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What’s on this weekend?

Posted in local outdoors outings, Uncategorized, tagged , , , on March 15, 2012| Leave a Comment »

Some suggestions (although I’d check before you head out if the weather is bad – there may be cancellations):-

March 17th

Family Day at Elkus Ranch. See here for details. Registration required.

Wingding Family Fest at Skyline Ridge Open Space Preserve, 10am-3pm. It’s a bird themed celebration of spring.  Find the flyer here.  CANCELLED.

Enjoy a tour of Deer Hollow Farm in the Rancho San Antonio County Park, 10am-1pm, admission $5. The flyer is here.

Family Bird Walk at the Don Edwards Bay Wildlife Refuge, 2.30-4.30pm. Recommended for kids aged 5-10, reservations required.

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Rain Day? Science Day!

Posted in Boys Activities, fun in your garden, Uncategorized, Unstructured Play, tagged , , , , , on March 13, 2012| Leave a Comment »

I thought today was going to be one of those looooonng days where the kids are going crazy trapped inside by super heavy rain.  Especially after we had inside preschool in the morning. They are, after all, Outdoors Kids right?  But it actually proved to be a really fun afternoon.  The weather vaguely co-operated and we were able to get outside for a few hours.  I also discovered that rain days make perfect science days, which little boys really enjoy.

The boys are fascinated by rain.  They haven’t seen too much of it this year, so it’s novel, and it makes everything — in their opinion anyway — so much more interesting.  First, we decided to see how much rain was falling this week and whipped up a quick rain gauge. It wouldn’t win any prizes for beauty or scientific accuracy, but it did the job and was constructed entirely from items we found in our recycling bin.  The Monkey is fascinated with numbers and measuring things, so he loved explaining how the gauge would work and finding a good spot for it in the garden.  It better rain enough over night to make it satisfying to look at tomorrow.

Five pounds of rain Mom!

Then we went to our local park and noticed all the changes the rain had made in this familiar landscape.  We talked about why the wood chips and sand had changed colour and why some areas of the park had remained dry.  We talked about how and where puddles form. Then we pondered how different the creek might look after rain.  The Monkey, after his current favourite TV show, likes to make hypotheses (“Mommy, a hypothesis is an idea you can test!”), so I encouraged him to guess how the creek would have changed from our last visit.  He suggested it would have more water and be running faster.  We clambered down to the creek to check and he was delighted to discover he was right–the creek was running really high and fast.  We then spent a happy thirty minutes paddling in the creek as we had our rain boots on anyway.  Rain? It’s just an opportunity for science, right?

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Sharon Park

Posted in local outdoors outings, Short Hikes, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on March 10, 2012| Leave a Comment »

Last week we had a great hike at Sharon Park. This tranquil spot is a great toddler destination: there’s a grassy area for kids to run around, a great (but short) hike through the woods, a pond to explore, a little play structure for climbing and sliding, picnic tables and plentiful parking.

Looking for the fish

To do the hike, head left from the car park past the climbing frame and pick up the trail going into the wood. The trail veers round to the right and runs parallel to the pond through the woods.  This is a great area for kids to explore off trail and enjoy some unstructured play and fort building.  After a few hundred yards the trail re-emerges onto the grass at the far side of the pond and from there you can explore the path around the water.  There’s lots to see in the pond including insects, large koi and ducks.  Most toddlers really get a kick out of the big, colourful fish–mine could have watched them for hours.

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59 % of kids can’t climb a tree

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on March 6, 2012| Leave a Comment »

These results of a recent survey of British kids are really super sad. Can’t imagine the situation in the US is much better.

TOP TEN THINGS (UK) CHILDREN AGED 5 TO 13 CAN DO:

1 Work a DVD player – 67 per cent

2 Log onto the internet – 58 per cent

3 Play computer games on games console (wii, Xbox or similar) – 50 per cent

4 Make a phone call – 46 per cent

5 Use a handheld games console (Nintendo DSi, PSP or similar) – 45 per cent

6 Use an iPhone (or smartphone) – 42 per cent

7 Work Sky Plus – 41 per cent

8 Send a text message – 38 per cent

9 Search for clips on YouTube – 37 per cent

10 Use an iPad (or tablet computer) – 31 per cent

TOP TEN THINGS UK CHILDREN AGED 5 TO 13 CAN’T DO:

1 Recognise three types of butterfly – 91 per cent

2 Repair a puncture – 87 per cent

3 Tie a reef knot – 83 per cent

4 Read a map – 81 per cent

5 Build a camp fire – 78 per cent / Put up a tent 78.5 per cent

6 Spot a blackbird, sparrow or robin – 71 per cent

7 Make papier mâché – 72 per cent

8 Make a cup of tea – 65 per cent

9 Build a den – 63 per cent

10 Climb a tree – 59 per cent

See here for the report.

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Smelling overdrive

Posted in Uncategorized on March 6, 2012| Leave a Comment »

Since discovering that some plants smell interesting, The Monkey now wants to smell every garden we walk past.  This isn’t too bad, although it does slow down any strolls we take around the neighbourhood.  His brother, however, also wants to join in but doesn’t really have the skills–he tends to blow his nose onto plants rather than to sniff.  So now we’re the family who walk past people’s gardens, have two kids grabbing at flowers for a smell, and one who leaves a small trail of snot across every plant he stops by. Luckily our neighbours think it’s funny.

