February's garden

Thought I would try and keep a diary of the garden over the year. Missed January but never mind!

Clearing moss off summer house roof

Here are a few photos for this month

I love these winter flowers

Planting salad seeds with Amy

More Hellebores

We planted some of the strawberry runners
 out under cloches

Digging out compost to fill up the raised beds

Can you see the worm scaling the wall!

Spring is on its way - hooray!!!

Big Garden Birdwatch

Well I'm a little late posting this but we took part in the RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch last weekend.

Here are the children, binoculars ready, looking out of the window ready to start the count!

If you've not participated before the idea is that you choose an hour anytime over the weekend to observe your garden and count how many birds of each species that you see.  The records over time help monitor trends and get a picture of whats happening in the bird population for example numbers of house sparrows and Starlings have fallen since the 1980's. The RSPB will investigate and try to find out why this is happening and what we can do about it.

Our count this year was as follows:

Blackbird     3

Blue tit         4

Great Tit      2

Magpie        4

Robin          1

Woodpigeon  2

Carrion Crow  3

Greater Spotted woodpecker   2

No Starlings for us this year - last year we had 21!

The boys and I all completed a page in our journals on birds.

Make sure you add this to your diary for next year - its always at the end of January and a great project to support.

Constellations!

We'd planned a nature walk with some friends on Wed but the weather has been really wet and so we opted for an indoor activity instead! I found this idea on pinterest here.

The boys have asked if we can learn something about stars so thought this would interest them.

I printed off the sheet showing the different constellations and we used a push pin to make holes where the stars would be. Luke enjoyed using the hammer and nail to make a large viewing hole at the end of the pringle tin! We then decorated the tubes to make them more interesting.

Unfortunately with watching 2 mischeivous toddlers at the same time I forgot to take photos of us making the viewers but here are the end products.

The circles stuck onto black card and holes made through each dot

Viewing the constellations

Hopefully we will get some clear nights so we can see if we can spot the constellations outside.
We hope to arrange another visit to The Observatory in Todmorden. We have been before a while ago but its definately worth a visit. Its open to the public on Sat evenings - but make sure you wrap up warm.

Winter tree study

We began a year long tree study in Autumn - choosing to look at the Oak tree in our garden.

On Wednesday we observed our tree in the Winter. It was rather a damp day so this is a photo of our tree on a sunny day!

We took bark rubbings

and sketched the shape of the winter tree observing how different it was from the Autumn.

Here are the boys notebook pages

I love seeing all the wildlife coming to visit the trees in the Winter. We are looking forward to the Big Garden Birdwatch next weekend. Do join us by registering here RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch 2014

Friday

Fridays we try to get out and about and do some nature study or just enjoy the fresh air. Today we met some friends at Hollingworth Lake. Here are some of my favourite photos of the morning

I loved the water drops on these branches

Not sure what these are but they were really interesting -
 felt soft if you touched then one way and spiky the other

A enjoyed splashing in the puddles with her new friend
Oops - nearly up to her knees in one of them!

We found a tree with a frowning face

We tried touching the trees whilst blindfolded
 and describing what we could feel

It was cold but a pleasant morning out - thankful for the absence of rain today!

New Year

It’s the New Year and I've decided the children and I are going to start a blog to record some of our home schooling adventures and general things that are of interest to each of us.

I have been thinking about New Year goals and thought I would start by sharing them:

I have read about choosing one word for the year and so my one word for this year is Gratitude. 

It sometimes feels like we are a nation of complainers and it can certainly feel like this in our house some days. In my pursuit of joy I know that I need to develop a more thankful attitude and I'm hoping this will rub off on the rest of my household.

To help me develop an "attitude of gratitude" I am going to keep a gratitude journal which I aim to write in at least 3 times a week and also to write a thank you note every other week.

My second goal is to reduce the amount of caffeine I drink so I am going to alternate each cup of tea with something decaffeinated e.g. water, peppermint tea. Maybe I'll try some other herbal teas too.

My third goal is to try and get more organised with housework - it always seems to get on top of me! I have started to create a book which lists all the different jobs I need to do around the house and chop them into small achievable chunks so I can tick them off when I have done them - an idea I pinched from a good friend of mine. I'm hoping it will help the housework not to feel overwhelming.

So there you have it - my 3 goals for the start of the year.