Oh this child of mine has a new obsession – Dinosaurs! It all started a couple months back, one Saturday, when Jeff was watching a documentary on “Spinosaurus”. Usually Ellie is too busy playing, to bother with watching Dada shows, but this one sparked an interest. She sat and took the whole show in, mesmerized by these extinct giants that once roamed the earth. After that, she wanted to know as much as possible about dinosaurs and the interest has been going strong ever since. We have our home school group and we also belong to a little nature hiking group as well. These girls were also very into dinosaurs and we were lucky enough to join in on their “dino day” a couple weeks ago. There was a dig and fossils (borrowed from our local natural history museum’s lending library) and some fun build your own dinosaur kits as well. The other moms did a fantastic job setting everything up for the kids. I sang a couple of dino songs and we brought some dinosaur books as well to share.

Ellie and the other girls had an absolute blast! It’s been really neat to watch this interest blossom and develop. We do a bit of project work at home as well and Ellie decided on her own, that she wanted her project to be “writing a dinosaur story”. With my help, I have transcribed two whole chapters of her dinosaur story. It’s quite fantastic coming from this four and a half year old’s head. She’s been illustrating her story as well and I will have to write up a whole other post about it, because its just too good not to share.

We did take Ellie to the Natural History museum in LA when she was pretty young, but we thought it would be neat to bring her back, since her new interest is so ripe. So today we headed out to LA and first went to the La Brea Tar Pits and then to the Natural History Museum. It was a long, busy day, but I think one Ellie will treasure.

I know there is so much more to learn and so much more to explore and we certainly will!  Ellie wants a dinosaur birthday party this year and how in the world can we say no to that?!

This week for home school class we explored lady bugs. We have been visiting a lovely nature spot and the girls have noticed lots of lady bugs around the area, so we thought we’d do a little more in depth study on the local lady beetles. We found plenty and decided to sketch them and make our own ladybugs out of beeswax modeling clay. We read a lady bug story and used to books to look at all the different types of lady birds there are in the world. There was even a lady bug obstacle course built! All of the ladybugs we caught that day were of course set free after we were done with our lesson. It was a lovely cool spring morning of exploration and play.

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Eloise: About five months away from being a five year old! You are still very spunky and very assertive of your independence (which of course makes my days a bit challenging). You are dedicated to animals and learning as much as you can about them. You are newly fascinated with dinosaurs (“I like them because they are cool Mama”). You sing all day long and when you aren’t singing, you are talking and telling stories. You play hard with your friends. I find some days when we are out with friends, I only catch glimpses of you because you are so busy and in deep play with them. You love to cuddle with me at the end of the day though and tell me all of your “highs” and that you “don’t have any lows today Mama”, beaming proudly.
You are my light little girl, my high… every day.

We’ve been out in the wild a lot these days. Soaking in the gorgeous colors of this wet California spring. Taking little nature walks and exploring local pond life and checking on the seals along the bluffs. It’s brought a new dimension to our days. Discovering nature together and with friends has been such a joy, every week. I’m truly thankful we get to explore with friends, new and old every day.