Adding Borage to a butterfly or bee garden is a great choice as it attracts pollinators including native bees to your space. It also has the added benefits of repelling pests and being companions to plants like tomatoes and strawberries. Borage is also known as the Bee Bush or Star-flower. I was excited to see Blue-banded bees enjoying the star…
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“Children are encouraged to patiently and quietly watch until they learn something of the habits and history of bee, ant, wasp, spider, hairy caterpillar, dragonfly and whatever of larger growth comes in their way… Let all he finds out about be entered in his diary, by his mother if writing be a labour to him… Where he finds it, what…
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“If you also take a look closer at the patterns of our world you will always reveal the beautiful mathematics.” Ali Kayaspor I love finding books that I can read during our math investigations. Jody’s Beans (by Malachy Dolye) is a very loved book in our house. It is a beautifully illustrated story about a little girl and her discovery…
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“The child should be taught to observe the position of the sun in the heavens from hour by hour, and by it’s position, to tell the time of the day.” Charlotte Mason – Home Education Hmmm, I know that I can’t tell the time by the sun except maybe a vague, it’s almost dinner time at sunset. What about you?…
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Scouting the district for plants and wildlife is a huge project that may seem daunting to begin with, but if we take one step towards the goal each time we walk outdoors, we’ll be increasing our knowledge in bite sizes pieces day by day or week by week.
We were absolutely thrilled to happen upon orchid treasures scattered throughout the bush, sometimes growing in colonies, sometimes solitary. We felt we’d stepped back in time and walked alongside Amy Mack as she wrote in A Bush Calendar, “Today I found a treasure trove. On the slope of a gentle hill, beneath the shade of young turpentines and sassafras trees,…
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Charlotte Mason encouraged supplementing informal nature walks with incidental, natural object lessons which sharpen a child’s observational skills with gentle, guided discovery questions once in a while. A Natural Object Lesson is simply noticing an object of interest while on a nature walk and taking a closer look at it in its habitat or environment. It’s the moment we recognize…
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We encountered the Mosquito Orchid in early June but they flower anytime from April through to August.
My Autumn garden has been surprisingly busy with insects. I was impressed with my Sunset daisy which has been a hive of activity for wasps, flies and the Long-tailed Pea-blue, skipper butterfly. I’ve propagated a few stems to add more Sunset colour and insect activity to the backyard. This was my ‘Sit Spot,’ a place to sit and watch nature…
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Lately, I’ve been thinking of activities to do with my grand-daughter and support my daughter as she begins her preschool journey with our little pumpkin. So when dad decided to build a veggie bed and plant seeds, I thought it’ll be awesome to do some seed related activities with her. Jo had a brilliant idea to create a nature board…
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I was given a flower press some years ago and I’ve had a little fun collecting flowers from my backyard garden to press. I’ve also pressed flowers from my daughter’s wedding as I didn’t have the heart to chuck them out once their beauty had bagun to fade. I decided to use a few flowers that had been pressed along…
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