Sea Critters!

One of our favorite field trips last year was our trip to Titlow Beach, out in Tacoma. It is a rocky, muddy beach full of old pilings and lots of barnacles. But when the tide goes out, it is a treasure trove of sea life. We headed out to Titlow during one of the year's lowest tides and hunted for sea critters.

David was on the lookout for an octopus, since we saw one there last year. We didn't see an octopus, but we did find tons of sea stars, big and small.

A pretty purple one

More sea stars

David found some teeny-tiny baby brittle stars. You can see it just to the palm-side of his middle finger.

Grayson found a dead crab. There were lots of small shore crabs, and some larger ones as well. Grayson got his finger pinched by a mean old crab - poor buddy. Thankfully it wasn't this size.

A lot of the tide pools had gunnel fish. They look like an eel (in fact, last year that's what we thought they were). Squirmy little suckers!

Trying to catch a gunnel fish

It is a great beach for tide pool discovery! A little muddy, but nothing some rainboots can't handle. We had a good time, even if we didn't find an octopus this year.

Ladybugs!

Our Nature Club recently hosted a ladybug release. We met at a park and several families brought packages of ladybugs. We were able to open them and let the kids gently catch them on little piece of card stock and then release them onto the plants and trees at the park.

There's not much to wax on about this time - mostly a chance for gratuitous pictures of my cute kids. In other words, this post is for you, Mom.

 

Ella was a little nervous to touch the cards with ladybugs on them, so she made me do it.

David had fun with the ladybugs; he also did a lot of running around with his friends.

Grayson let them crawl all over him. He actually spent the most time with the ladybugs; the other two finished up and headed for the playground before Grayson was done.

Gettin' Our Nature On - Mima Mounds Nature Preserve

One of our favorite group activities has become our Nature Club - part of our local homeschool group. About twice a month, we get together at various locations and take a hike or explore, often with a theme. We've done bark rubbings, salmon sighting, low tide explorations, and more. Today we took a trip to Mima Mounds, a nature preserve south of Olympia. It is a prairie environment, but rather than being more or less flat, it is full of small hills, or mounds. I find it neat that the origins of the mounds is still not fully understood. They are likely the product of glacial retreat at the end of the last ice age, but there is still a bit of mystery to them. Today, it is a vast, grassy area that looks like it could be a mini-Hobbiton, and this time of year it is peppered with wild flowers.

Lots of pretty purple Camas flowers

The kids had a good time wandering along the trails. When we got them to slow down enough to pay attention, we saw some butterflies. Personally, I was curious as to why there were so few bees, even with all the flowers. I wonder if the decline in the bee population is to blame. We identified some of the wildflowers, and David was a little nervous at the news that there were poisonous flowers (we didn't see any of them).

We're the kings of the hill!

The weather was amazing, and all in all, it was a great way to end our week.

You can't really tell from the angle, but she's on top of one of the mounds

Looking out over the prairie

He was all decked out in his "nature explorer" stuff