Chasing Bluebirds

grand council fire and spring camp out

a whirlwind of events right now, spring camp out (where families camp together at our local day camp)
emily finished her sixth year of camp fire, wow!
my goofy middle schoolers, such fun!

i never tire of seeing my girls up there singing... the camp fire law this time
love all the tents, watching the sun go down in the middle of the city...
lizzie flys up to adventure level (and will attend grand council fire next year... no more winging ceremony which is just for kids in k through 2nd grade)

lizzie liked when i pointed her out during my little speech

we are just weeks away from our trip to italy...been really addicted to this site and daydream of visiting all the places she writes about. ciao for now!

Love A Sea Turtle

we recently had a sea turtle meeting that was inspired by a nonprofit organization on the east coast (north carolina, yay!) called Love A Sea Turtle. it was started by an 11 year old girl who was so inspired by a visit to a turtle rescue facility, she decided to raise money and awareness to save sea turtles where she lives. luckily for her, sea turtles nest along the east coast so they get to see them lay eggs and can help protect the nests. we made a donation and requested a dvd to use at our meeting which the kids were riveted to. i did a little lecture on sea turtles (happy i found a great book on our own bookshelves!) and we took notes in a little sea turtle book. i had a craft for them (turtle collage) but with all the good question and answers going on, our discussion took up too much time. love when that happens! so we will continue to learn about sea turtles (specifically the green sea turtle we have here in southern california) and work with our sea turtle friends on the east coast too. 

here's my little guys and another link to Love A Sea Turtle. so happy to find ways to link our local wetlands to an organization all the way on the east coast via a migrating sea turtle! so cool!

los cerritos wetlands évent x 2

i wanted to include something we did at the last los cerritos wetlands event that was totally unexpected! we made and tossed seed bombs! now if you have read my blog in the past you know i am crazy for seed bombs! we have made them at camp and made them at a meeting last year (spreading them all over our local parks full of california poppy seeds) there was something so satisfying in making and throwing all in one go, the kids loved it!

perfect weather and just enough hands on to keep the kids happy. looking forward to doing this more often!

los cerritos wetlands

another awesome event! a special camp fire wetlands walk and restoration

taylor giving us the ground rules and telling us what to expect on our walk
for any of my faithful readers who have heard me lecture on the necessity of saving the wetlands (rants maybe?) we are finally seeing some real work being done to do just that. last week i attended the second of six community meetings designed to get the public involved in the restoration. it was run by eric and taylor, just like a lecture you would expect to hear in a college biology or ecology class (love!!) i will include the link here so you can check it all out. what i love is how formal and REAL this all is, people actually make a living doing research on this stuff and spend their days counting birds, testing water samples, watching the tides, collecting seeds and on and on... (career change maybe??)
the los cerritos wetlands has a few areas that are pristine but much of it is heavily degraded... still the animals and plants exist here. can you imagine how a fully restored wetlands will look?
so here is lizzie along the river channel looking for sea turtles, yes sea turtles here in long beach! they are attracted to the unusually warm water coming out of these electric plants (they use the cold water to cool their "engines" and pump warm water into the channel. this is the bike path i have used to get to the beach my entire life and its been only recently known that turtles are here. these are juvenile green sea turtles, and they are stopping here on their way up and down the coast. we would normally never see them so this is a real treat. the biologists say this is a way for them to avoid predators and they eat the algae produced by all the warm water
last week i had a sea turtle meeting (we have hooked up with the love a sea turtle group from north carolina, more on that later) and those kids really knew the answers to the questions taylor and eric asked them (felt good they remembered!!) so if you are local, plan on coming out to one of the wetland events. this is really happening folks and if we want to save it all, we need everyones help! i still have a few more things to share about todays event... coming soon!

