Fourth Of July

This is a great country to live in, especially when it comes to the outdoors! Nature wise, within the borders of this country we have everything from tropical forests, deserts and frozen tundra. And we have a right to explore these all freely.

I’d like to give a shout out to all the service men and woman who have willingly worked to protect our freedom and land. It allows me to pursure my passions and raise my children in a world of endless possibilities!

not everything is perfect but it’s a blessing to live here. I’m grateful I have the opportunity to encourage Nature For Kids and I hope you all have a happy Fourth Of JULY!!!!!!

Old Glory music fading out….

Flower Child

Our first rose of the season has bloomed and thankfully it will be the first of many!

Here’s my little flower child Ava. Can you smell them? So Yummy!

Send in your best flower child shot and I’ll put your name in a drawing for a free Nature For Kids logo sticker and feature the pictures on this blog! Send photos to [email protected]. Flower child picture submissions end July 31, 2008.

Night Games

It’s time to stay up late and enjoy the warm nights that summer provides. Take advantage of a pleasant evening by playing night games with your kids!

Glow In The Dark Baseball: Buy a bundle of glow in the dark necklaces and have each player put one on. Get a wuffle ball and put glow in the dark bracelets inside it or get a ball like this. Tape about 5 bracelets lengthwise on the end of the bat or a stick.

Star gazing: That’s an easy one. Print off a sky map here.

Sardenes: Like hide and seek but only one person hides. Everyone else tries to find them. When they do find them they hide with the person. The last person to find the hiding spot loses. 

Kick The Can: This is kind of like hide and seek mixed with tag. One person is It and counts to 20 while everyone else hides. The person that is It has to find the people hiding but guard a can on the ground as well. When a person hiding is found they have to try to run and kick the can over before the person who is It tags them.

Flashlight Tag: Plain old tag but using flashlights or glowsticks.

Steal The Flag: Split everyone into two teams. Have a flag on opposing ends of the playing site. Each team tries to steal the other teams flag without being tagged. You could use glowsticks instead of flags.

What are some of your favorite night games?

Mutton Bustin

The rodeo was in full effect this weekend and we were convinced by some friends that it was the place to be! So we put on our pearly button shirts and cowboy hats and took to the arena. Well at least one of us did. Our oldest son, Cru, decided to take part in the Mutton Bustin competition. Now if you’re a real cowboy you call it Mutton Bustin not Busting. So get it right partner!

Before the competition began Cru said, “Cowboys have to be tough huh Dad.. at least that’s what the song just said.”

He got 2nd place and won a John Deer tractor toy with a time of 3.01 seconds. Take a look.

Do your kids love the flying dirt, speedy horses, and wild bull excitement of the rodeo? Send in a picture of your little cowboy! [email protected]

Where I Blog

I thought I’d give you all an inside look at Nature For Kids by showing you where I blog from. Take a look!

It’s usually not this clean and my kids are usually close by while I’m on the computer building blocks, painting pictures or trying to push buttons on the computer AHHH! Notice we have a hard wooden chair at the desk there. That’s to insure that we don’t get too comfortable and spend all our time on the internet. When the bootie starts to hurt I know I need to get up and head outside.

Please excuse my poor video skills and video camera…;-)

Berry Good Books

This post is an extension of the Blueberry Picking post done on Friday by Becca Renfroe…

Before we went (blueberry picking), we read my number one favorite children’s book: Blueberries for Sal. We read it about three times every night during the week leading up to our excursion. I love anything by Robert McCloskey, and I really think Blueberries for Sal is his best work, even though it was awarded a Caldecott honor, and not the Caldecott medal (which he won for Make Way for Ducklings, but, sorry folks-Blueberries is the more endearing choice). I don’t think your home library can be complete without this book . . . and it’s still as fresh and entertaining now as it was when it was first published, sixty years ago.

I got some more books about blueberries from the library to read to the boys-one is one of our repeat check-outs that I plan to buy, and it is called The Terrible Hodag and the Animal Catchers. The reason we got this one is because the hodag in this picture book (and the pictures are amazing, beautiful woodcuts) eats blueberry bushes as his food of choice. But two of the books I checked out were new to me: Blueberries for the Queen and Blueberry Mouse.

Blueberries for the Queen is based on a true story. Apparently, the Queen of the Netherlands fled to the United States during World War II, for her safety. She rented a house in Massachusetts, and a local farm boy took a basket of blueberries from his farm to her as a present. Queen Wilhelmina invited him right in and treated him very kindly, thanking him for his gift. Children’s book author Katherine Patterson and her husband, John Patterson, teamed up with illustrator Susan Jeffers to create a perfect story for children that really happened. Truman loved this one.

Brigham liked the second book better. Blueberry Mouse is a fun, rhyming story about a mouse whose favorite food in the world is blueberries, and who lives inside a blueberry pie. She nibbles her house, one piece at a time, until it is all gone . . . but then she decides to replace her house with a blueberry cake.

