A Morning Walk

Every morning, that I'm with our Little One, we go for a stroller walk.

I specify stroller because we can go farther than if she was walking.

(we do her speed walks at other times)

A great destination for us is about 6 blocks away from our house.

What we like about this yard is that it is an ultra-mini farm in the city, right in our neighbourhood.

Benches have been set up between the sidewalk and street so we can sit and enjoy all the work they have done.

When we get there the Little One gets out of the stroller and looks around.

 

First stop is at the chickens!

They are not out everyday but we are always thrilled when they come out to see us.

We've learned a few things about chickens over the past few weeks.

They scratch the ground and then they peck at it (we're not sure if they are looking for worms or bugs) and they go "buuuuck, buck, buck, buuuuck", which we try to copy.

This ultra-mini farm has apple trees

and raspberries.

We had a conversation about not picking other's fruits unless there is a sign saying we can.

This morning my grand daughter reminded to stop and look for the little things.

Like snails and ants.

And bumblebees!

 We enjoyed taking the time to look around that we did that all the way home

 We found a community garden that has fun, informative signs.

We talked to people walking their dogs.

 We found other gardens that had lots of flowers, pig statutes and bird houses.

We counted the bikes as they whizzed by (there were a lot).

We watched the BIG lawn mower cut the grass in the park.

It was loud and a little scary.

And right by our house we saw this crane.

Wow!

All of this during a walk around a small part of our neighbourhood.

Hope you enjoyed our walk.  We did!

Biking at School

It's Bike to Work Week and the staff and students

are encouraged to ride their bikes to school.

To celebrate we closed off the parking lot this morning

so our littlest students could participate.

It was so much more space than the playground pavement

we've used for the past two years.

We did our favourite things;

decorate our bikes with ribbons, balloons and licence plates,

washing our bikes,

and of course ride our bikes.

Especially through our pretend bike wash.

I think I'm going to have to make it taller.

I set up a StoryRide around the perimeter of the parking lot.

A few children noticed and read it with their grown ups.

We had more than 30 children participate

plus the kindergarten class joined us.

We set it up early so the primary grades could use it during

their recess time

 so a lot of children

rode their bikes at school this morning.

StoryRide

Last week during our Bike at the Playground we did a StoryRide.  It's like a StoryWalk but instead of walking we rode our bikes from page to page reading the story.

I chose Duck on a Bike by David Shannon.

The pages of the book were set up around our school.

As they rode they stopped and waited for a grown up to read it.

By riding around the school the children experienced a variety of surfaces.

Riding on pavement, loose rocks and grass.

The children became confident with riding ahead and 'reading' the page while they waited for the grown ups to arrive.

We ended up back at the playground for a snack.

Biking at the Playground

It's Bike to Work week and we took part by organizing fun events at our school playground.

The families started by decorating their bikes with balloons, ribbons, and license plates.

Or they washed their bikes.  I noticed most of the children washed only the wheels.

Then they were ready to ride the figure 8 course.

Some of the children recognized and knew what to do at a STOP sign.  

Not everyone though.

The video shows some near misses so we started to give a bit of direction and instruction to keep traffic moving safely.

The most popular part was riding through the bike 'wash'.

Around and around they went.

How I Spent My Weekend

I’m taking you away from work today to share with you my
husband’s latest adventure.
       
We were out for a bike ride one day, not long ago, and as we
were crossing the train tracks my husband insisted on stopping
to take some measurements. 
Measurements? 
For what? 
         
He has an idea to ride his bike on the rails from here down island.
 
So he measured and took pictures of the width and height of a rail,
the distance between the rails and went home to create.
        
On the internet he found pictures of how other people have adapted
their bikes and set to work finding items to piece a rail bike together.
 
Everything he used was recycled, except one bolt that he had to buy. 
The front part is an old dry ground training ski, the outrigger is a
scooter that we found abandoned, and the connecting bars are from
an old cartop carrier and a piece of bamboo.  Plus he also used lots of
zipties and old bike tubes.
          
All ready to try it out he quickly learned that balancing it would be difficult. 
“When we ride a bike we turn the handle bars to help keep us balanced”
he tells me.  He couldn’t do that on the rail bike. 

He also discovered that the bamboo wasn’t strong enough to keep the bike
from leaning inward and pushing the outrigger off the track.  So he replaced
the bamboo with another metal bar from the cartop carrier.
           
Once that was fixed and an additional bracing bar was added he was ready to go.

As I watched him develop his idea and build it, problem solve and recreate it reminded me how children play.  They learn through what interests them.  A child will explore an item of interest, take it apart, rebuild it, change it or make something new all the time learning many different concepts.  And most importantly learning by doing not by being told “this is how it’s done or this is the way it should be”. 

                      And having that thrill of success be yours to show. 
                                Doesn't his smile just tell it all?

 Note:  The rail line that my husband is riding on has no trains in operation this year so risk is limited.


In a future post I’ll talk about how I’ve been developing an area in our centre
where children can use their imaginations and create using loose parts.