal to start planting our potatoes.
                
      We started by looking at a potato that I just bought at the store.
 
Then we checked out our seed potatoes.  Most of them had more than one sprout so if they did we picked off the biggest sprout before planting it.  This will help the seed produce more potatoes.
                
       
Then it was time to prepare the soil.  We added a scoop of plant food into the soil.  The children dug right in to mix the food throughout the soil.
  
    We planted five seed potatoes in each tub and watered them really well.
                      
              We finished the morning tasting cooked potatoes.
         
I wonder how long it will take before we see a sprout peek through the soil.

Shiny Little Rainbows

               We did an experiment to create rainbows this week. 
                You will need nail polish, water and black paper.
  
Let a single drip of nail polish fall into a container of clear water.  Quickly place a piece of black paper on top.  Lift the paper and turn it over to see what happened.
                     
                                         A rainbow!
You may have a problem if you take too long to put the paper on the nail polish.
            
    If you wait too long the nail polish will form a skin on the water. 
                        Don’t worry because you can still use it. 
    
                          Slip the paper under the skin and lift it up.
    
             
        We only used black paper but after seeing this child’s rainbow,
which he made on paper painted green, we should have tried a variety of colours.
                 
          To check out where I found this idea visit The Science Kiddo.

An Awesome Fire Hall Tour

This morning we toured one of our local fire stations, it turned out to be extra exciting.
                
We started the tour meeting Firefighter Greg.  He told us some rules for our tour.  When we enter the truck area we would be meeting on a mat and if the alarm was to go we were to stay on the mat to be safe.  We would learn later that this was a bit of foreshadowing.

Greg was teaching us about fire safety, matches, burns and smoke detectors, when the fire alarm rang.
                    

We watched as the firefighters quickly prepared and got in the truck.
       
It was exciting to watch the firefighters come out of their dressing room and rush out to the truck.  Watching both men and women getting ready offered us the chance to have a discussion about why we say firefighter, instead of fireman now.
                      
We had just started back to learning about the fire truck when a second alarm rang.
 
We safely walked back to the mat and watched more firefighters get ready.

Both firefighters that were giving us our tour had to quickly dress, get into the second truck and leave.
                
               
                 
Luckily another firefighter stepped in and let us tour through the truck.

By the time we finished touring the truck the second truck called out returned and we were able to see a demo of all the parts of their uniform.

 
Before moving outside to play with the hose we practiced “Stop, Drop and Roll”.

                    
Then time for the most fun part of the morning, using the fire hose.  We learned how to turn it on and off and aim it at a truck parked in the lot.
                    
When we were ready to leave firefighter Greg gave each of the children their own fire hats to take home.  It was a very memorable tour.