Enjoying Beautiful Akron

It's been beautiful here in Akron !! I decided to make the most use of it... the past few weeks the kids and I have been focusing on "nature". We have been enjoying the outdoors and doing some great crafts.

Just 1 mile from our house is the F.A. Seiberling Nature Realm - This is a 104 acre park that has a bit more than two miles of hiking trails, several gardens  and a visitors center that hosts several indoor/outdoor activities for adults and children. Oh, did I mention that it's all FREE!?

Before heading out, we printed out a nature themed scavenger hunt. I thought this would help keep the kids interested. It was a fun addition to our day trip but not "needed" as they had a great time. I got the scavenger hunt here, but there are some other cute ones here that we'll use another time I'm sure.

Here are the items we "spied" - note, we had to accept the picture of the acorn as it was the wrong time of year to find a real one laying about on the trail.

Some of the crafts included painting our own birdhouses, making tissue butterflies to hang in front of the windows using clear contact paper, we hung birdseed bells out back and made leaf rubbings from leaves the kids picked off the sidewalk from one of our after-dinner strolls.

The most exciting thing going on around here... we're "growing" real butterflies!! I bought one of those Live Butterfly Gardens while in a check-out line at Walmart one afternoon. It was $14 and comes with a coupon inside to order your live caterpillars. I placed the order over the phone and the caterpillars arrived about 4 days later. I waited a couple days to tell the children about them so they weren't waiting too long for their arrival. Here are the pictures of their introduction to our home. Stay tuned for updates!

We've sinced moved onto "farm" related activities and then we'll be taking a bit of a hiatus as my MIL is coming to visit, as well as one of my BFF's!!