Beaver Sighting & Paper Mache

One crisp morning early in November, the kids and I woke before the sun and headed down to the park where the beavers live. As we walked toward the lake, with eyes sharp on the water, I did not expect to see anything. But there in the middle of the lake a lump of something gently bobbed and moved off in the opposite direction. Apart from jumping in the lake, we couldn't get closer. We stood on the bank squinting in the half light, hoping beyond hope that something would happen to confirm that we were seeing  a beaver swimming. Nothing really did happen, the shape in the lake simply moved off out of sight. We were disappointed, the kids started asking for granola bars and "Can we play at the playground now?". I decided we needed to hike out to the dam sight, so we did. We saw this great blue heron and we inspected the dam. No beavers popped out and said "Good morning", so I let the kids go to the play ground.
We saw lots of squirrels, and a few ducks on the lake, but we kept asking each other the same question, "Was that really a beaver?" In optimistic hindsight, I am going to say, yes it was. The guide at the beaver program said that if we saw one it would be far out from the shore, and we would just see a head above water. This fits what we saw in the dim light of morning. We didn't scare it or maybe we could have elicited a confirming tail slap. Anyway, beaver or no, getting out in nature is always rewarding, and the kids did love the playground.

Paper Mache armadillos were our project for science class last month. I searched the internet for inspiration, thinking that a million other homeschool families using Land Animals of the Sixth Day already posted pictures of their awesome armadillos, but I couldn't find much out there. So here's how ours turned out. 

This project is really lovely because one balloon makes two armadillo bodies. We worked together to Paper Mache the balloon. We use old paper lunch bags cut into strips (the kids bring crafts home from church each Sunday in a lunch bag) and liquid starch. Then we cut the balloon into two and each big kid decorated their own armadillo. Both armadillos were colorful (he orange one didn't make the picture).