Our Obstacle to Nature Study

A mighty creature is the germ,

Though smaller than a pachyderm.

His customary dwelling place

Is deep within the human race.

His childish pride he often pleases

By giving people strange diseases.

Do you, my poppet, feel infirm?

You probably contain a germ.

by Ogden Nash

One of our greatest obstacles to getting out and exploring nature has been . . . nature. In particular, those teeny tiny viruses and bacteria so freely shared among family members. It seems that someone in our house is always coming down with, or recovering from, the common cold.

I had hoped that one of the side benefits of homeschooling would be that we wouldn't catch as many colds, since we wouldn't be exposed to all the germs from school. Sadly, that has not been the case. In the fall we made the mistake of regularly visiting a veritable germ paradise, the indoor playground. It took us awhile to recover from this error, at which point we wholeheartedly headed outside into the freezing weather, rather than take the path of never ending illness again.

Yet, here we are, watching the different phases of dripping noses and hacking coughs making their way through each child, knowing that we will be the next victim. We haven't seen the inside of an indoor playground since October, yet the germs still found us. It is obvious that stronger defenses against such a formidable foe are needed.

All of these colds have left us stuck inside the house. It is difficult to justify going outside when one child is running a fever, even if everyone else is fine. The frigid air is not good for their congested lungs. We have been thwarted by a microbe.

Finally, all comes to a grinding halt and falls apart when the germ conquers Mom. She bravely staggers on, undaunted by the ominous signs, until at last, her sinuses and lungs filling with fluid, she sinks. She is replaced by the television, which faithfully mesmerizes her children until she can regain consciousness. Her husband bravely holds down the fort, while wading knee-deep through all the stuff that has managed to accumulate on the floor in the last 24 hours.

I am on the mend, and slowly uncovering our living room floor and kitchen counter tops. The battle is over and the germ has emerged victorious.

The above photo was taken on February 8.

113th Carnival of Homeschooling

I particularly liked this post about making your blog easy to read.

Winter gear

My boys drinking hot chocolate

With a little magic from photoshop, you can make your child look like you have chained them to a bench.

Jokes aside, our local groundhog announced an early spring, but it hasn't arrived yet. I know it's the end of the season, but I'm going to do a post on how I dress my kids for the cold weather. These photos were taken today, it was a balmy minus two degrees Celcius (28 F).

A few things have made all the difference this year. First, all the kids have fantastic mittens. They're water repellent, and they have a gauntlet that covers their wrists, keeping the snow out of that space between their mittens and coats. Mittens are also warmer than gloves. After I got these mittens my kids were happy to stay outside in very cold weather for a few hours, their only complaints were about being tired.

They also have water repellent snowpants. They're fairly thin, which lets them move around easily. These ones happen to come over top of their boots, keeping the snow out.

Lastly, they all have a good set of long underwear. Cookie has an infant's long underwear set, I especially want her to be extra warm since she is not active when we are out. I put her in a one piece fleece sleeper to keep the heat in as well. Her mittens are on top of the stroller, she's drinking hot chocolate out of her sippy cup.

Cookie has been in the jogging stroller all winter. It has large tires and can handle snow that is a few inches thick. When the snow was too deep I used my frame pack, although I'm finding she is getting rather heavy. I should have tried putting her in a small sled. She's young enough that I really needed something I could strap her into so she didn't crawl out when I wasn't looking. She seemed very comfortable in the jogging stroller so I stayed with it, although it limited our explorations at times.

Sunglasses for the kids would have made today's trip more enjoyable. The sun on the snow was very bright. We used to have 4 pairs and now we only have one.

My friend Woman North, living north of the arctic circle, has highly recommended wool to me. She says it's even better than fleece. Next year I hope to knit some wool sweaters, and maybe socks, for the kids.

I have a very warm and soft sweater from New Zealand that was knit using possum wool. Apparently there is a possum epidemic in NZ, and making sweaters out of them is good population control.

These pictures were taken using my digital point and shoot, a Canon Powershot G7, which I got mostly so I could take small videos of the kids, something I couldn't do with my digital SLR. It also fits in my pocket, something else I can't do with my SLR.

Sumatran Tiger

Sumatran Tiger, Panthera tigris sumatrae

I'm not sure that zoo animals count as 'nature', but this tiger is magnificent.

We live very close to a world class zoo. We have a membership and go there often. Yet, I feel like we're not learning much about the animals that we see on our visits. It's difficult to get the kids to slow down and observe an animal for a little while.

I have been trying to have my children describe something they see when we are on our outings. At first they looked at me like I was a little crazy, "Can't you see the tiger? He's right there, Mom. Why do you want me to describe him to you?"

I have been making some small gains in this area. My oldest son described a duck we were watching today. He talked about its feet, the colour of its feathers and the shape of its bill. The duck was taking a bath in the rhinoceros lagoon.

Snowflakes

The right kind of snow was falling today so I tried again to photograph snowflakes. The snowflakes are not as sharp as I would like, but I think this might be the best I can do with the equipment I have.

I used a piece of dark blue velvet as the background. I set my camera on a tripod and used my macro lens. It was cloudy, and the dark background with the large lens meant there was not alot of light for the picture, so my shutter speed was long, about 1/6 sec.

On my last attempt to photograph snowflakes Steph left me a comment mentioning Wilson Bentley. I have his book on order from the library but it hasn't arrived yet. I'm looking forward to reading about his techniques. He used a microscope to take his pictures. There's a book for children about him that I am also trying to get from the library.