camp wasewagan

most of my camp fire kids had conflicts with our second trip to camp wasewagan (the camp next to yallani) so i had just three rascals to hang out with last weekend. we weren't sure what to expect this time of year, last time it was november which was cold but no snow. there's something about snow that makes kids go crazy and mine spent every waking hour making a snowman and having snowball fights. here is our cool cabin:

the weekend was designed to have discovery level kids from our councils mingle together and work on activities challenging them in areas of trust and communication. i was in charge of an orienteering (sp???) nature walk where groups of kids wrote up a path using a compass (pacing and putting out markers for guidance) and then the groups rotated to follow the paths the other groups mapped out. it was FUN! and the kids (including me) really learned how to use a compass.
up behind the camp was another deserted camp with retro cabins that i became obsessed with

really fascinating... old style like i used to camp in. wasewagan cabins are heated and can be used year round which is great but my heart loves these old tent/cabins too!
here is our little pack of discovery kids
and the snowman that took two days to build
and a trend my daughter started:
tails to go with their animal hats!! :)

el dorado nature center

an oasis in the city: el dorado nature center. i grew up going here many weekends with my dad and walking the one or two mile loop trail. lots has changed here, more native plants and a more manicured path but fun all the same

my big camp fire kids held an "environment" meeting here, hosted by three kids, part one was our walk today and a craft and lesson will complete the "trail" at mondays meeting
winter time is the best time to be in california, the mountains can be seen (with snow too!) and the days are cool, windy and sunny
one of the first outings our group did together was visiting the nature center and it's been 6 years since! wow!
i couldn't help myself with all these group photos, such a wonderful way to spend a weekend morning
and one more....

thanks for six wonderful years together girls, i can see the bright futures for all of them shining in their eyes. what a great feeling!
i am heading to work and hoping to share more about our new "garden club" at the kids school i am FINALLY getting started! more to come!

candy sales once again

so this year candy sales has begun and unlike other years, the first weekend was bad bad bad... i am sure the economy has something to do with it. whether people just dont have the money or because so many organizations are struggling, everyone is being nickeled and dimed to death. i know we are as a family, fundraising for the schools foundation, cheer and band as well as just coming off christmas, when will it all end? it's a real bummer though to sit for hours and hours watching dozens after dozens of people walk by saying, "no thank you" one after the other. 

so we try and keep our spirits up with lizzie and her giveaway drawings...
emily kept "fake answering" the pay phone near her...
and when the silliness takes over...
just go with it!! let's hope we get through this month without too much anti camp fire crap from the girl scouts (already have had some which unnerves me to no end) and have a great sale to keep the lights on at our local council.

badges

making badges for my camp fire kids... super addicting actually

the best thing i ever bought for my group was that damn button making machine, have used it so many times
all done and ready for our ceremonial campfire celebrating the giving of service to our community. wo he lo!

halloween fast approaching

for the first time in years and years i sewed my kids costumes, pretty much from scratch

 

their new favorite show is adventuretime (not always the most appropriate but...) so they are cake the cat and fiona
we spent last weekend getting the costumes completed then headed to the camp fire carnival
chris just whipped up this "fish" game last minute and it turned out so amazing!!
and it worked too!

happy halloween!!

Alice DuBois

i stumbled onto this lovely artist on flickr and fell in love with her fun style, i thought she would be great inspiration for my camp fire kids. i had the first of two meetings last night with my older girls (first meeting of the year) and they were very attentive and seemed to enjoy the relaxed pace of drawing and painting rather than a more serious lesson plan. these 5th and 6th graders can be hard to keep happy these days...

we spent some time looking over pictures of alice's work and talking about her use of color and design. i wanted to keep the girls focused on birds and backgrounds and gave them limitations on what they could do. i have learned from the past (especially with my own girls) that often they will get off task and if the result isn't of their liking they can get frustrated. even with lots of instruction and guidance, there was one unexpected glitch (i'll get to it later) but overall i think this was a successful art lesson
sketching out birds first
blocking in color
completed picture
so the "glitch" i found was that as the end of the meeting approached and maybe a little too much gossiping and laughing was going on, i reminded the girls to keep on task and rushed them a bit
i realized that every kid who had some open white space started slapping dots all over to "finish up"
and in the end all but a few had polka dot backgrounds. the reason i mention it is that even with careful instruction and guidance to focus on a specific style, they will always be kids and do their own goofy thing. i spoke with emily about it and she got upset that i was saying something negative about her picture. i tried to explain to her that this was a lesson and i am like a teacher and if you don't follow the teacher's instructions you might get a "C" or "B" rather than an "A" on that assignment. of course i love all the work everyone did and everyone enjoyed themselves, i am just always surprised at the lessons i learn about how hard it is to be a leader and a teacher since no matter what i do, there is always a glitch. ha ha!!
a few finished pictures, thanks Alice DuBois!! i will try this tomorrow with my 2nd graders... we'll see how it goes!!