Mosses and lichens and fun with a skipping rope

On Monday morning we had a disastrous lesson time. Just disastrous. I'm not sure why. The weekend was extremely busy and Fina was just in a state. If I'm being honest, I was in a bit of a state myself. At any rate, we packed up to go to the forest for our nature study just the same. On our way out Fina said "mom, can I bring the long skipping rope to tie to trees and stuff?" Sure, Fina, bring whatever will get us out of the door right now!

Well, give a girl a good, sturdy rope and wait and see what you get!

She tied the rope around her waist and was "mountaineering" on the trees.

And then she somehow decided to make herself a swing. I was working on my nature study and didn't help her at all. She tied this knot.

And then swung and swung, sitting and standing. For like an hour. She was so proud of herself

I looked at this cutest mushroom, that was growing on a felled tree.

And we read about our cute red-topped moss from last week. It is actually a Cladonia, a lichen with fungi spores! We are reading Dorothy Sterling's The Story of Mosses, Ferns and Mushrooms.
Dorothy Sterling says "The prettiest of all the lichens are the Cladonias. Many of them are so tiny that you have passed them by without noticing. Once you meet them, you won't forget them, however." Too true!

It is called the Scarlet-Crested Cladonia. This one is nicknamed the "British Soldier" because there are bright red knobs on top of the stalks, "as bright a red as the uniforms worn by British soldiers during the American Revolution." Fungi spores are formed in those scarlet knobs.

This pic is from last week. Zoom in and you will see our brush drawing of the "British Soldier." We knew it was special, we just didn't know what it was! It was our dear friend Linda who first noticed them last week while we were walking together and Fina and I went back for further investigation.

On Monday, we searched high and low elsewhere in the forest to see if we could find more of them, and we did not. Only on this original tree stump! We are so thankful to have spent some time observing it and learning about it!

We finished reading E. Nesbit's The Enchanted Castle. I fear Fina has a bit of me when she said, at the end of the book, "I didn't love the ending. I feel like something else should have happened." I know, my dear one, I know! Sometimes it is hard when books end because you don't want them to end, or sometimes the ending just feels unsatisfactory. I get it.

We're reading some great historical fiction right now. We're really getting "into" the 1800s. We are reading Jeremy's War 1812, The Broken Blade, and now we started The Incident at Hawk's Hill. I thought of it as our new free read, but after the first chapter realized that it is set in the 1870s and talks a lot about the same things we're reading about in history - the Red River Valley, the settlers coming north of Winnipeg and more. It is so wonderful to make connections between things and to make connections with things. What a blessing!

Fina is really enjoying our Spanish lessons. Today we started a new little poem and I continue to marvel at how much she understands. She can translate into English with great facility. I can hardly believe my eyes (well, my ears) sometimes.

We have our struggles, do not delude yourselves about that, my dear readers. But the blessings far outnumber the heartache!