I've been feeling lately as if our Family Learning Adventure is, well, lacking in adventure. So I've been looking for ways to remedy that. A hs group here in our area sent out an email that they were going to have a nature walk this morning in a place a little less than an hour away. It didn't take me long to scrap our learning plans for the morning/day, pack a picnic, and set off.
The first sign that this plan might go awry was the place where the nature walk was to be held. It wasn't in some gorgeous park with trees and good signage. It also wasn't really in a great neighborhood at all. But we were on an adventure so we persevered on, making sure to lock the car doors.
We were the first to arrive--only a bit nerve-wracking when we realized that we were in a not-great neighborhood and even the coordinator wasn't there. Still, we were up for an adventure. And we wandered around the preserve. It was billed as a native-plant preserve, so I pictured some cactus, sage, stuff like that. And it was there, kind of. There were very few signs to tell us what we were seeing and of the signs that were there, most were broken. Also, quite a few of the plants were dead.
Honestly, I was thinking, "I wasted my gas for this, I put three kids in the car to see a few half-dead plants which we can't even identify? And where is the coordinator? Was the whole thing a scam to get pregnant women and their children into a remote, not-very-nice place?"
But I sucked it up and adventured onward, trying to have a good attitude for the kids while looking around the whole time for escape routes. They, on the other hand, had a good time finding neat plants and rocks, sitting on the various benches and rating them for cleanliness. They also sat down on one of the clean benches and drew pictures of one of the things they had seen that they liked.
Even I was getting into the adventure. Until the dog came...But you can read about that below.
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