week 4...

despite my lousy head cold i'm fighting with, the kids still had to be entertained yesterday...

another hot day, so i thought it might help me to be outside for a while and get some sun and some heat to help 'dry out' my cold...only to find this morning that my plan did NOT WORK!

~sniffle~

tyler collected his usual pail of rocks while we were at the cabin, so after pleading for the last 2 days to paint his rocks...i gave in and let him create his beautiful masterpieces!

...later in the afternoon, and being tuesday and also being the first day of 'week 4', we ventured off to the park to go check on tyler's geese! wow, have they grown since last week! some of the younger males have learned from their dad's examples and even tried to 'hiss' us away...too funny! kinda like a chicken picking a fight with a dog...WHATEVER little fuzzball!


( i never like being on the other side of the camera, but here was an opportunity to take a picture of myself and the kids!)



this guy.
ok, this gander was really fearless and quite curious of our visit. we found a group of 16 adult geese WAY on the farthest side of the park. no goslings around. it was either the goose version of "country charm adult only resorts" or a senior's development for geese on the lake. 'no goslings allowed'...!!!
anyway,
he was front and centre the whole time we were tossing out crumbs for them, and the others didn't really come to close to him. he was a hisser alright. probably the 'ring leader' of the flock as it seemed the others were intimidated by him. he swam right up to us and THEN he proceeded to crawl up onto the bank of the pond and FOLLOWED us along as we continued our exploring...looking for the families....

once we did find some young families, he had the NERVE to come up to tyler and actually grabbed the bread right out of his hand!!! courtney continued to feed the little guys around us while tyler kept hand feeding this guy so he wouldn't scare off the little ones. tyler was quite thrilled that the gander came several times to feed from his hand!! ( i wish i knew how to add video to my blog because i got a little video of this adventure as well...)

...enough about him...

we found our little family of 5 again...and they sure are getting big!

here's one of the curious little ones...it was kinda funny too because we saw this family when we arrived and were looking on the docks...they were on the other side of the lake from us, about 40 feet away, and they all just jumped into the lake and swam over to us! they got a good feeding on the lake and then we went for our walk and all these other adventures were happening...but, not to be left out, perhaps from picking up the familiar 'peeps' of the feeding golslings, they came running over to us from behind a bush and joined in again! this little one was running an olympic goose stance to get to us!

( kinda reminds me of the story 'the ugly duckling' right now....soon he will be beautiful!)

...imagine hearing the 'here comes the calvary' theme music and picture them running...

too funny!

...and this is them ( family of 5 ) on the lake at the docks when we first arrived...

WE LOVE GEESE!!!

:o)

...one more little note of excitement and interest from our visit with the geese today is while we were on the dock feeding them, keeping in mind that last week the docks were UNDER WATER from all the rain we had, the water was only about 2 inches down from the dock.

anyway,

while feeding the geese, this group of 4 CATFISH decided to bob up to the surface and snaffle some of the bread crumbs too! it was hilarious and unexpected to see these ugly faces pop up out of the water and pull a 'don't mind if i help myself' apperance...!

i got a couple pictures of them as they kept coming back, but i was interested in seeing what it would do...i held a larger piece of bread in my fingers and just kind of bobbed it along in the water and the darn things came up and were nibbling on it right out of my hand! i could feel their slimy catfish whiskers on my hand (YUCK ) but it was still pretty cool at the same time!

i am TOTALLY having fun with tyler's canada goose project (no kidding?) and i am so glad that i did it with him! he is learning a lot about them, and courtney is also involved now that school is out and she LOVES going to see them. i am learning so much too, but my favorite thing about this adventure of a lesson is spending this learning time with my kids and exposing them to a whole new world! they are excited about their findings, their exploring and all the knowledge they are learning. we have been enjoying these geese at this same park for over 4 weeks now, on a weekly photojournaling visit, and been seeing them grow and change and it's just a wonderful thing to share with my kids!

i am looking forward to the fall when we go to the Fort White Centre to wrap up our little project and to see all the full grown families there before they migrate south for the winter...that will be amazing for tyler to see in person and know that all the things he's been learning about happen through stages and the pictures he's seen in his library books, and video's we've watched happen

FOR REAL!!!

NOTE TO LIZ...just wait until you see what your little preschool student has created during this project!!!

NOTE TO SELF....man, this was a long post! thanks to those of you who kept reading til the end!!!

{GIGGLE}

:O)