Trying to get back into the Great Outdoors.

I have been very lax about doing any formal nature studies. We play outdoors quite often but it is usually at the park or someplace where the kids can run around while I sit and take care of the baby. But Barb has started some fall outdoor hour challenges and I felt like we really needed to get back into doing these. So we started with cattails.

This is an easy one. My kids already love these. They play with them at Grandma's house. (I remember having a lot of fun with them as a kid too.) And we knew where we could find some not too far from our house.

We took a friend with us on our hunt to find cattails. This little guy hadn't had the chance to play with cattails before so my kids were happy to show him how much fun they could be.
(notice my kids in their long pants and long sleeves. It is starting to really feel like Fall here.)
The kids did take a few moments to look at the murky water that was in the ravine.
This ravine has water in it here, but further up the trail it was dry as a bone. This part always seems to have water but depending on the season the rest of the little creek will sometimes and sometimes not have water.

I wasn't long before the kids started to rip their cattails apart.

Sophie was the most vigorous. She ripped into several of them and kept trying to get the boys to do theirs also but they wanted to try to save them. (I think one made it home with us, which is amazing. Such restraint!)


Not Sophie. She loved the fluff and continued to pull the fluff and drop it all along the trail as we walked back. She said she was spreading the seeds.

On such a windy day I am sure we helped spread them around, a lot!