Outdoor Hour - Challenge #2

We are actually a week late finishing this challenge, but we did give it the old college try last week. We made it home early from a Thursday afternoon meeting so I thought we would wander down to the mailbox and do our listening exercise before TS Fay brought bad weather our way. So the kids piled out of the van and we headed down the drive only to be overcome by mosquitoes and fire ants. I don't think I'll ever get used to living in the Florida countryside. So after being delayed a few days by supposedly impending nasty weather, today was take two for Challenge #2 and a good time was had by all.

I don't know if you can hear the brook bubbling in the background, but it was probably our favorite stop on the 45 minute walk. If you look at the drainage pipe, you may be able to get a glimpse of the little lizard we stopped to watch. He was pretty quick though. You can definitely hear the wind, crickets, frogs and birds. It was a pretty noisy day!

Sydney was overcome with the sights and sounds of our walk today. I think she's a nature girl at heart even though she tries to deny it. She fell in love with this view, imagining another world just underneath and behind that dying bush in the background. She's decided to use it as the setting for her next book.

Her descriptions for what she heard, saw and felt were, rustling (the brook), beautiful woods and a soft, small flower. Her favorite finds on the walk were the wildflowers that were growing along the drainage ditch. Unfortunately the big tractor was out today and nearly mowed them all down.

Delaney seems to have the most fun chasing after frogs, collecting nuts and picking flowers for her sisters. She wasn't impressed by the sounds of nature, but the lizards, bugs and anything else she could touch definitely caught her attention. It was hard for her to put her impressions of nature into a few words, but she told me that she heard "crickety crickets", saw lizards that were "yellowish, reddish, stripey-ish" and felt the wind. Her three word description of the wind was actually several sentences and involved a bucket of water. I don't know how her mind works sometimes, but she has a very vivid and detailed description of what the wind felt like against her face. She was taken aback by all the water in the drainage ditches along the side of the road. It's funny how we live so close to the Gulf of Mexico and the world's most beautiful beaches, yet the kids think standing water in a drainage ditch is the best thing they've seen in a long time.

Sadey - eh - she'd rather be in the house. But I don't blame her because the mosquitoes go after her regardless of how much bug spray I bathe her in. Poor kid. She was thrilled with one of the weed/flowers that we picked by the side of the road and this leaf though. I think she'll have more fun with our walks once the weather cools off and some of the bugs die down.