"Doing School" In a Different Way...

It's so hard to "do school" when the sun is shining and the snow is finally melting.

So for the last couple weeks we've been taking it rather easy school-wise. Once breakfast is done and the nip is out of the air, we get dressed and muck around in our yard.

We've explored icicles. Our eaves decided to spring a slight leak this spring resulting in a rather large icicle down the length of the tree (which gets the bulk of the water from the roof and as a result has grown from a cute little three foot pine to well over 15 feet in a little over four years). Beav was looking at the tree wondering when the new needles would begin to grow when he saw it - over 6 feet long and almost 4 inches wide at the widest point.

He was in little boy glory!

So we discussed why icicles form and how, while that tree is in direct sunlight, the icicle still hasn't melted (shaded by the branches of the tree, of course!)

Then cleaning up exploring the yard he wondered why we had no snow here, but there was still "a ton" over here - the south side of the yard but the north side of the fence still had lots of snow, the south side of the garage was almost bare but the north side had a full three feet yet.

Again, the sun's reach - the fence provided shade to that part of the same southern facing piece of yard.

Then there were the gardens. Some of my early bulbs were popping up through the sprinkling of snow left. He was fascinated by the fact that there were flowers beginning to grow (which have since disappeared thanks to neighbourhood cats using the flower beds as litter boxes and digging and scratching in the dirt). But they were there, for a while, and Beav was quite impressed by the touch of greenery peeking through the snow.

He was also quite disgusting by the amount of garbage that accumulates around our yard through the winter. Pieces of paper, plastic shopping bags, even single serving pizza boxes and pop cups complete with lid and straws.

"Doesn't anyone know how to use a garbage can, Mommy?" he said more than once in a huff as we gathered together the garbage, only to find more daily as the snow continues to melt.

One of these days we'll return to "regular school" but right now we're enjoying our time outside after a long cold Canadian winter.