I recommend checking out books to go along with any outdoor adventure. Our family loves fiction and non-fiction alike, and most kids will get excited when a story captures their imagination about an activity, or when they feel like they are an “expert’ already. All of these books got my kids excited about berrying, and our preparation and then work paid off when we got to, literally, enjoy the fruits of our labors . . . á la blueberry buckle. I’m warning you . . . one taste and you may dread the eleven months of the year when fresh blueberries aren’t in season.

Becca Renfroe is an at-home mom, a lover of all things outdoors, a freelance writer, and a baker of desserts. She and her family live in Northwest Arkansas.

Berry Picking

An outdoor family of five sent in some inspiring shots of their blueberry adventures in Arkansas. I couldn’t wait to have them share their experience with you. Becca Renfroe, the outdoor mamma of the fam, happily agreed to contribute a write up of their fun. Take a look… 

Happy Summer Solstice! This year, June 20th is the longest day of the year, and all that sunshine has been working overtime for you and your kids! June and July are the best months of the year to go berrying as a family. Grab some buckets, put on your grubbies, and find a berry farm near you!

If you want to take your kids berrying, I think blueberries are the perfect choice. They ripen in June, which means the weather isn’t unbearably hot in most states, especially in the morning. The bushes have no thorns, the berries have no pits or seeds, and they are large and grow very closely together on the ends of the branches. Perfect for kid-sized hands to pluck and pack a pail. And the difference between ripe and unripe berries is easy to spot, even for a child.

We used a great website called pickyourown.org to locate a blueberry farm (I use it in the fall when we want to pick our own pumpkins, too). Most local farms that sell fruits and vegetables will have their own buckets for you to use, but you may want to check in advance. While you’re checking, see what type of payment they accept (not many will take your debit or credit card, and some are strictly cash only), and ask if the fruit is ripe. We were going to visit a blueberry farm we’d been to before, but when I called the owner, she said all the ripe berries had been picked and it would take a few days for more fruit to ripen.

So this year, my husband, Allen, and I took our three kids berry-picking at McBooberry Farms, outside of Rogers, Arkansas. The best thing about McBooberry was that when we bought our blueberries, the owner gave us a stack of recipe cards and some tips for freezing blueberries when we left (for instance, I didn’t know that it’s better to freeze the berries unwashed, then wash them before you use them, to keep the berries from getting tough).

Brigham, my 3-year-old, carried a spring-loaded plastic knife in his bucket, in case there were any bears. (Perhaps we read Blueberries for Sal one too many times). Truman (almost seven) and I picked steadily through the five-acre patch, and he really got into it, trying to fill his gallon bucket before anyone. If it had been a race, however, Allen would have been dead last between the three of us.

Watching Allen fill his bucket was an interesting commentary on our different personalities. This was Allen’s first time picking blueberries, and he kept saying, ‘They’re so good! I’ve never really cared about blueberries but these are so good!’ But he wasn’t lagging behind because he was eating all he picked, he was lagging because he is painstakingly thorough. He did not want a single unripe spot on any of his blueberries. I observed him pick one berry at a time, turn it every way to see how ‘blue’ it was, and then either plunk it into his bucket or (gasp!) toss it aside! I mean, if there was the tiniest penumbra of a reddish color on one of his berries, it was not worthy. I admit, my bucket was mostly blue with patches of purplish-red, and Truman’s was two parts blue, one part red, and one part pink (Brig had about nine pinkish berries total by the end of the day) . . . but Allen’s bucket was impressively, entirely, and cobaltly blue. So, I guess we can conclude that I’m all about quantity and he is all about quality. Or at least, I’m all about speed, and he is . . . not.

Our 9-month-old, Mollie, got wheeled along in the stroller for a while, but then we took turns holding her while we picked, and she loved the taste of the blueberries as much as her daddy did. It was a perfect, sunny day for picking, with a nice breeze to keep us working happily.

We paid $10 per gallon for our blueberries, and they are the plumpest, sweetest berries I have ever tasted. Later that day, I was in the grocery store and checked the price of a pint of blueberries in the produce section: $3.78. Which translates to $30.24 per gallon (not including sales tax). The difference between the two can’t be measured just by quality or freshness . . . because my kids got to experience firsthand how food goes from a seed to a plant to a harvest. They got to feel and taste and smell and get dirty, instead of taking produce for granted—something that magically appears at a grocery store. Not only that—we had a fun, relaxed, and wonderful morning together as a family, continuing an annual tradition and making long-lasting memories . . . all for a mere $20.

Becca Renfroe is an at-home mom, a lover of all things outdoors, a freelance writer, and a baker of desserts. She and her family live in Northwest Arkansas.

Outdoor Birthday Party

As I mentioned before, we celebrated my son’s 4th birthday a few days back. Since it’s June and the nights are warm and inviting we decided to set up the festivities outdoors. We created a makeshift outdoor movie theatre with multiple blankets, sheets, garden lights and a chalkboard naming the featured presentation!

Sidewalk chalk is always a great outdoor entertainer. Thanks Grandma! The kids had a blast playing duck, duck, goose on the grass and the evening wouldn’t have been complete without a Candy land cake! Yummo…

Do you have any fun outdoor birthday party ideas to share? Leave a comment!