Of Stories and Snakes

One of our favorite haunts these days is Veteran's Oasis Park. I alluded to it in my post on the great outdoors over at Playful Childhood. Surrounded by a riparian preserve and stocked fishing lake, this has been a gem of a find for us. After a short 5 minute drive (which in Phx is a big deal) we can enjoy hiking trails, a beautiful waterfall, lake and story time!

The Environmental Education Center hosts all kinds of classes. Being the frugal mama that I am, FREE has been sounding mighty fine these days. So on most Thursdays, you'll find us enjoying Mother Nature Story Time. (It's free, but pre-registration is required online if you ever want to join us.) The boys love the animal or nature related crafts, books and games.

Today they made name tags. They were supposed to pick an animal name that started with the same letter as their name. I could not come up with any animals that started with 'X' so we reverted back to 'A'. Even with that we couldn't think of any desert animals except ants. Alexander the Ant. Keegan was a bit easier and became Keegan the Kangaroo Rat.

Mr Matt, the asst naturalist at the park, conducts the story times. With the education world pretty well dominated by women, it is so cool for the boys to see men who value learning and want to pass on knowledge of the world around us.

Finally, just as they have been sitting long enough, we wrap up story time with a game. Today we played Animal Olympics.

Competing with a hummingbird who can flap his wings over 300x in a 10 second period of time. Despite their best efforts, the hummingbird still won.

Trying to jump higher than a jackrabbit!

Did you know that lizards do push-ups to talk to eachother. The boys really got into this one.

Trying to jump at least 6 ft, like a Kangaroo Rat!

Feeding time for the kingsnake. YUM!