Tutorial

You'll find my monthly post published today at Simple Homeschool.  I've written about two things we enjoy very much; reading and the outdoors. The combination of these is a post titled, Great Books for an Outdoors Education.

Reading is something that inspires us to get outdoors more; to experience this great, wide and beautiful world we've read about. Then, after we've been outdoors and want to research what we've discovered for ourselves (ie: identifying the bugs, leaves and forest floor wildflowers) books are where we turn to find our answers. 

Just this morning I read Henry David's House to the kiddos.  Reading this very edited and richly illustrated (oh I just love children's picture books) version of the American classic Walden, or Life in the Woods by Henry David Thoreau inspires me to follow my dreams for simpler living, leaves me pining to return to the woods (only 4 more days till our next hike) and has piqued my curiosity to read the original. 

If you'd like to find more outdoor/nature type books to read with your children you can check out my nature study shelf at Goodreads.  

This winter Damien upped the nature-book ante by reading outdoor adventure books to our family during the evenings. These are stories about people truly being in the outdoors, not just studying it from the comfort of their heated living rooms or well equipped science labs. He's got a booklist going also at Goodreads that you can see at the bottom of the AdventureinProgress mainpage. 

Have any of you read Walden, or Life in the Woods? What did you think? Would you recommend it?

PS. I know there's been a lot of posts lately on FIMBY about the outdoors.  This blog reflects my life, it's not an abstract writing project, and we've been reading about, talking about and spending lots of time outdoors. And we hope to do more.  It's a good thing but I do plan to post about other more "homey" subjects.  Maybe hopefully spring gardening, with some pretty photos. 

Over the past year as I've started to share more about our family's outdoor adventures I've gotten questions from people asking how we do this with our children.  

I think the overall vague question of "how do you do this?" can actually be broken down into several questions.  Two of them being, "how do you make the time?" And "how to you get multiple family members on board?"

As we have time to articulate our thoughts (we're actually quite busy having adventures and making time to write about having adventures is challenging) we plan to answer these questions fully. Here at FIMBY, our home blog, and ADVENTUREinPROGRESS, our adventure blog and eventually in a book devoted to that very topic, hiking with your family. 

But before we ever publish a book with gear lists, menu plans and clothing guidelines we would like to help families get started by addressing a few of the basics, one of which is making the time.

Damien just published a fantastic post on this subject. Time is such an important topic to discuss because if you are wanting to be outdoors more with your family finding the time to do so will be one of the biggest obstacles to overcome.   

Damien's post, One Day A Week, explains in some detail our family's experience with setting aside one day a week to be outdoors, all together, for the better part of the day (ie: morning till supper).  I plan to follow up on his post with more practical tips from a homemaker's perspective.   Let's just say actually getting out the door is the hardest part of the whole adventure.  Never mind hiking up the actual mountain!

When I get around to writing that I'll be sure to give you a heads up.  But to get you started you can read what Damien has to say about how to make family day a priority.

PS: With this recent "new look" you'll notice at the bottom of the FIMBY main page that you can read the titles of the last 10 posts written at AdventureinProgress.  

Editor's Note: I am thrilled to turn the blog over to Laurent today. I know many of you have kiddos and we thought they might appreciate doing a search and find.

This is a picture I drew of a flooded section of the rainforest.

You can look for:

1. 6 snakes
2. 7 pink flower blossoms
3. 2 yellow breasted hummingbirds
4. 2 green frogs
5. 2 turtles
6. 8 grey fish
7. 3 red piranhas
8. 1 school of blue fish
9. 2 parrots
10. 1 capybara

Capybaras like the water and they are the largest rodents in the world.

Click the attachment on this post to see the answer key.

What's your favorite rainforest animal? How many items did you find without looking at the key?

(editor's note: To view a larger version of the drawing please click here. Then drag the picture to your desktop and open it there.)