Into the Woods

The kids quite enjoy "nature hunts," where they take a bag and collect interesting things they find on their walk. I do not enjoy the fruits of these adventures: messy bags of dirt, rocks, bugs, forest paraphernalia, and water; the contents usually end up all over the living room rug.

So today we added a modern twist: a photo nature hunt. We went into the woods across the way and I let Bryn and Calvin tell me what to photograph. After the usual (and not so usual) rocks, sticks, and leaves, they started finding some really cool stuff (fungi, flowers, etc.). Here are some of the things they found:
I think Bryn wins most interesting object. She was so excited to find a stick shaped like the letter T:
I even started to get in on the hunt, and found these psychedelic pom-pom like fungi on a log:
And here's a sampling of the critters we found in the woods today:
(Lower left: Poor Calvin took a head-first high-dive from the log bridge into the brook. He was not happy about that.)