Let's have a sniff

 

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Out and about this weekend

Posted in Uncategorized on March 2, 2012| Leave a Comment »

A few ideas:

Celebrate hummingbirds at the Arboretum at the University of Santa Cruz.  See details here.  We’ve not been to this event, but the Autumn monarch butterflies festival was lots of fun.

Saturday 3rd March: there’s a three mile ‘tracks and scat’ hike at the Russian Ridge Preserve.  Information here.

For those who like a spot of history, this event at the San Juan Bautista State Historic Park might be worth checking out. We’re going to try and get down there at some point in the coming months.

This is a bit far out but meant to be spectacular: open weekend at the Black Diamond Mines Regional Preserve.  It’s on our ‘to do’ list.

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a spoonful of sugar (or 22!)

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on February 29, 2012| 5 Comments »

I was fascinated by a recent report that suggested sugar is about as toxic to our bodies as alcohol and that we eat far, far too much of it.  You can find a good summary of the report here (the actual report is behind a subscription wall).  Now I know this has been a little controversial but its basic arguments, that too much sugar is unhealthy and that sugar is addictive, do seem to be substantiated by the evidence.  I also know that I am a terrible sugar addict with out-of-control cravings for mint aeros and jam.

Inspired by the report (and by the hope that a sugarless diet will shift that last bit of second-baby-fat), my husband and I have decided to do a ‘no sugar month challenge’ and March is the month. As of tomorrow, we are both going to try to exclude any items with added sugar from our diets. (Foods with naturally occurring sugars – fruits–are permissible).  He feels he can do it. We both feel I will last about three days.  We shall see.  Declaring the challenge to the world is my way of seeking accountability in the hope I may make it to five days.

And what a good example we would set our kids right?

Would love companions in the journey……

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McClellan Ranch Park

Posted in Short Hikes, Uncategorized, tagged , , , on January 3, 2012| Leave a Comment »

We’ve only recently discovered this little gem in Cupertino, but it’s quickly become a favorite with the boys.

The boys on the trail

There are wonderful fallen trees to climb on and jump off:

A Puppy Dog in a tree

Nothing improves a hike like things to jump off

A numbered nature trail to follow:

Mom, there are numbers in the woods!

and a creek to throw stones in (complete with handy natural barrier to prevent soggy children).

Hmm..now how can I get into the water?

What’s so lovely about this little park is how wild it feels even though it’s small and surrounded by suburbia. And how empty – we’ve never seen other hikers there on any visit. McClellan Ranch is also beautifully maintained and it warms my heart that it’s treasured so much by the locals that there is never any trash to be found.  A perfect toddler trek destination on a sunny afternoon.

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San Andreas Fault Hike

Posted in Short Hikes, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on November 3, 2011| Leave a Comment »

This weekend we found an awesome, kid friendly and interesting-to-adults trail in Los Trancos Open Preserve: the San Andreas Fault Trail.  The trail was wide enough for a jog stroller but The Monkey walked the whole way, and The Puppy Dog most of the way.

The Monkey running down the trail map in hand

Puppy Dog liked it too

There was lots for the kids to look at — interesting trees and flowers, little rabbits and a family of deer.  There’s also a guided walk with points of geographical interest. The Monkey loved running ahead and finding the numbered posts that marked each landmark and then finding them on the map. It was really neat to see him understand how maps work and how the things represented there relate to the real world.  His parents enjoyed the information on the San Andreas fault–we learnt lots about pressure ridges and sag ponds, and how fault features looked like great building spots to early settlers until they realised what had made them.

An exercise in map reading

It was also a nice trail to use to talk to The Monkey about earthquakes and to help him make sense of the earth quake drills that he’s been having at school in previous weeks.  Broken fences and mis-shaped trees made great visuals to help him understand what an earthquake is.

A fence split asunder by a quake

Looking down the fault--deadly but beautiful

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Manresa State Beach, Santa Cruz

Posted in Beaches, Uncategorized, tagged , , , on November 1, 2011| Leave a Comment »

 
Dancing on the Beach

This October in North California has been glorious. We’ve spent each weekend at the shore and keep discovering ever nicer beaches.  Manresa State Beach may now be my all time favourite for this bit of the coast. It’s a little off the beaten path, is usually completely empty and is spectacularly gorgeous.

Do beaches get any nicer?

 
I love the super gentle slope down to the sea and how shallow the water remains for 100 feet or so off shore.  The Monkey really enjoyed running in and out of the waves and was dancing on the shore with glee when we first arrived last weekend. 
 

running in and out of the surf

 
The boys had great fun digging, checking out the many crab carcasses that littered the beach, paddling, jumping in holes and driving their trucks along the shore.
 
Perfect sand for trucks

Plus, there was plenty of wildlife to watch. The Puppy Dog loved chasing the sea gulls and watching the birds and, on this visit, we were joined by a pod of playful dolphins for about an hour.  They were leaping out of the water and surfing in the waves. As the group was only 100 yards or so from shore, Mommy and Daddy took turns to swim out and join them (I find the water in the Bay here significantly warmer than at Half Moon Bay and fine for swimming on a hot day). It was one of those afternoons that make me infinitely thankful that we live in such a beautiful part of the world: what can be better than watching two happy, sandy babies run free on the beach and swimming with wild dolphins in the October surf?

 
Dolphins. Honest.

There are only very basic amenities at this beach — just a small car park and toilet block.  And there is the usual $10 day use fee.  But if you want an empty, remote (ish), beautiful beach perfect for toddlers, I don’t think you can beat Manresa.  We’ll certainly be there a lot again next year.

 
 
 
 
 
 

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