Likin' Lichen

A while back,  we headed out to our park. It was cold - there were even a few snowflakes in the air - but I'm so glad we went anyway: it was a really productive day. I saw quite a few birds, and put in a nice checklist on eBird, which I love to do. And we all made entries in our nature journals. This one is mine - pretty sure that it's a Buckthorn, which is one of the invasives that troubles our preserve, but I'm not positive, since I'm very weak on identifying things without leaves. We accidentally sent one of our nature books home with our friends that we go out with... oops.

The nature journals still feel a bit awkward, but I think we're slowly getting into something of a groove with those. Hero(9) drew some interesting lines he found in the dirt under the tower we usually visit. I have no idea what they were about; it looked raked; my feeling was that they were probably made by a person, not a critter, and definitely not a natural process. But I have no idea what would lead someone to rake interesting designs into the dirt under the tower.

Dragon(5) has begun to notice that his drawings are not very true to what he sees, and it frustrates him. I may have to ponder how to help him improve his skills. Hero is working on Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, which I used when I started drawing, but Dragon doesn't read well enough to do that, yet. Hmmmm.... I thought he did well, but I will have to think about how to support him, since he is dissatisfied.

But the day's really cool discovery didn't make it into our books. Not yet, anyway.

Miss H found this really cool mossy thing and brought it over to me. I took a picture and posted it to the Plant ID group I found on Facebook. They are always so kind, and today was no exception. They told me right away that it's lichen, not moss. And one guy even offered to share some macro photography he does, so the kids can see. We plan to get together with Miss H's family and do some learning about lichens and drawing in our nature journals. In the mean time, I will also be on the look out for opportunities to share information about lichens with the kids turns out they're pretty interesting.