She stooped to retrieve a snail from the stalk of a milkweed plant. She carefully placed it in her open zip-top bag, crossed off "snail" on her list and ran down the path.
They were in search of twenty items from the woods near our campsite and the completion of the list for my three youngest, would result in a prize. It was a cooperative hunt and no one would receive a reward until each of them had all their items. So they ran around helping each other with those tricky-to-find bits and pieces. It seemed easy enough but now and then, a weary gatherer would come straggling back to me whining about how they will never find this item or that. For some reason, caterpillars were difficult to come by this year so, it took a day and a half for three to be collected... and I wasn't relenting on keeping it challenging! The elated squeals that erupted when the creepy-crawlies were discovered one by one, returned us to the game again and again.
An oak leaf, a butterfly/moth, a feather, a pink rock, a shell...
an acorn, a maple leaf, a caterpillar...
a white rock, a piece of birch bark...
a snail, something unnatural (garbage: plastic cap, pop can, etc.)...
two different types of flowers...
a "Y" stick, a skipping stone...
evergreen needles...
berries...
crayfish (could be a piece of one--yum)...
and locust leaves.
We finished off the day with a delightful campfire (where Mommy freaks out every five minutes thinking someone will trip and fall into said fire), complete with s'mores and Daddy's favourite: talking about our highs and lows of the day.
The next day, we went to a nearby town and they did pick out a prize, however, I believe the joy of finally finding those three fuzzy caterpillars was the real prize :)
1 comment:
Fun idea. Great s'mores pictures. YUM!
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