Cooking and life skills

Lily likes to cook all by herself these days. Yesterday she made toast, fruit, and yogurt for breakfast; then she made macaroni and cheese (from scratch) for lunch.

I believe children should be taught how to take care of a household starting from a young age. Yes, that means chores. And allowing them to help when they ask. Young children want to do what you are doing. Don't send them away to do work, but do it with them.

I had the good fortune to be homeschooled, and since I was I had plenty of time to learn how to cook, clean, and take care of a household. It seems that many people lack education in this area, especially financial management. But I say that once kinds are old enough even let them balance the family budget. Nothing but good can come of that.

Log Cabin Village

We went to the Log Cabin Village the other day, and loved it! They have log cabins from the olden days that they brought to the site from various places. In each cabin they have beds, cooking equipment, and other things from the era. They also have a schoolhouse, a wood carver's shop, a blacksmith shop, and a water powered mill (for grinding grain). The kids favorite part was watching the blacksmith heat up the metal, bend it, and then cool it down. They asked for her to do it probably ten times. Then they have a hands on cabin where the kids can play with various items from that era. Definitely a good place to go.

Dinosaur Valley State Park

We went to Dinosaur Valley State Park this last week, and I would recommend it to anyone. It was great! They even have camping, and I want to go camp there. First we went to look at the dinosaur foot prints by the swimming hole. That's this first picture. You can kind of see the footprints, but it's hard to see in the picture.

 

 



 You should have seen us. We had two moms with six kids. Two of the children were babies strapped on to each of us mothers. The path down to the swimming hole wasn't extremely well marked, and there were a few paths people had made coming away from the pool. Going down was a little difficult. We had to navigate past some big rocks and slippery areas. But going back up was even better. I just wish we had a video of the whole shebang. We ended up trying another path hoping it would be easier to ascend. Nope. We ended up climbing up the face of a cliff (almost). Can't you just see us? Oh, we also had a puppy with us. So here we are with our babies strapped on to us, four other small children, and a puppy. Climbing this rock face! By the time we realized what we got ourselves into it was too late to turn around. So we just continued on handing children and puppies to each other and trying to climb without squishing the babies. Oh, the memories. But we made it. I think we should be awarded a wilderness explorer merit badge just for making that climb.

Next we went to find more dinosaur tracks. These had to be excavated from underneath tons of dirt. How did they even know they would find anything? We hopped over the stream on some big rocks. It was kind of fun. The tracks were on the other side. We found some pools that were once connected to the river, but since there is very little water right now the water had receded so the pools weren't connected to anything anymore. In the pools were some little fish and tadpoles. One small pool had tadpoles galore.

On we hiked for a while and found the best area for wading and playing in the water. We took off our shoes and socks, and the water felt amazing! I don't know how long we stayed there. At least two hours, it seems. It was so beautiful. Just playing in the stream made the hour-and-a-half drive worth it. I love being in nature. It is one of the few places where I feel truly happy. It restores my soul.

Fort Worth Nature Center

I love being in nature. It restores me. I want my children to enjoy nature like I do. So I try to get them out in natural settings as much as possible. It's also good for the wiggles. It also gives us a space for exploration. I think little minds need time to just explore and not be rushed. So many places (museums especially) I see adults rushing children from one thing to the other. Children need time to soak in information. They need to have time to experience something. When I go to a museum with my children I like to let them take their time on the things that interest them. I don't want to rush through so we can see everything in the whole dang place. That defeats the point, to me. Tangent! Ok, so back to nature. I like the slow pace that nature promotes. I like the peace it brings. I think we need more of that in our lives. Also, I think too many people are so cut off from the natural world around them. When we eat meat we don't go hunt the animal, kill it, skin it and cut it up, then cook and eat it. We go buy frozen chicken breasts that have no bones, no skin, no fat. And no one realizes the waste that goes into that product. What happened to the rest of the chicken? No, they don't think about that. Another tangent! Sorry, I'm on one. But this is something I think about. A lot. I think a lot of the problems that we are faced with in our world today come from people not connecting things in their life to the world around them. We don't connect the chicken breasts with the rest of the chicken and wonder what happened to it. We don't connect TV dinners with what they really should be and how they got the way they are. We don't connect the labor it takes to make a truly good product. We just want to buy cheap junk from Wal Mart because we can't really appreciate the true value of a product well made by skilled hands. Why? Because we have no idea what it takes to make things. We have gotten too far away from making things, from producing things for ourselves. So that is another reason to be in nature. To connect ourselves to the world around us.

We spent a day (or about four hours) at the Fort Worth Nature Center. It was wonderful. We visited the visitor center and looked at the animals, and we did some hiking. But my favorite part was right at the end. We found a little trail and followed it to an area where quite a lot of erosion had occurred. There was a cliff of rock and sand. So we talked about erosion. And then we found sandstone and sand. It was really neat because there was sandstone, sand, and almost formed sandstone that was easy to break apart. So we talked about how sandstone is formed. Then we tried to form it out of the sand. We found out we couldn't put enough pressure on it to get it to stick very well together. So that taught (I hope) the kids how hard it would have to be pressed to turn into a stone. Then Lily wondered what pushed it hard enough to actually turn it into stone. So we talked about that. It was a really neat conversation, and it was such a perfect place to talk about those subjects. It really had a chance to click and sink in, I think. Obviously they are young and probably won't remember much, but maybe they will. And maybe it would make it easier for them to understand later on.